Olivia killer’s childhood sweetheart, 34, who is mother of his two young children leaves court after guilty verdict – as it’s revealed couple lived together in £450k home on upmarket estate paid for by his life of crime
- Olivia Pratt-Korbel’s murderer and his girlfriend lived in a £450k Liverpool home
- Kayleeanne Sweeney lived a lifestyle funded by Thomas Cashman’s drug trade
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The childhood sweetheart of the man who murdered Olivia Pratt-Korbel, nine, has left court following his guilty verdict as it is revealed the couple lived together in a £450,000 home paid for by his life of crime.
Thomas Cashman and Kayleeanne Sweeney, both 34, lived together on an upmarket estate in Liverpool and lived a lifestyle funded by his criminal career as he made thousands selling drugs.
Cashman has now been convicted of murdering schoolgirl Olivia last August after a botched attempt to kill convicted burglar Joseph Nee.
Liverpool ‘born and bred’, he grew up just a 15-minute walk from Olivia’s house on a terrace of council housing with his parents, Stephen – a meat porter – and Angela.
Giving evidence, Cashman said he left school when he was 13 or 14, finding work delivering newspapers and washing cars before getting a job at fairgrounds in Wales.
Thomas Cashman, 34, was making £5,000 a week selling ‘kilos’ of cannabis by the time of Olivia Pratt-Korbel’s murder
Kayleeanne Sweeney, 34, leaves court after Thomas Cashman was found guilty of the murder of Olivia Pratt-Korbel, nine
By the age of 16 or 17 he was smoking cannabis on a daily basis, he said, making selling it a natural progression.
He met future partner Sweeney when they were barely out of primary school, and they were still teenagers when she became pregnant.
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Cashman told the jury he tried to ‘change my life around’ and stop dealing drugs when he became a father, beginning to sell cars instead.
But by the time of the murder, he was earning up to £5,000 a week selling ‘kilos’ of cannabis to contacts living around Finch Lane – the main road at the top of Olivia’s street.
His life of crime enabled him and Ms Sweeney to afford to live in their £450,000 detached house on an upmarket development where residents drive Bentleys and Teslas.
The couple, who have a son aged 14 and a four-year-old daughter, are understood to have been paying £2,000 a month for the four-bed rented property from the end of 2021, with Ms Sweeney driving a Land Rover Discovery Sport.
In addition, they were renting a luxury two-bed apartment in block overlooking the River Mersey.
Giving evidence, Cashman said he earned as much as £250,000 a year through his illicit trade and insisted he was not ‘a bad person’ as he didn’t sell Class A drugs.
Olivia Pratt-Korbel, nine, was murdered in her home after Cashman’s failed attempt to kill a convicted burglar
He said the money was spent on cars, bikes and holidays.
Asked in court whether Ms Sweeney knew the source of his extraordinary wealth – more than seven times the average salary for the area – Cashman replied: ‘She never asked me, I never told her.’
However, he admitted she and her parents would have had ‘suspicions’ that he was a drug dealer.
At the time of the shooting, Ms Sweeney had her own cosmetics clinic, however the business was dissolved just days before Cashman was charged with murder.
