The inside story of Tipperary pensioner Josephine Ray’s murder by her daughter’s boyfriend

Hunkered down in a makeshift tent and surrounded by rats on a Limerick riverbank, murder suspect Hasan Ali Gori showed this reporter an iron bar he was concealing in case of any surprise visitors.

“It’s for protection, because I don’t know the kind of people that come here,” Gori said in April 2025, eight months after the violent death of his partner’s mother in Co Tipperary.

As the rats scrambled for campsite crumbs, Gori added: “I’m not afraid of the rats; they only look for food.”

At the time, it was a brief but unsettling glimpse into Gori’s world.

Also living with him on the swamp site was his then girlfriend Mary Ray, a vulnerable adult diagnosed with a learning disability.

Gardaí then considered Gori and Mary Ray to be suspects in an investigation into the murder of Mary’s 89-year-old mother, Josephine “Josie” Ray.

The pensioner was found strangled and covered in bruises in her bed at her home at St Joseph’s Park, Nenagh, on August 4th, 2024.

Gori and Mary Ray had to leave the north Tipperary town after the killing and were sleeping rough on the riverbank a short distance from Limerick city centre.

Nenagh detectives had arrested the pair and released them without charge. Eventually, gardaí charged Gori with Josie’s murder and ruled Mary out as a suspect or accomplice.

On Tuesday, Gori was convicted of Josie Ray’s murder by a jury of nine men and three women at the Central Criminal Court, Limerick. He showed no reaction when the 11 to one majority verdict was delivered by the jury after they deliberated for almost nine hours.

Mary was not present in court for any of the trial and she was not called as a witness. Gori’s barrister, senior counsel Aidan Doyle, asked why this was the case in his closing speech to the jury.

Doyle pointed to Mary Ray’s sometimes violent past, reminding the jury they had heard Mary had previously been seen by a neighbour threatening Josie with a knife.

Doyle also highlighted the evidence of Carmel Ray, one of Mary’s sisters, who said Mary was “very kind and shy”, but sometimes “she couldn’t control her emotions”.

Carmel spoke of Mary’s strength, recalling a traumatic incident when it took five gardaí to restrain Mary during an emotional outburst.

Mary had also struck one of her siblings when she was a teenager after being asked to do household chores.

Doyle told the jury: “If you think it’s even possible that Mary did it, you have to acquit [Gori].”

“How do the guards know Mary Ray didn’t do this? Why was she dropped from the investigation? You haven’t heard from her,” added Doyle.

The court heard how Josie Ray never left Mary out of her sight. They were a “double act”, always together, however living in each others pockets fuelled their love-hate relationship.

They argued over Mary’s interest in African men and Mary bringing the men back to her mother’s home.

A mother-daughter bond born out of dysfunction, Josie was looking after Mary on her own, while Josie’s husband lived with their four other daughters after Josie had an affair with one of her husband’s close relatives.

So desperate to ensure Mary’s safety, Josie would chaperone her on bus trips from Nenagh to Limerick when Mary arranged to meet up with a man.

Josie had slept rough on bus stop benches in Limerick waiting for Mary to be ready to go home.

Chad native Gori arrived in Ireland in 2012 and met Mary and Josie by chance in Galway in 2014.

Josie and Mary approached Gori asking him for directions to the city’s bus station and Gori, seeing Mary’s vulnerability, immediately inquired: “Do you have a boyfriend?”

Gori transited between hostels and spent weekends at Josie and Mary’s house until he moved into Josie’s house in late 2023.

Gori went from being homeless with no income to sharing a bed with Mary and benefiting from her weekly social welfare disability allowance.

Prosecuting barrister Lorcan Connolly argued Gori had “motive” and “opportunity” to murder Josie Ray.

“He had struck it lucky, found a roof over his head and an attachment to the house,” said Connolly.

However, Gori had to navigate two hurdles to stay in Josie’s house permanently.

First, Josie Ray “wanted him out” of her home, his trial heard. Second, by Josie remaining in the house, she stood in Gori’s way of living there.

Josie and Mary were the only two people permitted to live in the house under the terms of a tenancy agreement with Tipperary County Council.

