Further Things That Are Wrong (Part 2)

StoneCold · February 28, 2026, 7:07am

Posting furiously for 17 or 18 hours per day

farmerinthecity · February 28, 2026, 7:12am

Far be it from me to agree with you on such matters but I found this utterly reprehensible given the nature of the crime.

myboyblue · February 28, 2026, 7:25am

That’s always an uneasy feeling

Locke · February 28, 2026, 8:08am

How many posts a day on here is too many would you say? 10, 20, 41?

myboyblue · February 28, 2026, 8:19am

I’d try and keep it concise myself. You can have too much of a good thing. Short snappy witty retorts is how I roll.

Sometimes I’ll go into a second paragraph.

Other times I won’t make it to the third.

Don’t give them too much of a good thing.

StoneCold · February 28, 2026, 8:23am

I wouldn’t want to put a numeric limit on anybody’s daily musings but this week has been astonishing; there are surely better uses of one’s time.

Raylan · February 28, 2026, 12:57pm

I look forward to this development

myboyblue · February 28, 2026, 2:02pm

I knew someone would bite

Locke · February 28, 2026, 5:39pm

Point made by another post. The ironing.

myboyblue · February 28, 2026, 5:46pm

Eh that was the joke

Corksfinedtboy · February 28, 2026, 7:59pm

Or that was where they originated

Corksfinedtboy · March 1, 2026, 9:24am

Larry Murphy, the mysterious red car and the long quest to find it

Search at disused quarry has yielded nothing of value to detectives, but ‘credible’ information about alleged activity in area will result in a reassessment

3

Maeve Sheehan

March 1 2026 5:30 AM

When convicted rapist Larry Murphy came under investigation for the murder of missing teenager Deirdre Jacob, detectives struggled to track his movements.

A self-employed carpenter from Baltinglass in north Co Wicklow, Murphy travelled widely across north Leinster each day, driving a range of vehicles.

He used the family car, with child seats in the back for his two children, as well as vans and cars belonging to contractors who hired him. Detectives also identified a third “offside” red car, variously described as a Toyota or Volkswagen, that they were never able to trace.

Last week, investigators who searched for it considered whether it could be buried under tonnes of earth and rubble in a disused quarry on the Kildare/Wicklow border, eight kilometres from Murphy’s former home.

Ms Dullard was travelling home to Callan, Co Kilkenny, from a night out in Dublin. She had got a bus as far as Moone, where she called a friend from a phone box, telling her that she intended to hitch. After chatting for a few minutes, she said she had to hang up because a car had pulled up outside.

A witness saw a woman matching Ms Dullard’s description leaning into a red Toyota Carina.

The Toyota was never traced, and the driver never came forward.

According to one informed source, tracing Murphy’s cars is important not for what may be concealed inside but because of their potential evidential value.

In the only crime for which he was convicted, Murphy’s family blue Fiat Punto was the stalking car, the getaway car and the crime scene.

In February 2000, he followed a woman to a car park in Carlow; he stunned her with a punch, forced her into the footwell of the front passenger seat of her own car, bound her and transferred her into the boot.

He raped the woman repeatedly inside the car, in different locations. He imprisoned her in the boot and that was where he tried to murder her when two huntsmen chanced upon him.

Murphy’s arrest the following day brought him to the attention of Operation Trace, the garda unit investigating the disappearances of six women in Leinster.

Profiling Murphy included identifying the vehicles he had access to at the time. Three emerged: the family car, a van owned by a contractor he worked for, and the untraced red car.

When Ms Jacob’s disappearance was upgraded to murder in 2018, the new garda investigation team devoted a key line of inquiry to tracing Murphy’s cars, and his alleged modus operandi.

Detectives went back to a former prisoner who had shared a cell with Murphy. The prisoner had first made a statement in 2011, after Murphy’s release. He alleged that while drunk on prison hooch, Murphy had confessed to murdering a woman outside Newbridge.

Gardaí believed the prisoner was credible, that he had nothing to gain from coming forward

The prisoner claimed Murphy told him he was driving a saloon car with toys scattered across the back seat, a child seat in place and a road map spread out on the front passenger seat.

