Gardaí still hopeful of charges against Larry Murphy for Deirdre Jacob murder

Gardaí investigating the murder of Deirdre Jacob are continuing to investigate her killing with Larry Murphy as the prime suspect despite a decision last year by the DPP’s office not to charge him. One of the main reasons no prosecution was pursued against Murphy was the DPP’s concerns that the credibility of a key witness, a former prisoner, would be called into question during a murder trial.

However, Garda sources said if more evidence could be obtained, the testimony of the witness could still be used but in a more peripheral manner, meaning the prosecution would be less dependent on it. The same gardaí said murder trials were now increasingly being run on circumstantial evidence and they believed such a case could still be built against Murphy in relation to Ms Jacob’s murder.

The young Co Kildare women vanished from the roadside close to her family home just outside Newbridge 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.

While Murphy has been at times linked to the disappearances, assumed murders, of other women in the east of the country, detectives believe the inquiry into Ms Jacob’s killing represents the best chance of charges being pursued against him.

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Originally from Baltinglass, Co Wicklow, Murphy was released from prison in 2010 having served 10½ 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 during the attack.

Murphy’s brother, Tom Murphy, has said he confronted him about the other missing women when he visited him in Arbour Hill Prison, north Dublin, in 2005, but had not seen him since then.

“I asked him had he anything to do with the missing women,” Mr Murphy says in an interview in the second and final instalment of Missing: Beyond the Vanishing Triangle to be 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.”

While it emerged last year that the DPP had directed Murphy should not be charged in relation to the Kildare woman’s murder, there is no legal impediment to more evidence being added to the file so it could be sent back to the DPP for a fresh decision.

Gardaí used modern technology to enhance CCTV images from around Newbridge on the day Ms Jacob went missing in 1998. However, they did not provide any information that linked Murphy to the crime. The images were not clear enough for witnesses to identify a person captured in the footage.

Furthermore, although a former prisoner, now regarded as a key witness, came forward and gardaí believed his information was credible, there were concerns the man’s criminal background would be used to undermine him if he was used as a witness in a court case.

That man claimed Murphy told him he pulled into the roadside on the pretence of asking Ms Jacob for directions and when she leant into the vehicle to see what area he was pointing at on a map, he dragged her inside and drove off. The witness claimed the motive for the abduction was sexual but that Murphy panicked because Ms Jacob struggled so much and he killed her immediately.

[ The myth of Ireland’s ‘vanishing triangle’ ]