Serial Killer Documentary - Eric Locke： The Sickening Truth
Serial Killer Documentary - Eric Locke： The Sickening Truth
Speaker 1: In 2014, in a suburb of Dublin, a brief romance
between Sonia Blunt and Eric Locke went sour, setting off
a chain of events that would end with Sonia's violent death.
Speaker 2: This was a brutal, awful murder. It was rage-fuelled.
Speaker 1: Furious at being rejected, Locke became obsessed with getting Sonia back.
Speaker 3: And he was going to do that, by hook or
by crook, whether Sonia wanted it or not.
Speaker 4: He brought cable ties, the Stanley knife, duct tape, the
imitation gun.
Speaker 1: After taking Sonia's life, Eric Locke threw off all responsibility
for his terrible crime.
Speaker 5: The defence really argued for his mental disorder.
Speaker 6: It was a momentary insanity. I never meant to do it.
Speaker 1: Despite his attempts to play the victim, Eric Locke's depraved
actions mean that he will forever be known as one
of the world's most evil killers. In May 2017, Eric
Locke was jailed for the murder of his colleague, Sonia Blunt.
The 35-year-old had lured Sonia to a hotel room in
Dublin and ended her life after pretending to be someone
else online. Locke was a lonely heart's worst nightmare.
Speaker 4: The person that you're meeting may not be the person
that they say that they are, but it could be
somebody deceiving you and then you could end up in
a situation where you're murdered or killed. I think that's
what's scary about it.
Speaker 1: 31-year-old Sonia thought she'd done enough to keep herself safe,
but she'd not reckoned on the determination and evil intent
of Eric Locke.
Speaker 3: He has been online. He has changed his identity, a
new profile on social media.
Speaker 2: He pretended to be somebody else so that he could
have access to her. He had no intention of leaving
there that night without having her. That was the plan.
Speaker 1: Sonia Blunt was a single mother simply looking for love.
Killer Eric Locke deceived and manipulated her in pursuit of
revenge and retribution. This killer's story begins in the spring
of 1982, six miles west of Dublin's city centre.
Speaker 3: Eric Locke was from St John's Park East in Llandawkin
in County Dublin.
Speaker 6: Quite a small community and he was born to a
very good family.
Speaker 1: Locke grew up with his parents and sister in the
working-class town. It was an ordinary childhood, though Locke's mother
and father had concerns from time to time about their
son's state of mind.
Speaker 5: He had been hyperactive as a child and his parents
had sought treatment for him. He was noticed by his
family at a young age to be interested in lining
up things and making lists and they were concerned about him,
but he was never diagnosed with anything.
Speaker 2: And he also said that he was subject of ridicule
because of a deformity on his penis.
Speaker 5: When Eric Locke was born, his urethra was on the
underside of his penis. And there was a surgical attempt
to correct it, but it was unsuccessful. So then he
was left with both the deformity itself and the scarring.
And he didn't know about this really until he was
teased in the showers after PE class when he was
12 or 13 years of age. And after that, he
always felt different.
Speaker 1: Whether because of his issues in his teenage years or
for some other reason, those who knew Eric Locke in
his 20s noticed something a little unusual about the way
he interacted with the opposite sex.
Speaker 6: I think one person said of Eric Locke that he
was weird about women.
Speaker 5: He had no problem getting girls. He was quite a
good-looking man, objectively, but he never could hold on to them,
and nobody ever knew much about his relationships.
Speaker 6: One friend described him as charming, but dead behind the eyes.
Speaker 5: Eric Locke was definitely an odd person, but he didn't
seem to be a dangerous person. He had no history
of violence or any police history at all.
Speaker 1: After graduating from college, Locke entered the world of work
and enjoyed socialising with friends and colleagues.
Speaker 6: He was a football player as a young man, a
Manchester United supporter. Some people say he did a bit
of male modelling. Whether it's true, I'm not sure. But
certainly he was, you know, upright, and throughout his 20s,
didn't really make much of an impression on anyone. He
just had an ordinary life.
Speaker 1: In 2013, 31-year-old Eric Locke was single and living with
his parents in Clondalkin when he got a new job
at a glue manufacturer four miles away in Taller. This
is where he met the woman who would soon become
the focus of the dark side he'd so far managed
to keep under wraps.
