SENTENCING STATEMENTS

Lord Arthurson made the following comments in court:

“Claire Kilduff, yesterday, in this court, on the first day of the float period of an eight-day trial diet, you tendered a plea of guilty to the gravest crime known to our law, namely the crime of murder.  During the period of the evening of 21 December into very early on 22 December 2023 you assaulted your neighbour Mrs Ann Coll, then aged 61, in her own home, repeatedly striking her on the head, face and neck with a hammer and repeatedly stabbing her on the neck and body with a knife, thereby murdering her.

Mrs Coll was a much‑loved mother of three children and an adored and very actively involved grandmother of eight.  Two of her grandchildren were born after her death.  Mrs Coll was a popular neighbour and a highly respected member of her community.  She lived alone in her flat at Newfield Place, Rutherglen, with her dog, Lola.  Mrs Coll had survived cancer not once, but twice, and lived a full and contented life among her family, friends and neighbours.  I have now myself had the privilege of reading heart‑rending impact statements prepared by her still grieving daughters, her son and one of her granddaughters.  Truly, as one of her children eloquently expressed matters, their lives will, due to the murder of their mother and grandmother by you that night, never be whole again.

You arrived at Mrs Coll’s flat at 7.30pm on 21 December 2023.  You were in debt.  You knew the log in details to your victim’s mobile telephone banking application.  Mrs Coll was due to receive a payment of £400 in the early hours of 22 December 2023.  At 7.40pm her mobile phone disconnected from her home broadband network and a banking transfer was set up using Mrs Coll’s banking application to transfer £320 to your own bank account.  The bathroom at the flat was later ascertained to be a broadband blackspot.  After the payment was set up, Mrs Coll’s mobile phone was reconnected to her home broadband network.  At 0051 hours on 22 December the sum of £320 was duly received into your bank account. 

It is in any event plain that during the period between 7.30pm on 21 December and 0050 hours on 22 December 2023, you repeatedly struck Mrs Coll with a hammer, causing extensive blunt force trauma injury to her head and neck.  In particular, the hammer blows inflicted by you, calculated to have comprised at least 21 in number, caused extensive skull fracturing.  You also repeatedly stabbed her on the neck and body with a bladed weapon, namely a knife.  Mrs Coll was pronounced life extinct by first attending paramedics at 1.00am on 22 December 2023.  Mrs Coll’s injuries were unsurvivable.  Indeed, police officers who attended the flat noted that brain matter was visible and protruding from one of her wounds.  

A subsequent post mortem examination undertaken on 23 December 2023 disclosed that Mrs Coll had sustained, inter alia, 21 lacerations around the head and neck area;  extensive skull fractures, a fractured nose, fractures to the left cheekbone and a fracture to the lower jaw;  a stab wound on the left side of the neck;  six stab wounds to the left back and side chest wall, four of these stab wounds having entered the left pleural cavity and three having cut into the left lung, with the longest track measuring some 8cm in depth.  No typical defensive injuries were noted.

You thereafter concealed the murder weapons along with other incriminating items of clothing in an underfloor cavity area of your own flat.  You blamed a third party for this crime.  Between 2117 hours and 2151 hours on the night of the murder you had undertaken searches on the internet for terms such as “deadliest stab wounds”, “hammer to head injury” and “stab wound to neck”. At 0040 hours on 22 December you had made 999 calls reporting that you had come up to the flat to find your neighbour in a pool of blood. By the time police attended at 0050 hours, you were wearing different trousers from those you had been wearing earlier that evening. The trousers that you had been wearing earlier were later recovered from the same underfloor cavity area located in your flat.

You are now aged 40.  You have a short and entirely summary level record of previous convictions, albeit I note that the final three of these are for crimes of violence.  You have never before served a custodial sentence.

I have considered with care the submissions advanced in mitigation on your behalf yesterday by your senior counsel following your plea of guilty.  I note in particular what was said by him regarding the responsibility now taken by you for this crime and the consequent utility of your eventual plea of guilty in these protracted proceedings;  your own somewhat opaque account of how you became involve in and committed this crime;  your instructions to direct the police to a location where significant evidence was duly found;  your health difficulties;  how out of keeping with your life to date this crime has been;  and the contrition expressed by you publicly in court yesterday through your senior counsel in respect of the injuries you inflicted upon your victim.

The sentence for the crime of murder is fixed by law.  It is one of imprisonment for life.  The court requires, however, as part of the sentencing exercise to be undertaken in such cases, to select a period which is known as the punishment part of what is essentially a fixed disposal.  The punishment part is the number of years which must be served by you before you can be considered for release on life licence.  The court in setting this punishment part tariff is not in any sense appointing the time or date when you will be released.  The court is instead determining the number of years which must be served by you before you can actually apply for release.  The punishment part does not take into account the need for public protection.  That matter is taken into account by the Parole Board for Scotland if and when any application is made by you in due course for your release.  The punishment part which I will set today does and must, however, take into account the twin sentencing requirements of retribution and deterrence.

In selecting an appropriate punishment part in this case, I take into account principally, indeed almost exclusively, the gravity of the crime of murder of which you now on your own plea stand convicted.  I also take into account the full terms of the mitigation which was yesterday advanced on your behalf by your senior counsel.

The crime of murder committed by you in this case can in my view properly be characterised as a frenzied and sustained episode of multi-instrumental violence upon a 61 year old lady in her own home.  Your victim’s injuries were catastrophic, extensive and horrifying.  Motive for proof of murder is not necessary, of course, but the immediate background here of the bank transfer in your favour, at a time when you owed money to others, the highly incriminating internet searches undertaken by you that night, your subsequent concealment of the weapons used by you in the murder along with clothing worn by you that evening, the fabricated content of your 999 calls and the lack of defensive injuries found at post mortem, are all highly suggestive of a cold blooded and intentional murder carried out for financial gain, a crime initiated and completed by you when your defenceless victim had no idea about the savage, merciless and wholly murderous attack which you were about to unleash upon her.

In the whole circumstances, on charge one on the present indictment, I now pass upon you the mandatory sentence of imprisonment for life.  I fix the punishment part of that fixed disposal at a period of 21 years.  But for the timing and utility of your guilty plea, late though that has undoubtedly emerged in these proceedings, the notional headline punishment part period selected in this case would have been one of 22 years.

This sentence will be backdated to the date of your initial remand into custody in these proceedings, namely 5 February 2024.”

19 May 2026