Even as he was questioned by police after knifing Elinor O'Brien, a stabbing which would eventually kill her, Kevin Mannion's attitude towards a woman he claimed to love was clear. Mannion, a 45-year-old cocaine fuelled thug, constantly referred to Elinor as 'the girl', or 'that girl'.
Within 30 minutes of stabbing her, knowing exactly what he'd done, Mannion had called his solicitor to make sure he was ready for the inevitable court case. And as Mannion concocted increasingly desperate lies in a selfish bid to save his own skin, it was obvious that Elinor, a young woman more than two decades his junior, was terrified of him.
She did everything she could to avoid Mannion's vengeful wrath, knowing just what he was capable of. When questioned by friends and family about injuries she'd suffered at Mannion's hand, Elinor invented a violent ex-boyfriend to try and explain away the black eyes and bruises.
She used a false name at hospital, and was petrified at the thought of being seen with police and labelled a 'grass'. She also made up stories to cover for Mannion's violent rages.
Even as she lay in an ambulance, fighting for her life, Elinor refused to name the man who had inflicted what would prove to be a fatal injury. A bubbly young woman, aged just 22 when her life was cruelly cut short, friends told how Elinor 'lit up the room' and had an 'infectious smile'.
But during her eight month relationship with Mannion, she lived in terror. Elinor had been unlucky in love before. She had previously been with a man had also instilled fear in her. Like with Mannion, she was reluctant to report his behaviour to police.
After moving on from that relationship, Elinor needed love and support from someone who cared for her. But sadly, she did not get that from Kevin Mannion.
He inflicted injury after injury on a vulnerable young woman, before eventually killing her. Now after being found guilty of murdering Elinor, faces a life sentence. He will learn how long he will have to serve in prison at a hearing next week.
Elinor had experienced her fair share of problems in her short life, but she had so much time ahead of her to come to terms with them. She had experienced struggles with her mental health, and had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Aged 16, Elinor, known to friends and family as Ellie, left home. Around the same time, she met a man who began to control her life. It was also thought that he had been violent towards Elinor, but, as later with Mannion, she didn't feel she could tell police.
Her ex spent time in and out of jail, and remains in prison now. The relationship ended in 2021, the same year Elinor met Mannion.
Around Christmas time that year, her family remembered hearing that she had a 'new fella' who she called 'Manny'. Kevin Mannion, from Salford, was a violent father-of-five, a man previously before the courts after becoming involved in a fight with two doormen at a bar, as well as a New Year's Eve brawl over a 'domestic matter'.
Mannion and Elinor had known each other as friends, but decided to embark on a relationship. The pair bonded over a shared interest in fitness and the gym. They would attend classes including circuits and MMA, mixed martial arts.
Mannion said the pair would regularly spar together, sometimes with their bare hands. But later on, Elinor became Mannion's punchbag.
Bruised by her previous relationship, Elinor wanted a boyfriend to settle down with. Mannion was not interested in committing to her.
He continued to string her along, seeing at least one other woman behind her back. Mannion lived in the Great Northern Tower apartment block, one of Manchester's most sought after luxury developments, in the heart of the bustling city centre.
How he came to be there is unclear. Mannion didn't own the flat, but could use it 'when he needed it', he said. Mannion was well known to his neighbours in the exclusive block.
One couple who lived downstairs even had a nickname for him. Mannion was known by them as 'scary neighbour'.
He was often the subject of noise complaints, with screaming and shouting being heard coming from the apartment. On one occasion, a neighbour texted her boyfriend who was away to chronicle disturbing noises coming from the flat.
"Currently having a sat-by-the-door cig, scary neighbour is being a nightmare this weekend," she wrote. "Last night he was screaming threatening to glass his girlfriend, when I woke up he was screaming the loudest I’ve ever heard on the phone to her calling her a stupid b****, and now she’s round and they’re on the balcony and he’s loudly telling her how horrible she is."