Speaker 3: Locke worked with a number of people in a daily
course of his employment, and one such person he worked
with was Sonia Blunt. She was a 31-year-old lady from
the Tala area.
Speaker 5: They caught each other's eye at work and there were
rumours around work that they fancied each other and they
did go on a few dates.
Speaker 1: 31-year-old Sonia had worked at the manufacturing plant for about
10 years when she met new employee, Locke.
Speaker 6: Sonia was brought up in Teller, at south-west of Dublin Centre.
One of five, it's a close family, the parents separated,
but it was still amicable.
Speaker 1: The eldest of five children, Sonia was known as a
caring sister and daughter with a strong circle of friends.
She'd studied childcare at college before starting her career at
the manufacturing plant. Sonia was also a devoted single mother
with a toddler son from an unhappy long-term relationship that
had broken down in the autumn of 2013.
Speaker 3: He was domineering and she had gotten away from that relationship.
Speaker 5: The man had left the country, and she really was
beginning to enjoy life again at that stage, because she
wasn't looking for a serious relationship.
Speaker 1: In December 2013, Sonia Blunt and Eric Locke started spending
time together outside of work. The romance, however, was short
and not particularly sweet.
Speaker 6: I think Locke was to say later, we were never boyfriend-girlfriend.
It was just a sort of, they went on a
number of dates. Early in January 2014, Sonia and Eric
Locke would go on a date together. It's a gig,
so far so normal.
Speaker 4: At some point in the night, Sonia decided to go
out and have a cigarette. Ultimately, Locke was a bit suspicious.
She was gone for 20 minutes, and this seemed to
upset him.
Speaker 5: After a while, Locke came out looking for her, and
she was talking to other people, including males, and he
called her a slut.
Speaker 1: Furious, Locke berated Sonia for daring to chat with other men.
Speaker 2: Basically accusing her of flirting, very gendered slurs. So that
incident actually is probably the biggest red flag you can
have from anyone who's going to become a problem for
you in the relationship. And she didn't like it, and
she was upset by it.
Speaker 1: Horrified at the dark turn the date had taken, Sonia left,
telling Locke that the romance was over. As he took
a taxi home a few hours later, a drunk and
apparently remorseful Locke tried to take back his verbal attack.
Speaker 5: He was just hounding her by text message and just
begging her to let him see her and explain it.
And she said, there's no need to explain it.
Speaker 4: Sonia explained to him the messages that she knew he
was a nice person. However, she couldn't accept being spoken
to in that manner.
Speaker 1: Over the next couple of days, Eric Locke bombarded Sonia
Blunt with dozens of messages demanding a second chance. Sonia
asked him repeatedly to stop, but the texts kept coming,
peppering her with excuses for his jealousy and aggression.
Speaker 4: He did acknowledge that the only reason that he reacted
in this way was because he was insecure and that
Sonia hadn't told him that he was attractive. This was
surprising to Sonia, that he would react in this way
or seek this type of approval.
Speaker 2: Sonia had only had a couple of dates with him.
This kind of behavior after a relationship breakup is not
about love. It's actually about possession and inability to take
any kind of rejection at all. And it can become
really quite dangerous quite quickly.
Speaker 1: Sonia found Eric Locke's response surprising, even alarming. But it
was only the beginning. On the 13th of January, three
days after their disastrous date, he walked out in the
middle of his shift. He stopped answering his phone or
replying to co-workers' messages about his whereabouts.
Speaker 3: Sonia, being the caring and kind and considerate person that
she was, sent him a text to say, oh, we're
worried about you, is everything OK? But he didn't respond
until the following day.
Speaker 4: And he said that he was in a hotel room
and that he had a rope and that he was sorry.
It was at this time that Sonia decided to contact
the Gardaí.
Speaker 1: Sonia was worried sick. She had no idea what this desperate,
volatile man might be capable of doing.
Speaker 4: The Gardaí were able to trace Locke's phone to a
hotel room and when they got there, he said that
it was just a joke. However, the Gardaí didn't believe
him and weren't convinced, so they arrested him under the
Mental Health Act. He was then hospitalised.
