Reward offered in murder inquiry

A €10,000 reward is being offered by Crimestoppers for anybody who can identify a murdered woman whose body was found in the Phoenix Park last week.

Despite an extensive public appeal both in Ireland and internationally through Interpol, the woman's body has not been identified almost a week after it was discovered in the Military Road area of the Phoenix Park.

Gardai today issued 20 new photographs of the woman and the clothes she was wearing at the time in an attempt to jog the memories of anybody who might have known her.

The woman has a number of distinctive moles on her face including one on her left temple, one under her right eye and another under her lips.

She was wearing a green or grey zip-up fleece, a striped red and blue top, three-quarter length pink leggings and pink fleece socks. She had gold nail varnish on her toes.

The woman was wearing a gold religious medal, a gold Celtic cross necklace, Creole-type hooped-earrings and a plain silver-coloured hairclip. She also wore a pair of size 5 Karrimor trainers.

The woman had good quality dental work done which would have required "some money," Garda spokesman Superintendent John Gilligan said this evening.

A black Raleigh ladies bicycle with a carrier on the back was found near the scene, but gardaí are unsure if it belonged to the victim.

The woman's body was discovered on Wednesday, August 5th, by two passers-by, one of whom has since contacted the gardaí. It is believed that she had been killed a short time before her body was discovered.

A post-mortem examination revealed that the woman died as a result of internal trauma caused by multiple stab wounds to her upper body.

Supt Gilligan said they had looked at options where she could be from, but had not drawn any conclusions.

The incident room has received around 200 calls, he said, but some positive sightings appeared to contradict each other. Interpol has also been contacted.

"A number of strong leads in terms of identity have come forward, but some of those leads are so different from each other that it is hard to say we are closing in," Supt Gilligan explained.

He said that the distinctive Irish jewellery she had worn might suggest she was Irish, but the fact that nobody had come forward in a week to identify her might alternatively suggest that she was foreign.

"The jewellery is something you can clearly associate with Ireland and with Catholicism, but it does not necessarily mean that she is Irish."

He added that it was "unusual" that nobody would have identified her by now if she was Irish.

"There are Irish people who live on the fringes of society for whatever reasons who are not recognisable now to someone who might have known them in the past."

"It could be that she was a foreign non-Irish national living in Ireland for some time. It could be, for the purposes of speculation, that having lived in a hostel, having met with religious people, maybe nuns or priests, that she was given these items and has worn these items. It is only to prompt people's imaginations we are suggesting these as possibilities."