SehaJ
Troublemaker
AN OLDHAM woman has spoken of her family’s mental torture after a convicted paedophile was found guilty of stabbing her mother to death and burying her in a cellar where she lay undetected for eight years.
Frederick Lawlor, 54, was sentenced to life in prison at Manchester Crown Court on Tuesday for the murder of Dorothy Carre and will serve a minimum of 17 years.
There were tears from jurors after it was revealed for the first time that Lawlor (pictured) is already serving an “indeterminate” sentence for sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl – including offering her for sex with other men while he filmed them – and has two previous convictions for physically abusing ex-girlfriends.
Lawlor was arrested in March this year after police investigating Mrs Carre’s disappearance found the remains of a body under the cellar floor at an address in Equitable Street, Rochdale.
During the trial the court heard a post-mortem had shown the bones had at least 10 stab wounds to the vertebrae which would have involved “extreme” force.
And although there was no soft tissue, DNA testing provided “extremely strong” evidence the remains were those of Oldhamer Mrs Carre, who had become estranged from her family in the late 1990s because of her relationship with Lawlor.
Her daughter Lynn Edwards, 42, an Oldham bus driver, told afterwards of the daily mental anguish and horrific loss felt by her family.
“I relive in my mind her last moments alive and imagine all sorts of atrocities Fred Lawlor may have subjected her to during their time together, prior to her murder, and during it,” she said.
Mrs Edwards described how Lawlor subjected her mother to physical and mental abuse while making “every effort to alienate her from her children to allow him to have control over her”.
“Frederick Lawlor has taken my mother’s life and as a result of this the four of us have lost our mother,” she added.
“Thirteen grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren have lost their grandma. I will never see my mum again and our lives are changed forever.”
Mrs Carre, a former launderette worker, originally lived in the Abbeyhills area but split from her husband after 16 years of marriage.
She then moved into a Holts flat and started a relationship with her then neighbour, Lawlor, which proved stormy and led to family concerns he was abusing her.
The couple then moved to Lancashire, but Mrs Carre did not tell her family and, when police traced her, said she did not want them to find her.
The pair next moved to Rochdale where Mrs Carre was last seen by her GP in March 1999, complaining of physical abuse from Lawlor.
The couple briefly split and then reconciled and she followed him to a new address in Equitable Street, Rochdale.
Despite evidence linking him to the address, Lawlor later denied having lived there and claimed Mrs Carre left him in 1999 to live in Ireland.
But after years of anguish and silence, Mrs Edwards says that when she discovered Lawlor was living with another woman in April 2006, she realised her mother was dead.
“Mum would have come back because she could not manage on her own and needed someone for love or support,” she said. “Even if she did not get that from Fred she would have stayed with him rather than be alone.”
Police officers began delving into Lawlor’s past and discovered that – within months of Dorothy’s last sighting – he had moved to Bolton with another woman.
When interviewed, she confirmed seeing Mrs Carre’s benefits book at Lawlor’s home, prompting a search of the Equitable Street house and the grim discovery of cracked flag stones in the cellar.
Upon hearing the guilty verdict at Manchester Crown Court, Mrs Edwards shouted “Yes!” from the public gallery.
Lawlor sat impassive while one of Mrs Carre’s sons, David, 38, began crying.
Det Insp Dave Lever, senior investigating officer, said: “I hope the family can now find some comfort in the fact that Dorothy has been finally laid to rest and Lawlor held accountable for his crime.”
