Murderer who attacked a woman weeks after his release from jail is refused parole

Martin Shipton

A psychopath obsessed with older women who murdered a Welsh grandmother and committed another serious attack on a woman a month after being released from jail has had an application to be released again turned down by the Parole Board.

In December 1985 Sharon Owens, 12, called to see her much-loved gran Glenys Owens, 67, at her home in Merthyr Tydfil, but found her dead, wearing only a pair of tights and pants. During a ferocious attack, Mrs Owens’ upper and lower jaw, her eye sockets and the base and left side of her skull had been shattered.

At first it was thought a hatchet had been used to kill her, but it emerged that she had in fact been stamped to death by Donald Sheridan, a 21 year-old friend of her grandson who had a fetish for much older women.

He also resented the fact that Mrs Owens didn’t approve of his friendship with her son. During a police interview, Sheridan said he had gone into Mrs Owens’ house and punched her in the face when trying to get her out of a chair. He threw her on the floor and then hauled her up the stairs with his hands around her throat.

Upstairs he headbutted her, pulled her clothes off and sexually assaulted her.

Released

Sheridan pleaded guilty to murder and was jailed for life at Cardiff Crown Court, although the judge made no recommendation about the minimum sentence he should serve.

He was released in 2019 after the Parole Board decided he posed no danger and moved to Leeds. Around a month later he committed another serious attack on a woman.

Sheridan had been drinking rum in the probation hostel where he was living, in defiance of an alcohol ban. He took a “considerable amount of money” to meet a female sex worker in the city’s managed sex zone. The sex worker made a phone call while they were behind a skip in a commercial yard and they began to physically fight before some men turned up and stole his money.

Following the incident, Sheridan made his way under a disused railway bridge and sat in some bushes. He grabbed a random woman around the neck as she walked past on her way home from the gym and pulled her backwards into the bushes.

He told the victim to lie down, started strangling her, then asked her for money.

She gave him £10, offered to transfer him more money, told him she had two young children at home and begged him not to kill her.

Sheridan told the victim he would not kill her and then continued strangling her while telling her to be quiet. He asked the victim to kiss him and perform oral sex on him, but she refused. He then took out two pairs of female women’s tights and made the victim put them on.

Sheridan let the woman go when a dog walker came near the bush but made her take the tights off first and asked her not to tell anyone.

DNA

Leeds Crown Court heard the victim, who believed she was going to die during the attack, ran away. Police later found tights covered in Sheridan’s DNA at the scene.

In a police interview Sheridan claimed he had only dragged the victim into the bush because he had just been robbed and said: “Well she’s not my type really, do you know what I mean?”

He then admitted that he had had a fetish for women in their sixties and seventies ever since he had seen a naked nun when he was in care as a child. He said he stole the nun’s tights, wore them to bed and had carried women’s tights around with him ever since, adding: “It’s a comfort blanket for me.”

But Sheridan said making the victim wear the tights did not “do it” for him as he intended. Asked what would have happened if the woman had been older and the tights had “done it for him”, he replied: “Might have raped her, might have killed her, I don’t know.”

Sheridan told police he still experienced urges to rape and murder women, especially to strangle them, and he had recently felt the urge to strangle an older sex worker after using her services.

Dock officer

After he made his first court appearance in relation to the Leeds offences the following day, he attacked a dock officer as soon as she took off his handcuffs in his cell. He lunged at her and began to strangle her before another prison officer pulled him off. Sheridan later told police he could have kept strangling the dock officer until she died.

Sheridan pleaded guilty to robbery, false imprisonment, committing an offence with intent to commit a sexual offence and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

He was sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment and life imprisonment with a minimum term of five-and-a-half years.

However, Sharon Owens was determined that he should not be released.

In a powerful victim statement to the Parole Board, she wrote: “Many years have passed since my grandmother, Glenys Owens, was brutally taken from us. Her death, a horrific murder, forever altered the course of my life. At just 12 years old, I was thrust into a world without the love and security she provided, and the consequences have remained throughout my life.

“From witnessing the dead body of my grandmother, I have had flashbacks all through my life. I have dreamt that I have been in the living room with my grandmother looking at her lifeless body, walking through the home looking through the ornaments in the glass cabinet she had and on the fireplace. These dreams and flashbacks are extremely vivid whereby nothing triggers them. I could be walking my dog, washing the dishes, shopping at Tesco’s and specifically looking at Breakaways [chocolate biscuits], as she would often buy these for me. I have also had extremely vivid dreams where she is at the gates of heaven and even calling me. These memories ambush me at the most unexpected moments, dragging me back into the darkness of that trauma.

“I have to deal with the trauma of my grandmother’s murder when I was 12 years of age, and the impact of the violence has remained with me throughout my years. My grandmother taught me love and kindness, and Donald’s actions on the night of Friday December 13 took this away from me.”

Risk

A spokesperson for the Parole Board said: “We can confirm that a panel of the Parole Board refused the release of Donald Sheridan following a paper hearing. The panel also refused to recommend a move to an open prison.

“Parole Board decisions are solely focused on what risk a prisoner could represent to the public if released and whether that risk is manageable in the community.

“A panel will carefully examine a huge range of evidence, including details of the original crime, and any evidence of behaviour change, as well as explore the harm done and impact the crime has had on the victims.

“Parole reviews are undertaken thoroughly and with extreme care. Protecting the public is our number one priority.

“Under current legislation he will be eligible for a further review in due course. The date of the next review will be set by the Ministry of Justice.”

A spokesperson for the Owens family said: “We are relieved that the decision has been made to keep this monster behind bars. Knowing he will remain out of society and not impose any danger to us or the public gives us as a family some peace. However, we will continue to fight for justice for this horrific crime and fight to ensure he remains behind bars in the future.”