by Andrew Carey
THE woman whose decomposing remains were found by burglars in a County Limerick farmhouse last week, left an Australian couple penniless after she convinced them to invest in a US property deal that never existed.
Julia Ruttle, as she was most recently known, died alongside her partner Tom Ruttle in an upstairs bedroom of his home at Boolaglass, Askeaton.
It is now believed that the 63-year-old Tyrone woman, whose real name is Ceceila Julia McKitterrick, died in a suicide pact by carbon monoxide poisoning with Tom Ruttle (56), the man who was known as her “husband” despite the fact that she hadn’t divorced from her two previous marriages.
And, as details her fraudulent activities continued to emerge, The Limerick Post was contacted by a couple who say their lives were ruined by the conwoman who left a trail of heartbreak and deception in her wake.
Speaking from Australia, Amanda Kent and her husband Greg said that they first encountered Julia Ruttle in 2011 when she was living in Abbeyfeale. Mr Kent, a truck driver, had received a substantial compensation award from an accident in 2006.
Similar to the fraud scam that resulted in her imprisonment in Texas, the conwoman convinced them she could get a three to four-fold return on their investment in a US property portfolio she said was worth millions.
“She was living in Limerick and we first met her in 2011 through facebook, through my husband’s parents, I think they met her online as well”, Ms Kent recalled.
“We got to be really close with them. We thought of them as surrogate parents, and they were going to fly over to Australia for our wedding in March 2012, but that’s when she said she had her stillbirth which we now know didn’t happen.
“She had spoken to us about a property investment she was involved with in the US and asked if we would like to be part of it. She said we would make three or four times whatever we invested by November that year.
“We initially transferred over €50,000 and then a few weeks later she talked about more openings if we wanted to invest more money and so we transferred another €20,000.
“This was the deposit for our house, so we looked on it as an investment. Our deposit wasn’t enough so we were happy to take the opportunity because otherwise we would have been saving for a lot longer” she explained.
After their marriage in 2012, the Kents spent two weeks with Julia and Tom Ruttle who were renting a house in West Abbeyfeale.
“In the weeks before the wedding, she kept telling us we should invest a bit more money in the US property deal as she could get that return to us quicker than the other money we already put in. She said it would help with the wedding cost but we didn’t want to invest more money as it was the last of what we had, so we kept saying no and putting her off.
However, she said she had invested €30,000 on our behalf and we would have to give it back to her. She asked for €20,000 as she would give us the extra €10,000 as a wedding gift.
“We were bullied in to giving her the last €20,000 of our house money, so all we had left was a bit of money for our honeymoon and that was it.
“Over the next two years, we tried to get it back but by the end of 2013, I knew we’d been ripped off. I contacted a lawyer who said he could help me, as all the money went into Tom’s account and he could go after his assets and report her to the Gardaí.
However, the legal costs of bringing Julia Ruttle to justice prevented them from recouping their losses.
“We had no money left and by then and I couldn’t even keep up with living costs, let alone try to pay for lawyers. We just kept messaging her to give it back, but she just cut all contact, changed her number, closed her facebook and email accounts.
“We have nothing and will never have the chance of having our own home, I’m so angry that not only did she steal from us and our kids, but by killing herself she’s made sure we never get anything ever, its like being stolen from twice.
“Anyway that’s pretty much the short version of it, I don’t know what she told Tom we were giving her money for, I just wish I had asked Tom about it at the time,
“I wonder if I had, maybe we all would have realised then what she was doing. I do know that Tom didn’t deserve to die. I feel sorry for him. She ruined him the most.
This week, Tom Ruttle’s remains were released to his family for a private funeral in Askeaton while the body of the woman known as Cecilia Julia McKitterrick lay in the morgue, unclaimed and likely to be buried in a pauper’s grave by Limerick City and County Council.