Speaker 5: He discharged himself later that day and she stayed in
touch with him. Her text messages to him were more
of a caring nature after that, asking him to get help,
encouraging him to get help. She was extremely worried and
her friend said she wasn't sleeping or eating.
Speaker 1: Sonia felt terrible about the way things had turned out,
which is perhaps exactly what Eric Locke intended.
Speaker 3: Sonia was such a gentle and kind soul that she
was looking after his best interests and he exploited that
instead of appreciating it for what it was.
Speaker 2: He is looking for anything that will get her back.
It's like having a little toolbox. Right, well, I'm going
to pull this tool out, the begging and crying. Let's
see if that works. And if that doesn't work, then
we'll go to something else.
Speaker 1: For homicide expert Professor Jane Monckton-Smith, Eric Locke's threats to
take his own life were not just a tactic. They
were also a warning sign of the risk he posed
to Sonia Blunt's life.
Speaker 2: When I'm training police, we always say, if there's a
threat to suicide, that should be interpreted as a threat
to homicide.
Speaker 1: Eric Locke's desperate text messages and disappearing tricks were just
the beginning. His pursuit of Sonia Blunt would continue to escalate.
But while Locke was planning his next move, Sonia had
been online and met someone new.
Speaker 3: Sonia was contacted on social media a guy called Shane Cully,
and they started messaging.
Speaker 5: And he seemed completely different from Eric Locke, and there
was a bit of fun, a bit of banter back
and forth, and she just went with it.
Speaker 6: Sonia wants to find something. Maybe it's friendship, maybe it's romance.
One can't be absolutely sure, but I can be incredibly
sympathetic because I can understand exactly how she must have felt.
Speaker 4: They're getting along quite well. He's proposing to go on
a date. Initially, Sonia had some concerns. She was worried
that this could have been Locke essentially catfishing her. So
she asked Shane Cully to send her a selfie. She
wanted to be completely assured that this wasn't Locke pretending
to be somebody else.
Speaker 1: The young mother ignored her own misgivings and brushed off
the fears of those who'd witnessed her ordeal with Locke.
Speaker 5: And even when she was telling the story to... her co-worker,
about this guy she was going to meet. The co-worker said,
are you sure that's not Eric Locke pretending to be
someone else? That's the kind of guy he was that
they suspected that of him. And she assured her, well,
I thought that, but I actually got a selfie from him.
Speaker 2: It's not him.
Speaker 5: And they started to send each other risque messages. And
eventually they agreed to meet up in a hotel room.
Speaker 4: It was something unusual for her, but it was after
Valentine's Day, perhaps feeling slightly lonely, and decided to spend
the night with him.
Speaker 1: Sonia Blunt had never before arranged a romantic encounter with
a stranger in a hotel, but she pushed her nerves
aside and set a date to meet Shane Cully. While
Sonia did her best to move on, Eric Locke was
persisting in his campaign of emotional blackmail.
Speaker 5: He accused her of blanking him at work and said
that she was spreading rumors that he was stalking her.
And she replied, well, I haven't heard those rumors, but
I would appreciate if you'd stop staring at me at
work because it is making me feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: Sonia had been through bad breakup before. She had seen
probably the kind of behaviors that Locke was displaying, you know,
that possessiveness, that control.
Speaker 3: It must have been very difficult for Sonia on a
day-to-day basis, coming in and wondering, how am I going
to deal with him today? What form is he going
to be in today? I have to thread the needle,
be nice to him, but not give him the wrong signals.
Speaker 1: Sonia was so uncomfortable with Locke's behaviour that she considered
asking to change shifts so that she would no longer
cross paths with him. Her former love interest seemed hell-bent
on pressuring her into submissions.
Speaker 4: Sonia confided in one of her friends. She said that
he was freaking her out. It was at this time
that Sonia decided it was time to cut all contact
with him and blocked him on social media.
Speaker 2: She wanted him to go away. She was probably quite
frightened of him at this point. The trouble is, when
you do something like that, it just makes them more angry.
Speaker 1: The mother of one desperately hoped this would put an
end to a situation that had rapidly escalated from awkward
to troubling to downright scary. But Sonia couldn't have been
more wrong.
Speaker 6: On the 24th of January, Locke writes Sonia a letter,
quite long, again pleading for a reconciliation.
