Mystery of new-born's horrific death spans three decades

For more than 30 years the murder of the new-born baby girl found dumped in an alleyway has been shrouded in mystery.

Later named Noleen, she had been stabbed 40 times with a knitting needle and hidden in a plastic bag and blood-soaked newspapers.

Members of the Murphy family have been questioned but no-one has been charged.

Wednesday April 4 1973: A new-born baby girl is found by two young boys dead in a laneway in the affluent town of Dun Laoghaire. The infant, later named Noleen, had been stabbed 40 times.

April 27 1973: An inquest into the death opens and finds she died of haemorrhaging due to stab wounds in the neck. Unidentified, she is buried in the Holy Angels Plot in Glasnevin cemetery along with more than a dozen other babies.

1976: Cynthia Owen gives birth to a baby boy aged just 15. Years later she claims she became pregnant following a rape. She says ’John’ was stillborn and buried in the back garden of her family home, White’s Villas Dalkey.

1994: Ms Owen walks into Dun Laoghaire Garda Station and claims the unidentified baby girl found in 1973 was her daughter Noleen.

June 1995: Three members of the family were arrested and questioned about the baby’s death but the Director of Public Prosecutions decides against a criminal prosecution because of the passage of time and the absence of witnesses.

January 1995: Ms Owen’s brother Martin hangs himself from the kitchen door frame in his home. Before his death, he told one of his sister’s, Theresa, that he was repeatedly sodomised in the family home.

June 17 2002: Ms Owen’s brother Michael disappears. At the time, he was suffering from depression and drinking about two bottles of vodka a day.

February 1 2005: His body is found by workmen covered by undergrowth near Killiney DART station. Suicide was suspected but the coroner returned an open verdict due to a lack of evidence.

February 23, 2005: Three weeks after the discovery of her brother’s body, Theresa Murphy commits suicide, aged 33. She copies the method used by her brother Martin a decade earlier, banging three nails into her kitchen door frame.

She leaves a 37-page suicide note detailing appalling abuse of both herself and her brother Michael at White’s Villas and names their abusers.

Later it emerges Theresa was the daughter of Margaret – one of the older Murphy children – though she grew up in infancy believing her mother was her sister.

September 2005: The inquest into the death of baby Noleen reopens, as a result of Ms Owen’s maternity claims.

June 28 2005: The garden at 4 White’s Villas, Dalkey is excavated after Ms Owen claims she gave birth to a second child who was still-born. Nothing was found.

June 2006: Justice Minister Michael McDowell refuses a coroner’s request that the body of the baby girl be exhumed.