You're pathetic: Judge's verdict on mother with an eldest son in jail for murder and two more caged for kicking a tramp to death



Connor Doran, 17, dared friend Simon Evans, 14, to attack homeless Kevin Bennett saying 'I bet you haven't got it in you'



Doran's younger brother Brandon, 14, kept watch as the pair began to kick the innocent victim



Doran brothers' older sibling Ryan, 23, is also in prison for another murder

Judge brands brothers' mother a 'tragic and pathetic character'



She is jailed for perverting the course of justice after trying to protect sons



A judge lambasted a mother yesterday after her two youngest sons joined their eldest brother in being jailed for murder.

Linda Doran was in the dock with her children, Connor, 17, and Brandon, 14, because she had given the pair a false alibi to shield them from detectives.

The teenagers had kicked Kevin Bennett to death for a dare as the 53-year-old father of one slept rough.

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Baby-faced killers: Brandon Doran, 14, (left) who acted as lookout as his brother Connor, 17, (right) and their friend Simon Evans, 14, kicked the homeless man to death



In October, Doran’s eldest son, Ryan, 23, was given 15 years for the murder of a stranger. And, back in 2009, her other boy, Jordan, 21, was charged with manslaughter in an arson case that failed to reach court.

Passing sentence at Liverpool Crown Court yesterday, Judge Clement Goldstone QC told Doran: ‘You are a pathetic and tragic character.

‘You have just seen your two youngest sons sent to detention for a murder which within hours you knew they had committed. You have another son who is serving life for murder.

‘There are not many parents who have that sort of personal agony to bear, but then again there are not that many mothers who have shown themselves to be either so unwilling or unable to shoulder the responsibility of motherhood as you have.



‘There cannot be many mothers, three of whose sons are serving life sentences for murder.’

The QC jailed Doran for 30 months and jailed her two sons and their accomplice, Simon Evans, 14, for a total of 26 years.

Attacker: Simon Evans, 14, who beat the homeless man for a dare

The judge, who is the Recorder of Liverpool, said Doran, who also has a daughter, bore a heavy responsibility for the total lack of parental guidance afforded to her sons and her conduct contrasted with that of Evans’s mother, who gave evidence against her son.

‘Your code of honour was to protect your boys in their hour of need at any price, particularly if that price was honesty and decency,’ the judge added. ‘You behaved how you did despite the serious nature of the charge your sons faced and persisted in attempts to give them a false alibi for two months.

‘Not even a mother is entitled to lie with impunity to save her sons who she knows to have been involved in a terrible crime.’

He said the boys were flourishing away from her influence. No father is recorded on any of the brothers’ birth certificates and Doran, who was 19 when her first child was born, struggled to control them. By their teens, Ryan and Jordan were members of a gang and Connor and Brandon, who have learning difficulties, grew up believing drug taking, violence, clashes with the police and court appearances were normal.

Neither went to school regularly and their mother was prosecuted by the council for their repeated absences. One official charged with trying to curb their behaviour said Ryan’s murder conviction ‘lit the touch paper for the rest of them’ and their crimes escalated.

‘It was almost like “our kid has done it, so we’re going to do it as well”,’ the source said. ‘It was the degradation of the value of human life within the Doran family.’

The Doran brothers and Evans, all of Liverpool, denied murder but were convicted following a four-week trial in February.

They had been roaming the streets looking for trouble when they set upon Mr Bennett in the early hours of August 17 last year. Connor goaded Evans into attacking Mr Bennett, saying: ‘I bet you haven’t got it in you to do him in.’

Their victim, a former union official, had turned to alcohol following the death of his father and his drinking had led to marriage break-up and homelessness.

Behind bars: Ryan Doran (left), who is also a convicted murderer and was jailed for life last year and his mother Linda, 42, (right) who was locked up for 30 months today for perverting the course of justice



He had spent much of the previous day in a pub in the Walton area of Liverpool and consumed up to 12 cans of lager before settling down for the night behind a supermarket.

While Brandon acted as look-out, Evans and Connor carried out a ‘savage and sustained attack’. Connor even climbed on to a storage cage to get ‘leverage’ for jumping up and down on his victim’s chest.

Victim: Kevin Bennett, 53, who was kicked to death outside a supermarket in Walton, Liverpool

Evans later told a family friend: ‘I kicked him in the head and stood on his ribs. The noises were terrible.’

In what the judge described as a ‘final and gratuitous insult’, Connor rifled through Mr Bennett’s pockets to see if there was anything worth stealing.

Left for dead, Mr Bennett was found seven hours later by supermarket staff arriving for work.

He suffered a fractured eye socket, collapsed lung and broken ribcage and died six days later in hospital from blood poisoning after an infection set in, causing organ failure.

Jailing Connor for a minimum of 12 years, Brandon for a minimum of six years, and Evans for a minimum of eight years, the judge said: ‘It is a desperately sad reflection on the society in which we live that each of you was party to serious violence for the sake of it.’

Following the sentencing, Mr Bennett’s cousin Angela Connerty, 49, said he was a ‘fabulous’ man who would forever be in her thoughts.

Doran, who lives on benefits and has apparently never had a job, denied perverting the course of justice but was convicted by a jury.

During his brothers’ trial, Jordan was jailed for contempt after he was caught trying to take a photograph inside the courtroom.

Ryan was jailed for killing landscape gardener Wayne Mitchell, 42. The father of one was in the wrong place at the wrong time when Ryan, who was high on cannabis and cocaine, smashed him over the head with a bottle, causing him to fall and fracture his skull.