Barry Cummins - Without Trace: Ireland’s Missing

WITHOUT
TRACE

IRELANDS MISSING

BARRY CUMMINS

Gill & Macmillan

For every missing person

For further information visit www.barrycummins.com

You may reach me in confidence at

missing@barrycummins.com

For further information about missing persons cases please visit

www.missing.ie

www.missingpersons.ie

www.searchingforthemissing.net

www.garda.ie

You may contact the Missing Persons Helpline at 1890 442 552

The Searching For The Missing Group can be contacted on 085 2092119

The Missing Persons Association can be contacted on 087 9609885

If you have any information about any of the cases featured in this book, or indeed any other missing persons cases, please call the Garda Confidential Line1800 666 111

Contents

Cover

Title page

Dedication

For further information

Chapter 1: Predator

Chapter 2: IRA Disappeared

Chapter 3: Hidden Bodies

Chapter 4: Two Boys

Chapter 5: Unidentified Bodies

Chapter 6: For the RecordPriscilla Clarke

Chapter 7: Missing in Kerry

Chapter 8: Trevor

Chapter 9: Mystery in Mayo

Chapter 10: Limericks Missing Men

Chapter 11: Missing from Darndale

Chapter 12: Failure to Find Bodies

Chapter 13: Stranger than Fiction

Acknowledgments

Copyright

About the Author

About Gill & Macmillan

PREDATOR

It is not known what Larry Murphy planned to do with the body of his victim, had he managed to murder her on the night of Friday 11 February 2000. He had a white plastic bag over his victims face as she fought to get out of the boot of his car when two hunters happened upon the scene at an isolated spot in west Co. Wicklow. Just as the hunters approached, the woman showed super-human strength in forcing her way out of the boot, getting her feet on to the ground. Larry Murphy immediately fled the scene in his 1997 Kildare registered Fiat Punto. The two hunters, Ken Jones and Trevor Moody, recognised Murphy as he sped past them. They approached the woman who had now collapsed semi-conscious. In the darkness she had crawled into barbed wire in an effort to escape. The two men who had just saved the womans life brought her to Baltinglass Garda station, where the extent of what the woman had suffered in the previous hours soon became apparent. A Garda removed a headband which was tied around the womans wrists, and the officer also removed a bra which was tied around the womans neck. Both items had been used by Murphy that night to tie the womans hands and to gag her. The woman was taken by the Garda to the sexual assault unit at a hospital in Dublin, and some hours later she made a detailed statement to detectives. Officers were impressed at her amazing resilience, her battle for life and her determination to see her attacker brought to justice. The 27-year-old woman, who had survived Murphys murder attempt, suffered extreme brutality that night. She was abducted in one county, bound and gagged and forced into the boot of Murphys car and then driven to locations in two other counties where she was repeatedly raped by the 35-year-old married father of two.

Just hours after the attack, Larry Murphy was arrested at his home which was just a few kilometres from where he had tried to suffocate his victim. A team of Garda called to his two-storey detached home on the quiet Boley Road outside Baltinglass shortly after 8 am. By now the officers knew that Murphy was their prime suspect. He had been identified by the hunters who had stumbled upon the scene of rape and attempted murder in the nearby woods, and the Fiat Punto used in the attack was parked in the spacious driveway outside his house. Murphy opened the door to the Garda and turned back into the house as they followed, as if he already knew why they were there. The Garda knew that Murphy had a legally held firearm in the house, and they immediately asked where it was to ensure it was secure. Murphys wife came into the room where he was standing with the detectives, asking what was going on. Murphy turned to his wife of six years and said I raped a girl last night. Detective Sergeant Jim Ryan from Carlow station arrested Murphy in the house and cautioned him. Murphy replied, I dont know why it happened. I am terribly sorry.

Larry Murphy would later plead guilty at the Central Criminal Court to four charges of rape, one charge of false imprisonment and one of attempted murder. He also admitted stealing cash from the handbag of his victim. He was given six sentences of 15 years imprisonment for false imprisonment, rape and attempted murder. When you added in the sentences imposed for robbery and assault causing harm, Murphy was given prison terms which when added together amounted to 97 years. However, the judge directed that all the sentences were to run concurrently, with the last year of each sentence being suspended, so Murphy was effectively given what amounted to a 14 year sentence. On the day he pleaded guilty, Larry Murphy fainted as he stood before Mr Justice Paul Carney in a packed courtroom.

Murphy immediately settled into life at Arbour Hill Prison where he was of exemplary behaviour during his ten and a half years in prison. Although on paper he was supposed to serve a sentence of 14 years in jail, Murphy, like most other prisoners, benefited from the ludicrous situation where a quarter of a prisoners sentence is taken away if they are of good behaviour behind bars. So for the crimes of abducting a woman by punching her in the face, putting her in the boot of his car, subjecting her to multiple rapes, and attempting to suffocate her to death, model prisoner Larry Murphy served ten years and six months in jail before being released in August 2010. He refused to take part in a sex offenders treatment programme while in jail and refused to speak with any prison officer or fellow prisoner about the reason for his imprisonment. The woman who had survived Murphys attack that February night in 2000 had been fully prepared to give evidence if the case had gone to trial. Because Murphy pleaded guilty to the attack, the full details of what he did on one night in three counties never came out in court.

It was shortly after 8.15 pm on Friday 11 February 2000 when Larry Murphy approached his victim. The businesswoman had minutes earlier locked up her premises in Carlow and had walked to her car which was parked in a car park around the corner. As she approached her car she unlocked it with a central locking key fob. She noticed a man standing about 20 feet away. All of a sudden the man came around the back of the womans car demanding that she give him her money. Almost immediately he punched the woman in the face and forced her into her car. He pushed her over to the passenger seat and he sat into the drivers seat and forced her head down on to the handbrake with his left elbow. He picked up the womans keys from the ground beside the car and started the engine. He drove a short distance to a more secluded section of the car park where he forced her to remove her bra and he tied her hands tightly with it. He again demanded money and he took 700 from the womans handbag. The money was in Bank of Ireland bank bags which the woman had meant to lodge earlier that day. He took off the womans boots and he took a GAA headband that he had found in her car and tied it around her mouth to gag her. He took the woman out of her car and pushed her towards the car he had parked next to. It was a dirty grey-green Fiat Punto. He forced the woman into the boot of the car, sat into the drivers seat and drove off with the radio turned up loud. The abduction had taken a matter of seconds. Murphy and his victim were now gone from Carlow and nobody had seen a thing.