Speaker 5: He was telling her how sorry he was and how
ashamed he was putting her in that position after sending
the suicide text. But lower down in the letter, he
would say things like, I thought you might have stood
by me when I was suicidal and I would have
stood by you and I would have waited for you
until you got over this.
Speaker 3: One minute he was building her up, next minute he
was knocking her down.
Speaker 1: Locke ended the long letter by saying that Sonia was
an amazing mother who'd everything going for her and that
he hoped they would all find happiness.
Speaker 2: Locke's behaviour was escalating and in this stage, Locke's behaviour
turned to stalking.
Speaker 5: He contacted his sister to say he'd got back with
Sonia but that he had heard rumours that she was
ripping him off. and asked if an acquaintance of his
sister could hack into her Facebook page. Then he asked
what about hacking into her Hotmail email account.
Speaker 1: Whether or not she believed his tale that he and
Sonia were back together, Eric Locke's sister refused to help
him access Sonia's private email or social media profiles. Oblivious
to Locke's attempt to stalk her, Sonia continued living her life.
On Saturday 15th February 2014, she and her family celebrated
Sonia's little boy's birthday.
Speaker 5: Sonia adored her son and loved being a mother. And
according to her sister, she went all out for his
birthday and had a party with family and his friends.
Speaker 1: The festivities over, Sonia got ready for a secret tryst.
Speaker 4: She had asked her mother to look after her son
for the night because she wanted to go meet her
friend Susan and was going to go out with her
that evening.
Speaker 5: She cancelled last minute, telling that friend she wanted to
stay in and read a book, that she was tired.
Speaker 1: Though she did not admit it to friends and family,
Sonia had in fact arranged to meet her Facebook date,
Shane Cully, at a hotel in Talla that evening.
Speaker 6: She gets to the Plaza Hotel about 9 o'clock that
evening and it takes about 20 minutes for her to
check in.
Speaker 3: She's received messages from Shane to say that he was
going to be slightly later and could she leave the
key card for the door at the reception. Sonia was thinking, Asher,
I'll wait and we can go up together.
Speaker 5: But he didn't come for hours and he was texting
her through Facebook and most of the text messages, about
12 of the text messages, were unanswered. asking her to
leave a key card for him at reception. And she said,
there's no need, I'll let you in when you get here.
Speaker 1: Unaccustomed to arranging sexual liaisons in hotels and embarrassed about
facing reception staff again, Sonia initially resisted Shane's demand.
Speaker 4: However, Shane was quite persistent and asked her to leave
the key down at the hotel desk, so she did so.
Speaker 5: She'd been waiting for him for about three hours at
that stage and she said she was going to have
a drink to calm her nerves. She would have been tired,
but I suppose excited when he said he was finally
on the way.
Speaker 1: Armed with his own room key, Sonia's would-be lover had
no need to knock.
Speaker 6: When the door opens just before midnight, she immediately recognises
that the man who's just entered a room isn't Shane Culley.
but it's actually Eric Locke.
Speaker 1: We will never know exactly what went through Sonia Blunt's
head when she realized Eric Locke had tricked her into
meeting him, nor will we ever be sure precisely what
happened next.
Speaker 5: Locke himself told Garthy that she was shocked to see
him and that she asked, could they leave together? So
she did not want to stay there with him, there
was no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: But Locke did not agree to leave with Sonia. He
later said he feared she'd scream as they walked through reception.
Almost six hours later, he left the hotel alone.
Speaker 2: He left the Do Not Disturb sign on the door.
He didn't want Sonia to be found. He wanted to
buy himself some time.
Speaker 4: He got into the elevator. He could be seen trying
to cover his face. He was wiping it with a tissue.
Speaker 1: Eric Locke flagged down a taxi to take him home
to Clondalkin, telling the driver who commented on injuries to
his left cheek that he'd had an eventful night out.
Speaker 5: Gave him some story about dancing with a girl on
the dance floor and her boyfriend coming up and giving
him a few slaps. When the taxi driver said, let's
have a look at your face, which was very obvious,
and he said, oh, you'll have a lot of explaining
to do about that.
Speaker 1: While Eric Locke slept off his rough night, Sonia Blunt's
family had begun to sense something was amiss.