However, instead of living quietly among the St Joseph’s estate, and potentially under the radar of the authorities, Gori was embroiled in “constant and volatile rows” at the Ray home.

Neighbours complained and the council wrote to Josie informing her Gori’s presence in the house was considered a breach of her tenancy agreement.

Gori had put Josie’s and Mary’s living situation under threat.

Council officials visited, more letters came and Josie’s grandchildren and neighbours continued calling social services and local gardaí with concerns about Josie’s wellbeing.

A few months before her murder, the 89-year-old slipped while washing her feet in her kitchen, and she was found soaked in her own urine by another of her daughters, Sarah Ray, who lived nearby.

Josie was discharged from the hospital into Sarah’s care because she had not wanted to recuperate with Gori.

Social worker Sharlene Hegarty spoke of the fear she saw in Josie’s eyes whenever she mentioned Gori’s name, saying: “It would make [Josie] very nervous.”

In a poignant moment in the trial, Hegarty said she wished she had had the statutory power to intervene and insist Josie be relocated to a care home at the time.

Josie couldn’t stay away. She remained worried for Mary and was bombarded with calls from Mary who asked her to come home as there was “trouble” between her and Gori.

The council was “closing in” on Gori, the court was told; tensions in the house turned more volatile.

On the eve of Josie’s murder, Gori was overheard telling Mary he was “sick” of living with her mother. He gave her an ultimatum: either he would leave or Josie had to go.

That evening, two independent witnesses testified they saw Gori headbutt Mary and shout at her: “No one will murder me.”

An audio recording found by gardaí on Gori’s mobile phone, played to the jury, had recorded Gori telling Mary: “Murder her.”

The prosecution argued this was in response to Mary telling Gori, “no, no, can’t say anything to my mother”, as they discussed their housing situation.

The vitriol wasn’t all one-way, as the evidence presented in court showed.

Josie Ray attacked Gori with a fireside poker, hitting him with it on one of his legs. She also called him a “black b*****d” during their heated rows.

Mary Ray was also jealous and possessive of Gori. She also suspected Gori was engaging with other women and prostitutes on his mobile phone, which he took with him into a bathroom in the house.

Mary removed the bathroom door lock to monitor Gori’s mobile phone use, although her sisters told her there was no evidence Gori was cheating on her.

Facing homelessness and financial woes – coupled with facing the scorn of Josie and Mary – Gori was a “pressure cooker” waiting to explode, the jury heard.

Gardaí called to the house and advised Gori to leave, but he ignored them and said the only way he would leave was in a coffin.

Hours before her murder, Josie retreated to the safety of her daughter Sarah’s house, but succumbed to pleas from Mary to return home.

That night, the atmosphere inside the house reached a “powder keg”. The fighting continued. Gardaí responded, warned the occupants to cease and desist and left.

A neighbour overheard Gori telling Mary outside the house: “I don’t want to live in a house with your mother; I want to live in a house by ourselves.”

At 2am, some 10 hours before her body is found, Josie was seen by two local youths puffing on a cigarette outside her house.

It was the last time she is seen alive in the estate.

Josie’s grandson Samuel discovered her body after Mary told him to check on his grandmother.

Josie’s badly bruised arms were found upright by her face.

“Josie Ray didn’t go down without a fight,” said prosecuting barrister Connolly told the jury.

A forensic scientist told the court that human DNA can be transferred between people without them touching, particularly if they live in shared accommodation spaces.

However, the prosecution argued it was “significant” that Gori’s DNA profile was found on forensic swabs of Josie’s right hand and from under her fingernails.

“Unbeknown to himself, Hasan Ali Gori left his calling card: his DNA under Josie’s fingernails,” Connolly said.

Gori, through his barrister, tried to deflect the blame on to Mary Ray, claiming she had been in a “wound-up state of panic” after Gori told her he “was leaving”.

Mary Ray’s voice was not heard during the trial.

Speaking to me after Josie’s death at the rat camp she ended up living on with Gori, Mary denied any involvement in her mother’s killing: “No, I hadn’t, no, I hadn’t, no, no, I had not, no, no.”

Smiling, she added: “My mother loved me, she was mad about me, we lived together, I miss her terrible, so much.”