A 30 year old man has been found guilty of the murder of Frankie Dunne, whose body was found on the grounds of a derelict house in Cork in December 2019.
The jury of eight women and four men found Ionut Cosmin Nicolescu guilty by a unanimous verdict at the Central Criminal Court in Cork today.
Ionut Cosmin Nicolescu, with an address in Romania, pleaded not guilty to the murder of Frankie Dunne.
The 64 year old father of three was found dead on the grounds of Castlegreine House in Cork on the 28th December 2019.
The jury delivered their verdict after deliberating for seven hours and fifty two minutes.
The trial heard that Frankie Dunne spent his last Christmas day with his family on the northside of the city before his dismembered body was discovered three days later in the garden of the derelict house on Boreenmanna Road by a local man who was looking for his missing elderly cat.
Gardaí subsequently found the head of the deceased in a refuse bag in the garden whilst his arms were "draped over a branch on a tree."
Nicolescu was squatting in Castlegreine House at the time and had claimed that two men armed with a knife and machete had forced him to help dispose of Frankie Dunne's body and clothes.
Members of Frankie Dunnes family were present in court when the jury returned their verdict and were visibly moved when the foreman read out the guilty verdict.
Mr Justice Paul McDermott thanked the jurors for their service in the trial which began on the 13th of March. He said that the jury had listened to evidence that was at times “traumatic in nature.”
