On the night of March 13, 2017, backpacker Danielle McLaughlin sat on a secluded beach on India’s west coast, talking to fellow travelers from the UK she’d just met.
“She was really interesting,” Dave Woodruff, then 37, told The Guardian about McLaughlin, the friendly 28-year-old woman from County Donegal, Ireland, he and his two friends met at the Green Park beach resort on Palolem beach. “(She) told me about her family and life. We got on really well and spoke for a couple of hours.”
The next morning, Woodruff and his friends were shocked to learn that McLaughlin had been found dead – naked, beaten and strangled – in a field between Palolem and Agonda beaches, police said, The Guardian reported.
McLaughlin was found “lying in a pool of blood…and there were injuries on the head and face,” Canacona Police Deputy Superintendent Sammy Tavares, said, according to The Guardian.
Now, eight years after McLaughlin’s brutal death, justice has finally been served. On Friday, Feb. 14, Vikat Bhagat, 31, was convicted of raping and murdering her in the popular tourist spot, the Associated Press reports.
On Monday, Feb. 17, Bhagat was sentenced to life in prison, the Irish Independent reports.
He was sentenced to a second life term for rape, and three years for destroying evidence. The sentences will run concurrently.
McLaughlin had only been in India for two weeks when she was killed, according to the Irish Independent.
An autopsy showed that McLaughlin died from cerebral damage and constriction of the neck, the Associated Press reports.
Bhagat was arrested and charged with rape and murder hours after McLaughlin’s body was found. His arrest came after police released surveillance footage of McLaughlin walking with Bhagat at dusk the night before she was killed.
Bhagat confessed to killing McLaughlin but denied sexually assaulting her, police said, according to The Guardian.
Woodruff recalled how he and his two friends were talking to McLaughlin on the beach the night before she was killed when a group of about five men came and sat down near them, he told The Guardian.
“We chatted a lot, and these guys would pull her back and say: ‘You’re with us, remember,'” he told The Guardian. “She was just like, ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’,” he said.
McLaughlin told him she had met one of them the year before. “The man was going to help her find a place to stay,” he said.
He believes that man was Bhagat.
McLaughlin’s family spoke out after the verdict was handed down.
“We have lost nearly eight years of our lives fighting for Danielle,” McLaughlin’s sister, Joleen McLaughlin Brannigan, said, the BBC reports.
“We are so thankful that we can now start grieving her immeasurable loss. She made the most of her 28 years, and lived every day to the fullest.”