Those neighbours gained an insight into Mannion and Elinor's tempestuous relationship. They often saw Elinor's bags left out on the hallway of the apartment. On one occasion they saw Elinor apparently locked out on the balcony on her own.
A matter of weeks after their relationship started, Elinor called her doctor to report a black eye. She told how 'her boyfriend beat her up last weekend'.
Unable to hear through one ear and having difficulty opening her jaw, she had considered going to A&E but 'thought they would ask her loads of questions'. Mannion remembered the incident rather differently.
He admitted that he was responsible for the black eye but maintained he'd only slapped her once to 'calm her down', after she'd turned up to his flat drunk in the early hours. The following month, in March last year, she told her doctor that she'd been 'subject to domestic abuse by her boyfriend', and was worried that her ex was due to be released from prison.
She was later referred to Manchester Women's Aid, a charity supporting victim's of domestic abuse. She told them that she'd been subjected to domestic violence by her ex-boyfriend, a man called Paul Traynor.
He was 34 or 35 and from Gorton, Elinor said. But Paul Traynor did not exist. Traynor was in fact Mannion.
It was another example of the terror Mannion instilled in Elinor. Mannion was violent towards her again in April, causing a second black eye.
Again, he maintained he'd only slapped her to 'calm her down' because she was 'hysterical'. He raged after claiming Elinor had lied to him about when she'd returned home, after attending a baby shower with friends.
Mannion would not stand for insubordination. A few days later, he sent a voice note to Elinor's friend, calling her a 'dirty little sl**'.
"Don't talk s*** about me you little tramp, or I'll smash your head in," he warned her, after she'd tried to vouch for Elinor. After the attack, people noticed her black eye.
Elinor told her family that she'd been in a pub when a fight had broken out, and she had been injured after being caught in the crossfire. Further enquires at the pub revealed there'd been no trouble in the boozer.
It was around this time that the authorities became aware of her black eye. Firefighters had been called to her flat in Salford, where she lived with her two small French bulldogs, after reports of flooding following an electrical fault in a washing machine.
When Elinor went to pick up the keys to her home after firefighters had secured the property with new locks, watch manager Simon Ryder noticed the black eye.
Elinor explained to Mr Ryder that she'd had to flee the flat the day before, 'because her boyfriend had hit her and smashed up her car'. Mr Ryder had been preparing to give Elinor a stern telling off about leaving her dogs in the flat, but his attitude changed once he saw how upset and tearful she was.
"I told her that no one should treat her like this, and she really needed to report the matter," Mr Ryder said. "No chance," he said Elinor told him.
"I was really upset at the state she was in," Mr Ryder recalled. "I felt like seeking help wasn't an option for her."
She left the fire station without leaving a name or contact number, but Mr Ryder was able to alert the police. A few days later, officers went to see Elinor. She wouldn't let them inside, and refused to go to the station with them.
"I can't be seen speaking to you," she said. She even asked police to stand a few metres away, to make it look as though they weren't with her.
"If I'm seen talking to you I'm dead," Elinor chillingly told the officer. She wouldn't name her boyfriend.
Officers left, but the following day Elinor called police. She told them she'd been the victim of domestic violence by a man called Paul Traynor.
She followed up her phone call with an email, which read: "Hello, my name is Elinor O'Brien, I spoke to somebody last night, I don't know if it was you but I need your help. Please call me urgently."
When an officer attended her flat again, Elinor said she wanted to tell them about 'issues' she was having with her ex-boyfriend Paul Traynor, but stressed she didn't want to press charges.
She was 'getting beaten up every week' and was 'afraid of getting beaten up again'. He'd made threats to kill her 'lots of times'.
Asked further about the man, Elinor told police that he would pay for 'everything' because she didn't have any money, and he 'wouldn't let her get a job'.
She 'didn't know what he did to have access to this money'. Elinor said she was fearful and wanted to 'disappear' from Salford.
Arrangements were made for Elinor to move into a hostel in Wythenshawe. Despite her ordeals at the hands of Mannion, she went back to him.
