Eagle-eyed garda spots upskirting offender on the Luas and unearths a more sinister case

Dogged police work brought a sex offender to justice, but the deeper they dug, the more sinister the case became, writes Cormac O'Keeffe

Detective Sergeant Karl Murray witnessed an incident on the Green Line of the Luas that he said made him think 'I can't let this go'.Picture Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin

Karl Murray was off duty when he noticed something odd about a man on the Luas with him.

Both of them had just got on at the  Harcourt Street stop, in Dublin City centre, heading southbound on the Green Line.

It was mid-December 2019 and the Luas was busy.

Detective Sergeant Murray, in normal plain clothes, had his back to one door that remained shut for the journey. There was a crowd of people in front of him in the standing area.

“As time went on, I was standing there watching the world go by and I could see him with the phone in his hand.” 

As the Luas moved through Ranelagh towards Dundrum, and more people got off, he had a better viewpoint: “Further out, I noticed the phone was down lower, just below waist level.” 

At first, he thought, maybe, the man was watching something on his phone.

“I couldn’t see his face. He was on the far side, opposite me a couple of feet, with his phone down. He was moving around a good bit with the phone down below.” 

His antennae told him something was off: “I just thought ‘something doesn’t look right here'. I suppose alarm bells just went off.” 

But he still didn’t know what was on the phone: “I was trying to get a picture in my head from what he had down there, but I couldn’t.” 

Then, reminiscent of the scene from Agatha Christie’s 4.50 From Paddington, an image was revealed to him: “I couldn’t see until, at one stage, the way the Luas bends and he turned slightly and I could see a reflection in the glass of the Luas door. And from that, I could see the reflection of a woman’s buttocks. She was dressed, but I could see he was filming or taking pictures.” 

With 25 years’ experience as a garda and formerly of the Sex Offender Management and Intelligence Unit (SOMIU), in the National Protective Services Bureau (NPSU), he knew to act: “I knew what he was at. I said to myself ‘I can’t let this go’.” 

He could see the man's face now: “He looked like just an ordinary individual, any office worker, coming from a job. He had a work ID thing around him dangling, but it was turned in.” 

He kept the man under observation until the next stop.

“When we got closer to Balally stop, I went up to him, identified myself and I said ‘can you step off the Luas, I want to have a word with you’.”

Paul Boyle 

As he escorted the man off, he rang Dundrum Garda Station to come down.

“I started to talk to him,” he said. “He wouldn't even speak a word to me. He just totally shut down.” 

He couldn’t help doubt himself: “In your head you question yourself, but you kind of go ‘No, you saw what you saw, keep going and get the assistance down’."

Two uniform guards arrived quickly and Det Sgt Murray filled them in.

Garda Paul Newport tried to talk to the man, but got no reaction.

“I think because he wasn’t reacting that Paul believed he was under the influence of something and arrested him for the purpose of a search and took him to Dundrum Garda Station," Det Sgt Murray said.

Under Section 7 of the Criminal Law Act, he suspected an arrestable offence had occurred and that the phone may contain evidence and it was seized.

The man was Paul Boyle, from Scotland. There was nothing on the garda Pulse system on him.

“He had never interacted with gardaí,” Det Sgt Murray said.

That was December 16, 2019, and the following day as he headed into his own office, in NPSB Domestic Homicide Review, he popped into the Sex Offender Management and Intelligence Unit (SOMIU).

Detective Garda Colm Grogan and Det Gda Stephen Coller had worked for him when he was there.

“Karl came into the office and told us about the incident and that there was something off about him,” said Det Gda Grogan, who spoke to the Irish Examiner along with Det Sgt Murray.

So, Det Gda Grogan, assisted by his colleague, began their work.

The SOMIU is the national unit tasked with supervising people on the Irish Sex Offenders Register, both people convicted in Ireland and those convicted abroad are subject to the Act if they come to Ireland.

Detective Garda Colm Grogan, left and Detective Sergeant Karl Murray of Garda National Protective Services Bureau at Harcourt Luas stop. Picture:  Colin Keegan/Collins Dublin

Det Gda Grogan and his colleague checked the Pulse incident and spoke to the gardaí in Dundrum station. Given his Scottish background, they made contact with police there, through VISOR (Violent and Sexual Offender Register) in the UK.

Sex offender 

Word came back in a few days that Boyle had a conviction, for taking and possessing indecent images of children.

He was convicted in April 2014 and received a community order of three years.

After those three years were up he was free to leave the country and, at some stage, flew to Ireland. Scottish police did not inform Irish police as he was no longer on their Sex Offender Register.

But he was still subject to our register, which for the offence he was convicted of, would keep him on it for five years. He was legally obliged to inform Irish authorities on arrival here, of his name and address, but didn’t.

