20-Year Sentence For Shirley's Murder

A man who strangled a vulnerable young woman in Co Antrim has been sentenced to spend at least two decades in jail.

Polish national Henryk Gorski, 52, attacked Shirley Finlay, 24, in his Ballymena flat three years ago.

Gorski, who police described as an "evil murderer", wrapped her body in a duvet and used a pram to wheel her to where she was dumped.

Explaining his sentencing and noting that by stripping the body naked and dumping the victim the killer deserved such a jail term, Mr Justice Hart, sitting at Antrim Crown Court also ordered that Gorski must serve a minimum of 20 years imprisonment before he can be considered for release by the Parole Commissioners.

He said this was an aggravating factor as he had attempted to dispose of her body in a fashion that would deflect suspicion from him. He said it was "callous in the extreme" to strip her naked and then leave her body in the car park.

The court heard that Shirley Finlay was beaten and then strangled and that her naked body was found wrapped in a duvet cover behind a wall at the rear of a car park in central Ballymena.

Forensic evidence pointed extremely strongly to her body being wrapped in the duvet cover in Gorski's flat, carried down the fire escape and transported in a child's buggy to where it was dumped.

Mr Justice Hart said that this was a "brutal murder and the defendant's motive can only be a matter of speculation because there was no evidence of sexual contact, but whatever happened there is no doubt that [Henryk Gorski] strangled Shirley Finlay and then dumped her body".

He added that Shirley was "a vulnerable individual at the time of her death".

The judge referred to the guidelines on fixing the minimum term of imprisonment for murder and said that he was satisfied that a higher starting point is appropriate in this case.

He said this was because Shirley Finlay was a particularly vulnerable individual and that she was subjected to considerable violence before she died.

(BMcC/GK)