Woman bled to dying when on-off accomplice ‘fatally assaulted’ her throughout violent sexual act, homicide trial hears

A woman bled to death inside her on-off partner’s flat as she was allegedly murdered when he ‘fatally assaulted’ her during a violent sexual act, a jury was told.

Tiffany Render, 34, was an ‘extremely vulnerable woman who was trapped inside an aggressive, violent and controlling relationship’ with 50-year-old Paul Irwin, Carlisle Crown Court was told today.

Before her death, Miss Render described being together with Irwin for 16 months, the pair living together since January, 2023.

On July 17 last year, she phoned the ambulance service while increasingly concerned about his conduct. 

During that call, Irwin struck her multiple times with a wooden rolling pin, causing marks to her abdomen. She was also slapped to the face, strangled and had her hair pulled.

Police arrested Irwin, who was remanded in custody and punished for the violence by a judge last October. He received a suspended prison sentence and fitted with a booze ban tag until early February.

Tiffany Render, 34, was described as a vulnerable woman trapped inside a controlling relationship

But later in February, Miss Render alleged that she had been assaulted again with a forceful kick to the backside by Irwin. This, she told police, came against a background of his binge drinking, cocaine use, increasing control and repeated aggression towards her. 

Irwin, she alleged, exercised ‘full control’ over life, limiting access to money and contact with her children, interrogating her phone and telling her what she could and could not eat.

After the alleged February assault, Miss Render left his George Street flat in Whitehaven, Cumbria, and said she was told by Irwin he would burn photographs of her children if she did not return.

‘I have said to him if you burn those photographs then I will kill you,’ Miss Render told police. ‘He has then stated, “come up here and I will kill you, I’m telling you now that I’ll f***ing kill you”.’

Irwin was arrested after a complaint from neighbours. He was bailed with conditions not to contact Miss Render not go near George Street.

On March 4, Miss Render reported that he was continuing to contact her, making threats to ‘kick the s*** out of (her) because he wanted his flat back’, the court heard.

‘She told the police that she was absolutely terrified to leave the property and she was considering home security measures to protect her from a potential attack,’ prosecutor Iain Simkin KC told a jury.

Three days later, Miss Render secured supported safe accommodation elsewhere in Whitehaven. Several times she told staff she would be staying elsewhere overnight.

It was accepted, said Mr Simkin, that she may have voluntarily been with Irwin in breach of his bail.

On 22nd March, Miss Render exchanged texts with a support worker asking: ‘Am I ok to stay out tonight please?’ At no point did Miss Render reveal plans to see Irwin.

Also on 22nd March, Miss Render visited a tattooist who noted that she had 79 missed calls on her mobile.

Irwin was in a town pub until 2.30pm with Miss Render going to his George Street flat later that day.

‘Towards midnight,’ Mr Simkin told jurors, ‘the North West Ambulance Service received a call from the defendant stating that he believed that Miss Render was dead. 

‘At 11.49pm paramedics arrived at the scene and arrived at the scene and remarked that Tiffany was surrounded by blood-soaked bedding.’

Paul Irwin appeared at Carlisle Crown Court today charged with murder

Miss Render was pronounced dead just after midnight. A pathologist concluded she died of a massive haemorrhage. He was not able to say how many times she had been struck during an aggressive sexual act.

‘That injury resulted in almost immediate bleeding and she bled to death inside the defendant’s home,’ said Mr Simkin.

Irwin, of George Street, Whitehaven, denies charges alleging murder and a sexual assault by penetration.

‘The defendant claimed that he awoke to find Miss Render lying next to him, unresponsive in the bed, and that he realised that she was dead,’ said Mr Simkin as he opened the prosecution case.

It was anticipated that Irwin would claim Miss Render consented and that her death was ‘an accidental result of sexual activity’.

Mr Simkin said to jurors: ‘The prosecution submit that you will be able to reject that assertion. 

‘We will invite you to consider the nature of their relationship, the background to this offence, the violence which the defendant previously used upon the deceased and the extreme nature of the injuries themselves; which, taken together we say, is evidence which torpedoes Mr Irwin’s claim that Tiffany consented to the penetration.

‘Further, you will learn that he assaulted her, with such force, causing such severe injuries, that you will be able to conclude that Paul Irwin, at the very least, meant to do Tiffany Render really serious harm.’

The trial continues.