DETECTIVE Inspector Brendan McArdle is hoping that the belated conviction of John Crerar for a 23-year-old murder has left other unconvicted killers uneasy.

A former Irish Army sergeant is today beginning a life sentence - for a murder committed nearly 23 years ago.

The jury has retired to consider a verdict in the case of 54-year-old army sergeant John Crerar, who denies the murder of Kildare woman, Phyllis Murphy, almost 23 years ago.

The risk of a chance match or a mistake in the DNA evidence against accused man John Crerar is too high to rely on it to convict him of murder, his lawyer told a jury today.

DNA taken from the body of Phyllis Murphy - the young Kildare woman found raped and strangled in Co Wicklow over 22 years ago - matched DNA taken from John Crerar, the former army sergeant on trial for her murder, a jury has heard.

The garda detective who arrested former army sergeant John Crerar for the 1979 murder of Kildare woman Phyllis Murphy has a told a jury that he had arrested Mr Crerar because DNA evidence positively linked him to Ms Murphy.

A prosecution lawyer has accused the parents of an 18-year-old Corkman accused of rape and murder of lying in the witness box to protect their son.

A British forensics expert has suggested that the manner in which forensic evidence in a rape and murder trial was collected prior to testing in the State Forensic Science Laboratory could have left it open to tampering or contamination.

Graffiti at the scene of the rape and murder of a 22-year-old woman in a park in Co Cork proclaimed that the youth now accused of the crime "loved forever" his teenage girlfriend, a trial has heard.

There was an estimated chance of around one in 650,000 million that a DNA profile matching a Cork man accused of rape and murder matched someone else, a forensic scientist said today.

DNA samples from an 18-year-old Cork man on trial for the murder and rape of a young woman in a Co Cork park matched samples found in her body, a jury has heard.