WHITEHAVEN man Paul Irwin has been found guilty of murdering his partner on the day he subjected her to a violent sexual assault.

It took a Carlisle Crown Court  jury three hours and forty five minutes to deliver their unanimous guilty verdict on 50-year-old Irwin, who admitted manslaughter but denied murder.

Irwin has also admitted sexually assaulting 34-year-old Tiffany Render on the day in March when he killed her at his George Street flat in Whitehaven. He faces a mandatory life sentence, though the minimum term he must serve is yet to be decided.

During the two week trial, prosecutor Iain Simkin KC told jurors that the murder was the "culmination" of the "violent and controlling behaviour" Irwin exhibited during his 16-month relationship with Miss Render.

The trial heard that it was the defendant himself who called for an ambulance shortly before midnight on March 22, claiming he had woken in the night to find that Miss Render, lying unresponsive next to him in bed.

He initially claimed her death from severe blood loss was the accidental result of consensual sexual activity that had “gone wrong.”

But during the trial, as the evidence against him mounted, he abandoned his claim that she had consented to the sexual activity in question, admitting that he had sexually assaulted Miss Render (pictured below). (Image: Family photo)

Mr Simkin said Miss Render was an “extremely vulnerable” woman – and a mother – who found herself trapped in a controlling relationship with Irwin.

A heavy drinker, and a regular user of cocaine, he became violent when drunk, said Mr Simkin. Irwin had a “psychological hold” over his victim, the court heard.

This left her at the mercy of what became a repeating cycle of Irwin’s control, violence, apology, pleading and reconciliation. That dangerous cycle culminated on March 22 when Irwin sexually assaulted and killed her.

A pathologist described the injury she sustained as a “blunt force trauma” which would the attacker using “severe force” and left her in agony.

The judge in the case, Mrs Justice Foster, ruled that Irwin's name must now go on to the Sex Offender Register because he has been convicted of a sexual offence. He will be sentenced in the week of December 13.