Sex Beast Larry Murphy remains a “person of interest” in the cases of several missing women who gardaí believe may have been murdered by a serial killer, reports The Mirror.
Investigators have not ruled out the theory that all the women who disappeared in the 1990s died at the hands of a lone predator.
Wicklow native Murphy – also known as the Beast of Baltinglass – was jailed for the kidnapping, rape and attempted murder of a young Carlow woman in 2000 and remains a suspect in other cases.
The 57-year-old monster locked his victim in the trunk of his car, repeatedly raped him in different places and tried to suffocate them using a plastic bag.
The horror took place in an area known as the Vanishing Triangle and was part of an investigation carried out by the Operation Trace team into six women who went missing in the 1990s.
Retired detective Alan Bailey said, “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. I mean, he ticked an awful lot of boxes for us. 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. There was no obvious link and we were saying to ourselves ‘he ticks a lot of boxes’ so he was a person of interest,” reports The Mirror.
In an RTÉ documentary broadcast on Monday, former Deputy Commissioner Tony Hickey, who led Operation Trace, said Murphy’s arrest had set alarm bells ringing from the start.
He said: “It was in the region concerned – more or less the centre of what was called the Triangle. Alibis, they’re as good as the weakest link. We tried to learn from what was being done in other countries. In three of the cases there were very good suspects,” reports The Mirror.
It includes an interview with Larry Murphy’s estranged brother Tom, who reveals that he last saw Larry in 2005 in Arbor Hill prison.
He said: “I asked him had he anything to do with the missing women. I wasn’t happy with his answers,” reports The Mirror.
“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,” reports The Mirror.
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