Speaker 6: Sonia always called up to check her son was all right,
if she'd stayed out at night. First thing in the morning,
she'd ring and say, is he okay?
Speaker 4: However, when she didn't call, alarm bells started to ring.
Her mother initially called her friend Susan to see what
had happened because she was out with her friend Susan
that night. And when Susan told her that she had
changed her plans and said she was staying in that night,
her mother was very concerned.
Speaker 5: So her family were looking for her and calling everybody,
calling her friends.
Speaker 4: And it's then that her brother had seen on social
media that a murder had occurred in Tallinn.
Speaker 6: News travels fast that a body has been discovered. Now,
and it's almost impossible to imagine what the parents must
have felt The.
Speaker 1: News of a suspicious death at a Tala hotel came
in the late afternoon of that Sunday, the 16th of February.
Fearing the worst but hoping they were wrong, Sonia's family
needed to find out if she had come to harm.
Speaker 5: They made their way to the hotel and saw her
car there.
Speaker 4: Her father saw Sonia's car and saw police gathered around,
and he said that he just knew. When they approached
the Gardaí, the Gardaí told the family,' You better come inside.
Speaker 6: The guards ask the family to describe Sonia to them.
And in particular, they ask them about the tattoo that
Sonia had, because it's very specific. Well, imagine the scene.
It is beyond description. what they must have felt and
how they must have felt it.
Speaker 1: Sonia Blunt's devastated parents and siblings were told they would
have to wait 24 hours for confirmation that the female
victim was indeed their daughter and sister. As the shell-shocked
family returned home, inside the hotel, the Garda were examining
what was clearly the scene of a terrible crime.
Speaker 5: Her body wasn't discovered until cleaning staff went into the
room at 3 o'clock that afternoon.
Speaker 1: The young mother was lying on the floor in the
recovery position. Sonia had blood on her face and some
kind of fabric stuffed into her mouth.
Speaker 5: They found her with a ligature mark around her neck.
It was very pronounced.
Speaker 4: They also saw an imitation gun. They saw duct tape
and cable ties. When they went into the bathroom, they
saw a bloodied towel and bloodied napkins. They also saw
her bloodied phone cable charger.
Speaker 6: Something horrible has happened in that hotel room.
Speaker 4: The post-mortem results show that Sonia died due to asphyxiation
and lack of oxygen due to compression of the neck.
The strangulation was so vicious and prolonged that it actually
broke a number of bones in her neck.
Speaker 1: Sonia's T-shirt had been pushed deep into her mouth, exacerbating
the effects of the strangulations.
Speaker 4: The state pathologist, Marie Cassidy, noted that due to the
bruising around her mouth, that she was undoubtedly alive when
her top was put into her mouth. And it was
put in with such force and such ferocity that he
broke several of her teeth and the wire retainer at
the back of her teeth.
Speaker 1: Sonia Blunt had been murdered in an act of extreme violence.
Detectives asked themselves who could possibly want a hard-working, family-orientated
young mother dead? but they did not have to wonder
for long. Six hours after her body was discovered, Eric
Locke walked into a Garda station in the centre of Dublin.
Speaker 7: At around half nine last night, a man presented himself
to Garda at Store Street station in the city. He
was arrested and taken to Talla Garda station.
Speaker 4: Eric Locke went into Store Street Garda station and confessed
to killing Sonia Blunt.
Speaker 5: He said he had attempted suicide but couldn't do it
when he had very real images of his family in
his head. He admitted the killing but said it was
an accident. He said that he had just planned to
talk to her and explain his situation.
Speaker 1: Locke told investigating officers he had to use the fake
profile to trick Sonia into meeting him because she'd cut
all contact and blocked him online. He insisted he'd only
bought the cable ties and duct tape so that if
Sonia refused to hear him out, he could tie her
to a chair and force her to listen. The weapons
were simply to scare her into compliance. Locke claimed that,
at first, Sonia had been happy to stay in the
room with him.
Speaker 5: He said they had consensual sex. He was asked by
the Gardaí if he had raped her and he denied that.
When she saw what he had brought with him, the
pellet gun, the Stanley knife, the masking tape, she started
to scream and he said he just wanted to shut
her up in case somebody... heard her, and he started
to strangle her.
