Nicola Furlong

The mother of Nicola Furlong has told of her heartache ten years after the Wexford student was murdered in Japan.

"I watched my parents pass away within a year of each other and one of the last things I said to both of them was, 'tell her I miss her'. Hinds admitted that he was the only other person in the room with Ms Furlong. "I did lightly press on her neck," he told the court. He was also convicted of an earlier sexual assault on another non-Japanese woman, referred to in court as Victim B, after a forensic police analysis of his iPad retrieved incriminating images that Blackston had deleted of the woman. "On May 22nd, 2012, Nicola's last contact with me, she texted to say, 'all ready for the concert mam, am so excited 10 weeks & I will be back in Ireland’." The flexibility of a five- to ten-year term is designed to encourage rehabilitation. But her testimony affirmed the key points made by the pathologist for the prosecution, including that Nicola Furlong died because she was strangled over a period of "several minutes". "Yeah, I am going to carry mine," the other answers. "I am going to carry mine, you gonna carry yours?" In his testimony, Hinds dismissed the expletive-ridden taxi conversation as "meaningless talk". The CCTV recording also captured Blackston molesting Nicola's friend in the taxi, an offence for which he was later jailed. The men bought drinks for the two women, shots of tequila. The taxi's CCTV camera recorded snatches of disoriented female voices as the women were getting into the taxi.