A 51-year-old man has been jailed for life for murdering his partner in a bath in Co Antrim 15 years ago.
William Mawhinney, from Gracehill March in Canbridgeshire in England, was convicted of the murder of Lorraine Mills in May 1995.
The 35-year-old was found dead in the bath in the home she shared with Mawhinney and their two children in Ballymena.
A post mortem examination revealed that she died from drowning, had a fractured skull and was seven times over the drink-drive limit at the time of her death.
During the trial, the jury heard evidence from the victim's 22-year-old daughter who said she was just six years old when she saw her father attack and drown her mother.
She said she hated and despised her father for what he had done.
She told the court that on the day of the murder, her mother was in good spirits and was singing her favourite song, 'Danny Boy', when she went for a bath.
As she sat on the toilet seat, she said she heard her father come upstairs.
‘He came into the bathroom and shut the door behind him, he locked it with a bolt... he walked over to my mum... he seemed pretty calm,’ she said.
She told the court she saw Mawhinney ‘appear to shove’ her mother under the water, take a wooden bat from his pocket and hit her with it.
Her mother ‘sort of struggled... but not with a lot of energy,’ then her legs ‘fell to the side’ and her father got up and walked away.
Her father told her to tell police they had been out for a few hours and had come back to find Lorraine dead in the bath.
The jury also heard from Mawhinney's second wife, Gwen Mawhinney, who told the court that while watching an episode of CSI one evening in 2002, he had boasted to her that ‘the police were stupid - I got away with it’.
She told the jury how Mawhinney boasted, with no emotion, that he had ‘committed the perfect murder’ when he walked into the bathroom ‘and pushed her head under the water’.