He claimed Murphy told him he stopped the woman, asked her directions, luring her to lean into the open passenger window by pointing at the map. He also claimed Murphy told him he dragged her by the hair into the footwell and struck her with a hammer.

What struck detectives was the alleged modus operandi the prisoner ascribed to Murphy. They believed the prisoner was credible, that he had nothing to gain from coming forward and that his motives were sincere.

In 2019, a witness came forward with new information. He was a local man who claimed that on the afternoon Ms Jacob disappeared, he was driving into Newbridge in his SUV, on the same road where she lived.

He passed an oncoming car and, from his elevated position in the vehicle, he saw a person in the footwell of the front passenger seat, and noticed an expression that suggested the person was “either laughing or crying”.

The local man had spoken to detectives at the time of Ms Jacob’s disappearance in 1998, but withheld that detail for his own reasons.

Kilkenny woman Jo Jo Dullard went missing on November 9, 1995, as she returned home after a night out in Dublin

Even though the car was not identified, the local account both echoed the prisoner’s and the testimony of Murphy’s only proven victim.

All three accounts shared one key detail: a person in the footwell of the front passenger seat of a moving car.

The prisoner described a “saloon”; the Fiat Punto had been exhaustively searched.

The make and model of the car described by the witness who saw a person “laughing or crying” in the footwell of the car was not clear.

The investigation team reviewed all the cars that Murphy had access to at the time of ms Jacob’s disappearance.

The mysterious “red car” was the only one that gardaí could not trace.

“Gardaí had witnesses telling them that he [Murphy] had access to this red car. There were people telling them: ‘He drives a red car,’” the source said.

Detectives picked up only partial details of the car’s registration number. Some witnesses said it was a red Toyota, others said it was a red Volkswagen.

Detectives combed through archived tapes of CCTV footage taken from the time of Ms Jacob’s disappearance.

The inquiries “fell flat”, the source said. The red car was never traced.

Tradesmen and construction workers told gardaí Murphy went from one site to the next on jobs, and often disappeared from the workplace without telling anyone where he was going.

Gardaí proved that Murphy was working across north Leinster in July 1998. They pinpointed half a dozen sites close to Newbridge. Two jobs were in an area that required him to travel past Ms Jacob’s home.

But detectives could not prove where he was on the day the student teacher was murdered, nor could they prove what car he was driving.

A forensic psychologist’s assessment of Larry Murphy, before his release from prison, described him as ‘cunning, impulsive and controlled’

Murphy was identified as the prime suspect for Ms Jacob’s murder in the investigation file sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions in 2021.

The evidence included digitally enhanced CCTV footage that put a man gardaí said resembled Larry Murphy in Newbridge Post Office at 2.17pm, minutes before Ms Jacob came in to post a bank draft. Analysts said there was a “moderate” chance that man was Murphy, but it was not enough for the DPP.

The file also included the statement from the prisoner about Murphy’s confession, and one from a second prisoner who also claimed Murphy had said that he had “killed”.

It pointed to “strong evidence” that Murphy was in the Newbridge area at the time Ms Jacob disappeared.

The file contained a forensic psychologist’s assessment of Murphy, before his release from prison, describing him as “cunning”, “impulsive and controlled”, a person who took precautions and who was at “high risk of future offending”.

In 2022, the DPP decided the evidence was not enough to prosecute Murphy.

Four years on, the searches of a disused quarry in Castleruddery last week show that gardaí investigating the murders of Ms Jacob and Ms Dullard are not finished with Murphy.

The information that cars may have been dumped at a disused quarry is not a new lead. As far back as 2002, newspapers reported rumours that Murphy, then in jail, had dumped a car or cars there.

There were also reports that Gardai investigating Ireland’s missing women had examined several crushed cars on site.

The difference now is that a witness has shared specific information as to where the alleged burial took place.

Further Things That Are Wrong (Part 2)

Larry Murphy, the mysterious red car and the long quest to find it

Maeve Sheehan

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