Mum ‘had threesome with killer and his victim before covering up fatal shooting at holiday park for convict lover’
A mum accused of attempting to cover up a holiday park shooting, once had a threesome with the killer and his victim, a court heard.
Daisy Donohoe allegedly helped convict lover Jonathan Lawlor “lie low” after he murdered Sam Petrou – who he’d met while both were prisoners in HMP Stamford Hill.
Jurors were told by prosecutors that the mum-of-two, 36, booked a hotel stay and bought Lawlor clothing so he could evade justice after blasting the victim.
He is alleged to have used a converted blank-firing self-loading pistol during the incident on June 10 last year.
Dad Mr Petrou, 35, was gunned down in a friend’s caravan at Cliff Cottage Chalet Park, on the Isle of Sheppey.
13 months earlier, the court heard he had engaged in a sexual encounter with the couple while Lawlor was on home leave.
Maidstone Crown Court was told Lawlor was detained in connection with Mr Petrou’s death and charged, but died while on remand in prison, aged 42, reports Kent Online.
Donohoe was left to stand trial alone accused of perverting the course of justice.
On top of booking the hotel and purchases, cops found internet searches on her phone on how to obtain Irish passports and flights to Vietnam.
She denies knowing her late boyfriend – who she had known since childhood – was responsible for the killing.
Giving evidence on Wednesday, she detailed the verbal abuse she would receive from Lawlor during their two-year-long relationship.
She said he would bully her, accusing her of cheating, while drinking and taking drugs.
Donohoe, of Welling, South East London, said he would “track” her movements, had headbutted a work colleague and slapped her in a row over her lip filler.
She also claimed she believed Lawlor had shot her in the backside while she slept a month prior to the killing.
And even “sent people” to check she was at her address after she had bailed in respect of Mr Petrou’s death.
The court heard Donohoe had been in a brief relationship in 2005, having known each other since she was five.
In 2020 she then wrote to him in prison for “nostalgic reasons” before beginning visits at Standford Hill.
The relationship rekindled the following year when Lawlor was allowed on home leave after being transferred to Ford open prison in West Sussex.
Jurors heard it was while on leave in May 2022 the threesome with Mr Petrou – who was already free – occurred.
Donohoe said the sex had been instigated by Lawlor but claimed it was not something she wanted to do.
“Jonathan and I were at home and Sam had been calling, wanting to meet up,” she explained.
“Jonathan invited him to our house, we all had a drink and Jonathan decided he wanted me to perform a sexual act on him in front of Sam.
“He took his trousers down and pushed my head down. It started from there.”
Donohoe also said on two further occasions Lawlor had wanted her to have sex with other people during other times he was on leave.
She also described “breaking down” when he hired a male escort because she had refused to visit a sex club.
But she said he and Mr Petrou, who was from Gillingham, were “fine” after their hook-up and “nothing changed” in the men’s friendship.
Earlier in her trial however, the jury heard that in December 2022, Lawlor shot Mr Petrou with an airgun, and warned that “next time it would be real.”
It was for that reason, it was said, that Mr Petrou then gave his former fellow inmate “a wide berth” until their chance meeting at The Coppice pub in Eastchurch on June 9 last year.
The encounter, captured on CCTV, showed the two men sitting at a garden table, with Lawlor gesticulating at Mr Petrou and becoming animated.
The next evening he was murdered.
One bullet severed his aorta artery and lodged against his backbone while the other passed through his body and ricocheted off a kitchen unit and into the shower room.
Mr Petrou was found dead, slumped on the floor and against a cupboard, on June 11.
The gun itself was never recovered but DNA on the bullet casings found at the scene matched Lawlor’s.
He was also identified as the shooter from CCTV, and was seen fleeing Sheppey in Donohoe’s Jeep with her in the passenger seat.
The court heard police inquiries revealed the couple had stayed at The Shurland Hotel in Eastchurch High Street the night before the shooting, and then arrived at the Holiday Inn Express in Sittingbourne, just 20 minutes after the killing.
Donohoe said she was not aware Lawlor had been in regular contact with another woman, sending messages which included one saying “just done job”.
And denied that her decision to give him her phone SIM when she left the Holiday Inn to go home was another attempt to help him “cover his tracks”.
They met up with Lawlor’s sister Victoria, who had a caravan near the Cliff Cottage site, and drank into the early hours before returning to The Shurland.
The next day – that of the fatal shooting itself – they returned to his sister’s caravan for a barbecue.
She said there came a point when her boyfriend left his sister’s.
“He just came out (the caravan) and walked straight off past me. He didn’t say a word to me. I felt like crap and thought just let him be. I wasn’t sure where he was going,” she told the court.
The police investigation later revealed this was the moment Lawlor, who was also wanted on prison licence recall at the time, had left to carry out the killing.
When he returned later – claiming to have been for a drink – she said he asked for her car keys and then told her to “get in”.
He drove her to the Holiday Inn. She denied during the journey he told her “done the job” and they needed to “get away quickly”.
Lawlor was arrested in Newcastle on June 15. The court heard he died in prison in October.
Donohoe denies perverting the course of justice between June 9 and June 12 last year and her trial continues.