A killer in our midst?
Could a serial killer be behind a rash of disappearances in Dublin and neighbouring counties over the past two decades? And might the murderer now be behind bars? Craig Fitzsimons untangles a dark and disturbing tale and wonders whether the truth of what happened will really ever become known.
Craig Fitzsimons, 02 Nov 2006
Friends and relatives of several individuals who have ‘disappeared’ in Leinster over the last two decades are increasingly concluding that their loved ones may have been victims of a serial killer.
The individuals listed below are still officially ‘missing’, and their disappearances are, as yet, unsolved. Even a cursory examination reveals some striking similarities between the various cases. The vast majority were young women, described as ‘attractive’, whose bodies have never been recovered. Several of them were last sighted around a triangle on the Dublin/Wicklow/Kildare borders, near the Dublin Mountains, where four women are already known to have been raped and strangled in almost identical circumstances.
The evidence would seem to support the theory that a serial killer (or, as it has been speculated, more than once) was, or is, at large in the area. Over a period of time spanning the years 1982 to 1998, it seemed that whoever was responsible could strike at will, randomly, and escape without detection.
Yet, despite the common denominators, Gardai dismissed the serial-killer theory out of hand until 1998.
Curiously, the ‘disappearances’ now appear to have stopped.
Two individuals currently in prison, both with extensive records of sexual offences against women, have been identified by US media outlets as suspects in the cases concerned.
One is Robert ‘The Werewolf’ Howard, 61, who is currently serving a life sentence in England for the 2001 rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl. He has a string of sexual convictions, including an attack on a 6-year-old girl, and the rape of a 58-year-old woman. He has a long history of abductions, and is known to have been present in the area during the period in question. Reporter Jilly Beattie has described him as ‘a known sexual deviant, a prolific rapist and murderer – the personification of evil’.
Another suspect is 41-year-old carpenter Laurence ‘Larry’ Murphy, who is married with two children. Murphy is presently serving a 15-year sentence for the abduction and multiple rape of a 26-year-old businesswoman he had been stalking. After abducting her on February 11, 2000, he beat, tied and gagged the woman, placed her in the boot of his car, drove 23 miles to a remote woodland location in County Wicklow, and raped her four times. He fled after the fourth rape when two local men chanced upon the scene, and their evidence helped to put him behind bars.
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