Speaker 1: Detectives found Locke's version of events hard to believe. The
killer claimed Sonia had willingly stayed in the room with
her own stalker, had consented to have sex with him,
and had only panicked when she saw the array of
sinister items Locke had brought with him.
Speaker 3: From a Garda investigation point of view, here we have
a young woman who's strangled, murdered, And we have a
guy then coming in and telling us that he did it,
but he didn't intend to do it. So is it
manslaughter or is it murder? Can we prove the intent
or can we not prove the intent?
Speaker 5: He first told the Gardaí that he strangled her with
his bare hands only, but then he was shown the
cable of her phone charger, which was bloodstained, and he
admitted that he had used that briefly He later said
he used that first and then he changed to using
his hands.
Speaker 3: That first attempt he made to strangle her didn't work
so he strangled her with his bare hands then instead.
So really his story didn't really stand up.
Speaker 5: He was medically examined after his arrest and he had
very obvious scratch marks on his face and he also
had carpet burns on his arms and legs And these
were found to be consistent with him having carried out
a sexual assault. His DNA was found on her forehead,
her right breast, on a pillow and bedsheets in the
room as well. Sonia's blood was found on the jeans
Eric Locke had been wearing.
Speaker 1: Locke told the guarder he wasn't sure if Sonia was
dead when he left, but that before leaving, he'd dressed
the lifeless woman so that she'd have dignity when she
was found.
Speaker 6: It's a very, very creepy thing to do.
Speaker 2: The confession is not about remorse or shame or guilt.
He's now trying to say to the police, I'm not
really this bad guy that I look like. He is
going to start presenting himself as the victim. He claimed
that he'd always suffered with depression through his life, but
when he met Sonia, it seemed to lift and he
was happy. And then when she finished with him, it
all came crashing down again. Depression does not cause people
to commit this type of murder.
Speaker 1: Just after 1am on the 17th of February, Eric Locke
was charged with Sonia Blunt's murder.
Speaker 7: Eric Locke was brought by detectives from Tallagard station to
the local district court this morning to face a charge
of murder.
Speaker 1: There was not enough evidence to charge him with raping
or sexually assaulting Sonia. Locke was remanded in custody at
Cloverhill Prison in Clondalkin, South Dublin. The task for detectives
now was to prove their suspect intended to kill Sonia.
Speaker 6: The police search Eric Locke's house and discover a positive
treasure trove of information, including handcuffs, cable ties. a screwdriver set.
Speaker 4: And also a list of names of women a number
of them had addresses which he obtained from social.
Speaker 1: Media When Locke's devices were analyzed, Gardy found he'd been
stalking several women online. They suspected he planned more attacks
like the one he'd inflicted upon Sonia.
Speaker 3: We'll never know what his other plans were and who
else he had taken a dislike to or a set against.
Speaker 2: He had a kill list. He went with weapons. He
had got there through coercive means. This guy had been
planning this for a while. He was not an innocent.
He was not a victim of his own temper. That's
just not what was going on here. When a man
kills a partner who has left him, it is never
jealous rage. Most cases have planning and lock planned.
Speaker 1: The fake Facebook profile in the name of Shane Cully
had been carefully calculated to deceive Sonia and to win
her trust.
Speaker 5: He had photographs on there, he had friends on there.
It looked like a real Facebook profile of someone. At
this stage, it was months since he had met her
and they'd dated and he knew her likes and her
dislikes and he behaved completely differently to Eric Locke. On
this Facebook profile.
Speaker 2: And he played on that to be able to get
access to her. He knew enough about her to know
if he came in as a potential boyfriend, what to
say and how to say it.
Speaker 1: When the pathologist examined Sonia's body, she found further evidence
that Sonia's death had not occurred in one brief red
mist moment, but had in fact been a prolonged and
determined assault.
Speaker 2: She was really attacked by him. She fought for her
life and she was able to scratch his face and
she actually got his DNA. underneath her fingernails. She fought
like a tiger and it would have taken some strength
and some determination and some time. Strangulation murder doesn't happen
in a couple of seconds.
