UK UK - Claire Holland, 32, missing after night out in city centre, seen @ pub, Bristol, Jun 2012

  • #41
I’ve found his Facebook. He appears to have been a chef
I wonder if he worked at Seamus O'Donnell's. This post is from May 2012 (one month before Claire disappeared):

Screenshot 2022-08-03 11.48.35 PM.png


There's quite a few more promoting their Sunday lunches:

 
  • #42
Darren Osment, @ 35, Fore Street, Topsham. On 14/05/2017 at St David’s Station used threatening or abusive words or behaviour or disorderly behaviour within the hearing or sight of a person. Plea: Guilty. Discharged conditionally for 12 months. Surcharge of £20. Costs of £85.
 
  • #43
Det Supt Gary Haskins said: “Searches have taken place at the Barrelhouse pub in Gordon Road, Clifton, over the past week. These searches have now concluded and nothing of significance was found.

“We’d like to reiterate that the tenants of the pub, both present and former, have no connection with our investigation into Claire’s disappearance. We’d like to thank the present owners for their co-operation and understanding while we carried out these essential enquiries.
 
  • #44
Darren Osment, 41, of Chessel Drive, appeared at Bristol Crown Court for a further case management hearing today. (March 10, 2023)

He has previously indicated a not guilty plea. He was remanded in custody pending a trial set for October 3.

 
  • #45
Alcoholic Darren Osment is accused of murdering Claire Holland, who disappeared in Bristol in 2012 and whose body has never been found.

A jury at Bristol Crown Court on Monday heard how the 41-year-old was due to see Ms Holland after finishing a shift at a pub on the night she went missing - but he told police in the days after that they hadn’t met, and he had gone home alone.


However, Mr Andrew Langdon KC, prosecuting, told the jury how Osment had made a number of drunken confessions, including to police, in the years that followed Ms Holland’s disappearance.

The conversations revealed how Osment blamed Ms Holland for their child being taken into care before they split up in 2010, said Mr Langdon.

Read more here Chef accused of murdering ex ‘drunkenly confessed to arranging killing 7 years later’
 
  • #46
  • #47
Bristol Crown Court heard that when Osment fell under suspicion detectives deployed an undercover officer to befriend him.

Between December 2020 and July 2022, the officer – posing as a man called Paddy O’Hara – created a fiction of being involved in the criminal underworld with links to organised crime and enlisted the help of Osment.

 
  • #48
The thing that concerns me is why so many different versions of what happened? They cannot all be true? <modsnip: sub judice> MOO

The Avonmouth docks is an industrial/busy area, not sure how you'd dispose of someone there very easily
 
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Jurors heard witnesses recall conversations they had with Ms Holland describing the violence she suffered at the hands of Osment, while one said they had warned her not to meet up with him shortly before she disappeared.

Social worker Debbie Whitcliffe described speaking with Ms Holland either shortly before or after she gave birth to the defendant’s child in 2010.

She told jurors she had gone to the couple’s home in Bradley Stoke with two police officers and Osment was not present.

“I remember Claire saying that she and Darren had an argument, and I don’t remember exactly what it had been about,” she told the court.

“She said they had both been drinking and Darren had hit her. In her presentation, she was very shaky and she said she was very scared of him.

“In response, my question was, ‘how scared are you?’ and she said she wouldn’t put it past him to try and kill her and she also said on a separate occasion he had tried to strangle her.

“The advice that I gave her was that we could find her a place in a women’s refuge, that she should take the place in the women’s refuge because it is a place of safety.

“Claire was very reluctant to go to a refuge and so she opted to go and stay with a friend instead.”
 
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I can't see any recent updates for this trial
 
  • #56

Mr O'Hara said when Mr Osment spoke about her he often gagged or had to vomit, and said when he tried to sleep at night he could see her face and "black eyes".
The jury was played undercover recordings in which he discussed what evidence detectives might have against him after he was arrested in March 2022 on suspicion of Ms Holland's murder.
Mr O'Hara said: "He would talk about the lack of proof or evidence that could be got - that last piece of the jigsaw, referring to the body.
"He went on to explain that what he had done was probably wrong but what was done was done.
"He spoke to me on many occasions about killing witnesses who gave statements against him."
 
  • #57

Giving evidence, Osment accepted he had made admissions of guilt to all of those mentioned, except the prisoner, saying there was "absolutely no truth whatsoever" to their claims.
"In admitting you have said these things to Adrian Mulcahy, Michael Salaway, Selina Mulcahy etc, why did you say these things?," Mr Tully asked.
Mr Osment replied: "For the want of a better explanation, I am a drunken idiot."
The barrister asked why he would confess to involvement in either Miss Holland's killing or the disposal of her body unless he had done it.
Mr Osment said he had "no idea".
"Good question. Drinking too much, trying to big myself up, make myself out to be something I am not, the combination of the three," he said.
 
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11th December 2023 By Sammy Jenkins & Fiona Lamdin
''Mother-of-four Claire Holland had been estranged from most of her family for several years when she was murdered by her ex-partner in 2012. A heavy-drinker in the years before her death, Ms Holland's children had been taken away from her. But in taking Claire's life, Darren Osment also took away the chance of them ever being reunited.

Rosie Hall spent her entire childhood hoping and waiting for the safe return of her mum.

Claire Holland went missing without a trace on 6 June 2012 after leaving the Seamus O'Donnell's pub in Bristol's City Centre.

No body was ever found and Ms Holland, who had problems with alcohol, was declared a missing person.

Before she disappeared she had been due to be reunited with her nine-year-old daughter - from whom she had been estranged since she was four - and her younger brother.


They had spent years apart and a planned contact session had Ms Hall feeling "really excited" about their reunion.

"I was like OK, I just can't wait to see her," she said.

"We got there, but she never turned up. That was at the time that she was reported as missing."

''On Monday, a jury found her ex-partner, Darren Osment, guilty of her murder. He will be sentenced later in the month.''
 
  • #60

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