Businessman strangled pregnant girlfriend and threw another woman down landing

A businessman who attacked his pregnant partner has been jailed for 38 months.

Jonathan Murphy, 35, put a pillow over the woman’s face and then choked her in 2017.

He also subjected the woman, from Northern Ireland, to sectarian abuse.

Murphy, who runs Electricaire Ltd in Bellshill, was violent and abusive to three other women.

During one attack, the woman believed Murphy was going to kill her and fled to a neighbour’s home on her bare feet.

Murphy pled guilty at Glasgow Sheriff Court to two charges of assault.

He also admitted engaging in a course of conduct which was abusive of a partner or ex-partner.

Murphy further pled guilty to two charges of theft and a single charge of behaving in a threatening or abusive manner.

The charges span between March 2014 and December 2023 at properties in Glasgow as well as Johnstone and Paisley, Renfrewshire.

Sheriff Matthew Jackson, KC, at sentencing, placed Murphy under supervision for one year upon his release from prison.

The sheriff also granted a 15-year non-harassment order, which prohibits his contact with his victim.

The court heard that Murphy was initially verbally abusive towards the victim, which included slurs about her weight.

In one violent incident against his ex-partner, Murphy smothered and strangled the woman when she was four months pregnant.

In an attack on another woman, Murphy returned home late from a night out and threw her down a landing and later grabbed her by the hair to throw her around a room.

The victim was “terrified” and thought Murphy was going to kill her.

A third woman had her bank card stolen by him. Murphy used £1,000 to purchase a room at a hotel in Loch Lomond where he stayed with another woman while invited to a wedding.

Another woman had £1,246 taken from her account by Murphy to pay his daughter’s nursery fees.