Socialite robbed of jewels at knife-point

SOCIALITE and beauty salon owner Lisa Murphy was threatened at knife-point and tied up for two hours by a gang who stole jewellery worth over €100,000 from her.

The former model was left cut, bruised and traumatised by the incident at the luxury house at Brittas Bay, Co Wicklow, where she lives with her fiance, celeb-rity lawyer Gerald Kean.

Mr Kean became worried when she failed to turn up to a function they were meant to be attending in Dublin on Thursday night.

He told RTÉ he feared she’d had an accident when she didn’t answer her phone but he never expected the sight that met him when he went home to check on her.

“I heard her screaming and she begged me, ‘please come’,” he said. “That scream, when I heard it, I nearly died.”

Ms Murphy, 38, formerly engaged to Michael Flatley, was rushed by four men in balaclavas as she entered the house just after 8pm.

“They threw her to the ground and tied her hands behind her back,” Mr Kean said.

“They then started screaming at her, ‘Lisa, where’s Gerald’s ring, where’s Michael’s ring?’ One of them pulled the ring off her and cut her hand and then took another ring off the other hand and they started roaring at her ‘where’s the safe?’,” he said.

“She screamed at them that I was behind her even though I was in Dublin but they said ‘we’ll deal with him when he arrives’. They said ‘we can do this the hard way’ and they produced two knives. One of them they held towards her neck so she gave them the code of the safe,” Mr Kean said.