Speaker 1: Though they were certain Eric Locke had murdered Sonia Blunt
in cold blood, Garda and prosecutors knew it was down
to them to prove it to a jury. On the
8th of May 2017, Eric Locke went on trial at
Dublin's Central Criminal Court. The process of getting justice for
Sonia had been beset by legal delays.
Speaker 5: The trial was supposed to start at least a year
and a half earlier, but it was adjourned when the
defence applied for a new psychiatric report for him.
Speaker 7: Eric Locke didn't speak during the brief hearing. he stood
in the dock with his head down. He was granted
free legal aid and the judge directed that he have
access to his medication and be afforded medical attention if
required before remanding him in custody to appear again at
Cloverhill District Court this day week.
Speaker 1: Locke, now 35 years old, maintained his position that while
he may have killed the mother of one, he was
not a murderer.
Speaker 5: When the trial did get underway, a jury was sworn
in and he pleaded not guilty to murder.
Speaker 1: Journalist Natasha Reid attended every day of the two-week trial.
Speaker 5: The courtroom was packed, both families, friends, but also an
awful lot of reporters. There was a lot of interest
in the case. And there was an atmosphere, a very
tense atmosphere, that prevailed for the whole trial.
Speaker 1: One of the challenges for prosecutors would be convincing the
jury of eight men and four women that Locke was
a callous killer who posed a threat to women.
Speaker 5: One of the things that stood out about Eric Locke
is that he looked like quite a decent person. He
looked like someone who didn't belong in a courtroom. And
sure enough, he'd never been in trouble with the Gardaí
in his life before. He didn't come from that kind
of background at all. So he did look out of
place there. And he did look kind of innocent as well.
Speaker 4: As Locke had already admitting to killing Sonia, it really
came down to his mental state in this trial. So
what the jury needed to establish was his mental state
at the time of the offence.
Speaker 6: You couldn't argue with the forensic evidence. You couldn't argue
with the physical evidence. You could only argue about Locke's
state of mind.
Speaker 1: Locke's defence team claimed that at the time of Sonia's death,
the killer was suffering from a mental disorder that meant
he did not have the ability to form a rational judgement,
exercise self-control or understand that what he was doing was wrong.
Speaker 4: The psychiatrist who evaluated Locke did say that a great
deal of planning went into the murder of Sonia. However,
he did go on to say that Locke's mental capacity
had diminished a lot prior to this killing.
Speaker 5: There are only specific mental disorders that can qualify a
person for this partial defense of diminished responsibility, which reduces
murder to manslaughter. So it did come down in the
end to the defense psychiatrist saying he had a pervasive
personality disorder, which would have qualified him for diminished responsibility.
Speaker 4: When Dr. Bunn asked Locke to describe himself, he said
he was a genuinely peaceful guy. However, the psychiatrist had
noted in these examinations that Locke distinctly lacked empathy. He
also added that he had suffered from ADHD and borderline
personality disorder.
Speaker 1: When they cross-examined the expert witness, the prosecution questioned the
idea that Locke had lost control of himself when he
killed Sonia.
Speaker 4: The doctor did concede that there was an element of
control in Locke's actions when he was there. So when
he was strangling her, he could change his hands. A
person who lacks self-control is blinded by their rage and
would continue acting crazy. in a consistent manner. However, Locke
was able to change both of his hands. Not only that,
he then made the decision to reach for the cable,
the phone cable, and then strangle her with that.
Speaker 1: Not only did Locke show control in the moment, the
prosecution pointed out that he'd put a great deal of
planning into his crime.
Speaker 3: What he did was premeditated in that he had set
up a fake profile. He had engineered a case whereby
Sonia would leave the key card at the reception. He
knew that if Sonia had gone along with her plan
to let him in as he knocked at the door,
that she would have recognised him through the keyhole and
not let him in. He had brought the equipment to
tie Sonia up and to gag her, and he had
brought the fake firearm.
Speaker 1: After killing Sonia, Locke had also gone to some lengths
to cover his tracks. Having placed the Do Not Disturb
sign on the hotel room door, he'd run from the building,
attempting to cover his face so his wounds would not
be seen.
Speaker 5: He went outside and he was caught on camera disposing
of his mobile phone.
Speaker 4: The prosecution argued that Locke may have had a personality disorder,
but he did not have a mental disorder that would
qualify him for diminished responsibility.