It was the end of May when Mannion's neighbours in the Great Northern Tower heard some of the 'loudest' screaming and shouting yet. "It was always the male," a neighbour said. "I never heard her shout back."
"It was very aggressive language, you bi***, a lot of swearing. I never heard her respond."
The following month, Mannion paid for the couple to go on holiday to Cyprus, and relations appeared to have improved. "I have met someone who is a good person and has paid for me to be on holiday," Elinor said of Mannion in a text message at the time.
But the uneasy truce was soon over. Mannion revealed that a woman he'd been seeing at the same time as Elinor, had disclosed she was pregnant.
Neighbours in the Great Northern Tower heard a nasty row about the same topic. "You got another girl pregnant and that's my fault?," they heard a woman say.
While she was on the balcony, they heard someone shout 'go on, jump', before a woman replying 'maybe I will'. All the while, Elinor had remained living in the hostel, making trips to visit Mannion.
On one such trip, on August 13, they met with friends and took the short journey from the apartment to Impossible bar on Peter Street. They returned to Mannion's flat before their friends left after 1.30am. At some stage in the small hours, Mannion stabbed Elinor to her left breast.
After 7am, she took an Uber to the refuge in Wythenshawe, texting Mannion to let her know she'd got back safely and that she ‘loves him so much’. Mannion did not respond.
Later, she googled hospital times, and 'what happens if you get water in a stab wound in the shower'. Elinor went to hospital, and told doctors she'd been involved in a 'fight' and woke up to find her bra was covered in blood.
She provided hospital staff with a false name. And Elinor told her mother that she'd 'caught her boob on the shower door'.
Again, on August 16, neighbours heard screaming and shouting coming from Mannion's apartment. The arguing had begun in the early hours, and continued into the morning. By noon, according to one neighbour it was 'really ramping up'.
The pair rowed after Elinor dared to ask Mannion if he was seeing other women, when he failed to respond to a number of texts from her telling him 'I need you', sent during her visit to A&E.
It was 12.16pm when Mannion called 999. The lies began soon after.
"Please come," he pleaded, repeatedly heard saying Elinor's name. "There’s blood everywhere. She’s been punctured in the groin. Please come.
“She’s been cut with a sharp object. She was picking her stuff up, I was throwing her stuff telling her to get out and something punctured her in the groin. I’m begging you to get someone here.”
Another phone call he made within half an hour of ringing 999 was telling. At 12.38pm Mannion called his solicitor, a man who'd acted for him before.
"I wanted it documented that an accident had happened, and I wanted him to be available," Mannion later claimed at his trial.
"If I was in that position I would not have done that," a police officer at the scene of the killing later said.
Police and paramedics were met with a horrific scene. Elinor had been stabbed to her groin, and she was bleeding heavily.
Elinor was rushed to hospital in an ambulance. She was lucid enough to tell the paramedics her name.
But when asked what had happened, she turned her head away and didn't say anything. With Elinor still alive, Mannion was arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm. The lies continued.
"I didn't do anything," he told police. "She will say that because that's the truth."
Elinor clung on to life, but sadly died on August 19. Later, Mannion's excuse changed. Elinor's injuries had not been caused in a freak accident.
He now claimed he had closed the door while throwing out Elinor's possessions, only to open it again and find her seriously injured on the floor, suggesting Elinor could have stabbed herself.
A pathologist, Doctor Charles Wilson, said Mannion's first explanation of an accidental stabbing was 'highly implausible'. The suggestion that the stabbing could have been self inflicted was 'extremely unlikely'.
It took about a day for a jury of eight men and four women to see through Mannion's lies, and convict him of murder. Sadly, justice came too late for Elinor. But Mannion will now pay for his crimes.
Kevin Mannion, 45, of Watson Street, Manchester, was unanimously convicted of murder, wounding with intent and displaying controlling or coercive behaviour following a three week trial at Liverpool Crown Court. He will be sentenced on Thursday, March 9.
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