Ex-army man begins life sentence

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

John Crerar, 54, denied killing 23-year-old Philomena Murphy, on a date between December 1979 and January 1980.

She was strangled and her naked body was found in a ditch in a Co Wicklow forested beauty spot called the Wicklow Gap on January 18, 1980. Medical examination showed she had also been raped.

Ms Murphy disappeared after going on a pre-Christmas shopping trip near her home in Rathangan, Co Kildare.

Crerar, a father of five, from Kildare, was found guilty by a jury of six men and six women at Dublin’s Central Criminal Court yesterday after a day-long retirement following a four-week trial.

They were told of DNA evidence linking samples extracted from Ms Murphy’s body to blood samples provided by Crerar.

Dr Maureen Smyth, of the Irish State Forensic Science Laboratory, told the court that the estimated chance of someone unrelated to Crerar in the general population having the same DNA profile as him was one in 1,000 million.