Speaker 5: The prosecution case was that it was anger and rage
that led him to strangle her. And it was consistent
with retribution and vengeance. And they said, you know, that
this story about consensual sex was not even slightly believable.
Speaker 1: The prosecution argued that Locke was motivated by his obsessive
fixation on the relationship with Sonia he wanted and believed
he deserved to have.
Speaker 3: Locke had honed in on Sonia. He had picked her
out and then he had decided they were going to
live happily ever after and he was going to dominate her.
He was going to tell her what she can and
what she can't do and he was going to be
in charge and the relationship was going to go exactly
along the lines that he wanted. and there was no
room for maneuver.
Speaker 2: He feels that she has committed to him in some way,
which she hasn't, but he thinks she has. Then he feels,
this is now an injustice. I've had my rights taken
away by this person rejecting me and finishing with me
when we were in a relationship and I was in
charge of that relationship.
Speaker 1: This was the argument put forward by the prosecution that
Eric Locke had killed Sonia Blunt because he was furious
that she had rejected him. As the jury retired to
deliberate on the 22nd of May 2017, Eric Locke must
have been hoping they empathise with his plight as a
love-lorn suitor.
Speaker 2: He thinks that other people will sympathise with him to go,
I know what you mean, mate. That must have been
so hard for you. That's what he was expecting.
Speaker 1: Eric Locke did not have to wait long to find
out if he was right.
Speaker 5: When the jury was called back after only about 90
minutes deliberating, they were asked, as is always the case,
have you reached a verdict? There were gasps in the
courtroom when they said they had actually reached a verdict
at 90 minutes and the verdict was unanimous and it
was guilty. They didn't believe his story. They didn't believe
that he didn't know what he was doing was wrong.
They didn't believe he had no intent. They didn't believe
there was any mental disorder there.
Speaker 4: As he was leaving the courtroom, he turned to Sonia's
family and apologised and said he was so sorry. This
wasn't accepted by her family. They found that it was
completely insincere.
Speaker 6: As I think Sonia's sister Claire was to say later,
if he'd been truly sorry, he wouldn't have put the
family through the torture of a trial and the description
of what happened to her sister. It's an act of
savagery that it is impossible to exaggerate. She was an
absolutely innocent mother of a three-year-old boy. There can be
no excuse, there can be no hiding from the fact
that he was a dreadful, depraved act.
Speaker 1: On the 2nd of June, Eric Locke appeared again at
the Central Criminal Court for sentencing.
Speaker 3: The mandatory sentence for murder in this jurisdiction is life,
and that's exactly what he got.
Speaker 5: Two of her sisters read out very moving victim impact
statements and they talked about... not just losing a sister,
an aunt, a daughter, but a mother. And the fact
that Sonia's little boy now had lost both parents because
one had moved away and Sonia, who had promised him
she would never leave, had now left also.
Speaker 4: In the aftermath of Locke's sentencing, Sonia's family expressed surprise
at Sonia's actions that night. Their only explanation for it
was that she had been terribly lonely.
Speaker 6: She's had a relationship, had a child, the relationship has
fallen down, and now she's simply looking for the next
bit of happiness for her.
Speaker 4: They believed it was completely out of character for Sonia
to meet up with a stranger in a hotel room.
It's just not something that she would have done.
Speaker 1: Eric Locke exploited Sonia Blunt's vulnerability when he tricked her
into meeting him. His only intention to punish her for
refusing to continue their short-lived relationship.
Speaker 4: He took advantage of her compassion. When he threatened to
kill himself, she still was there looking out for him.
Even though she was concerned about his behaviour towards her,
she still wanted to be a really nice person and
be kind and considerate. So it is scary and sad
that somebody would take advantage of that to such an
extent and to manipulate her with her kindness and to
use that against her.
Speaker 1: Eric Locke could not accept a woman rejecting him. When
mother of one Sonia Blunt recognised his toxic behaviour and
made the decision not to keep dating him, Locke responded
with every trick in the book, from begging to threats
to emotional blackmail. When none of his troubling tactics worked
to win her back, he took the ultimate revenge, depriving
a caring and beloved young woman of her life. and
cementing his place as one of the world's most evil killers.