The brother of convicted rapist and murder suspect, Larry Murphy, has said he confronted him in prison almost 20 years ago about a number of women who had gone missing and whose remains were never found.
Tom Murphy said he was not satisfied with the answers he got, adding he has not seen his brother since that meeting in Arbour Hill Prison, for sex offenders, in north Dublin in 2005.
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“I asked him had he anything to do with the missing women,” Mr Murphy says in an interview on the second and final instalment of Missing: Beyond the Vanishing Triangle to broadcast on RTÉ One on Monday night. “I wasn’t happy with his answers. I wasn’t at all happy with them. I didn’t get any answers.”
“I never want to see him again. I can’t begin to comprehend the suffering these families are going through. They get up in the morning to a house, their daughter is not there. They’re sitting watching the front door to open for her to walk in. I have a daughter myself. I can’t begin to imagine what it’s like. I just can’t.”
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The RTÉ One two-part series has focused on a number of cases involving women who vanished and are assumed murdered and others whose murders were solved. It began last week with a first episode that focused mainly on the 1993 disappearance of American women Annie McCarrick. That case is now being treated as murder, with two men being examined as suspects.
Monday night’s second episode will focus on Operation Trace, a Garda inquiry establish in 1998 to investigate links between a number of cases of disappeared women, including Annie McCarrick, Fiona Pender, Fiona Sinnott, Deirdre Jacob, Jo Jo Dullard and Ciara Breen.
Larry Murphy remains the chief suspect for the murder of Ms Jacob, who vanished from the roadside close to her family home just outside Newbridge, Co Kildare, on July 28th, 1998. The 19-year-old had gone into the town for a bank draft to pay for student accommodation in London where she was studying to become a primary schoolteacher. She vanished on her return home by foot.
Five years ago, gardaí travelled to the UK to interview Larry Murphy (57), who did not substantively engage with them. While a file was sent to the DPP recommending Murphy face charges, no charges were directed for lack of evidence and questions about the reliability of a witness who told gardaí Murphy had confessed to him.
Originally from Baltinglass, Larry Murphy was released from prison in 2010 having served 10 years of a 15-year sentence for the kidnapping, rape and attempted murder of a woman in the Wicklow Mountains in 2001. Gardaí believe he would have killed the woman, and concealed her remains, but for being disturbed by two men who were out hunting.
Former Garda assistant commissioner Tony Hickey, who presided over Operation Trace, tells the documentary while the victim of that 2001 attack survived, it was reviewed as part of the operation because of its location and because Larry Murphy was the perpetrator.
“From our point of view, it was quite close to where we were operating from,” he said. “It was in the region concerned – more or less the centre of what was called ‘the triangle’.” Mr Hickey also says in a number of cases, the Garda had “very good suspects” though the crimes could not be solved and some of the suspects have alibis.
Retired detective Alan Bailey, who worked on Garda cold case inquiries, said while there was “no obvious link” between Larry Murphy and some of the cases “he ticked an awful lot of boxes” and so was considered as a person of interest in some of the investigations.
“Larry, of course, because of the modus operandi he used in the abduction and assault became a person of interest to the Operation Trace investigation. We went back to school, to work and all that just to establish a picture of him and see if we could connect him to any of our missing persons.”
The documentary also hears from Gerry Keenan, the brother of Imelda Keenan, who vanished in Waterford City in 1993 aged 22 years. He says when his sister’s disappearance was classified as a possible suicide it made no sense as he did not believe she would “ever think of suicide”.
The Keenan family continues to campaign for the inquiry to be upgraded from a missing persons case to a murder investigation. “Deep down, in my own heart I think that Imelda was murdered in Waterford. I think Imelda knew her murderer.”