We looked at the date of conviction, in April 2014, and he was in breach of the Sex Offenders Act.

“So, we did our checks with other agencies, like Social Welfare, to establish when he took up employment in the jurisdiction and we were able to go back as far as 2018.” 

They had to get the original court documents and certified copies of conviction from Scotland.

While Boyle was not breaking the law when Det Sgt Murray came across him on the Luas (his time period on the Irish register ended in April 2019), he could still be prosecuted retrospectively, between 2018 and then.

Boyle pleaded guilty to breaching the act in February 2020.

Det Gda Grogan also went through Mutual Legal Assistance to get a direct point of contact with Scottish police and the offices involved in Boyle’s prosecution.

“We started building a bit of a background and a full profile of Paul himself,” he said.

Phone 

“That’s also when we kind of said: ‘Well, we need to know what was on the phone'.” 

He said the gardaí in Dundrum, operating under Det Sgt Ger White, had gone through the correct procedures for seizing the phone and it had been sent for phone analysis within the division.

“Daniel Cuffe was the guard down in Blackrock and he was the local phone analyst,” Det Gda Grogan said. 

On January 17, 2020, Det Gda Cuffe had everything in an evidence pack – containing two USB keys. He flagged that there were 40,000 images or two folders of 20,000 approximately.

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“The system is searchable,” Det Gda Grogan said. 

“So it separates text messages from photographs from emojis, anything recently deleted, what was on the SD card.” 

It’s up to the investigating garda to view the images. He took sample dates and viewed the images: “You just have to sit down and do it. I was checking for upskirting or worrying behaviour. You look for places, crests on school uniforms, Luas stops, any reference point.” 

He said it became evident he was looking at offences under Section 15 of the Sexual Offences Act 2017, relating to “offensive conduct of a sexual nature”.

At that time, there was no specific offence of  upskirting, which only became an offence in February 2021 under the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act 2020 (also referred to as Coco’s Law).

While many of the images were on a Luas or at Luas stops and steps, some were also of women jogging and in the park.

Girls and colleagues 

“We found out quickly that we had identifiable injured parties,” Det Gda Grogan said, including school girls.

He said they spoke to parents involved, as well as various school principals.

“Obviously, the parents were shocked, and they were angry,” he said.

He said parents made decisions to try and make sure it wouldn’t happen again, which may have included “taking a bit of freedom off them travelling on the Luas”, highlighting the damage Boyle had inflicted.

In addition, the parents felt, that given the age of their children, they didn’t want them to go through the process of being interviewed.

Det Gda Grogan also discovered “a significant amount of the images” were from a workplace.

They knew where Boyle had worked and contacted the HR department.

Det Gda Grogan said: “We did a walk-through outside of office hours. I had seen the images and we had from the HR department the staff that were there. Then, we were able to specifically say: 'Yes, we have this person, this person, this person'.” 

In all, there were 11 identifiable victims, all female adult colleagues of Boyle.

“It was done in a very sensitive manner," Det Gda Grogan said. “We brought them into a room and showed them the images and interviewed them. They were able to say ‘Yeah, that’s me’.

He said they had no idea what Boyle was up to.

I spoke with them regularly over the last two years and it is still very upsetting for them. Look, it was shocking.

He said a 12th person was identified outside the workplace, in another business. 

All 12 women gave statements.

Gardaí now had evidence of a separate offence – harassment under Section 10 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, 1997.

Flash drive 

They had enough justification to seek a search warrant for Boyle’s home, and his workplace.

They arrived at his home, in a large apartment complex in Sandyford, early one morning in January 2021.

They showed him the warrant and sat Boyle down on the couch, taking the backpack he was carrying into work.

“He had a bag in the backpack and inside was a flash drive [external storage device]," Det Gda Grogan said. 

"That became the main exhibit in this whole investigation - where all the evidence was, he was carrying that in a backpack with him. It was a mass amount of information transferred in December [2019]. He wanted to hold on to it”.

Det Sgt Murray added: “He was still hanging on to it – he treasured it.” 

The flash drive was sent to Det Gda Shane Cullen in the Computer Forensics Section of the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau, which has specialist equipment and trained officers to analyse digital devices.

280,000 images 

Of the half a million images on the flash drive, a staggering 278,500 were images and video files of upskirting and harassment in work.

“His flash drive was all very organised and very meticulous and he had the folders labelled by month between June 2018 and January 2020,” Det Gda Grogan said.

Over the 20 months, that would suggest almost 14,000 images, on average, taken a month – or, over the 608 days, around 450 images, on average, per day, every day.

He said Det Gda Cullen was able to date and locate each photo as the data contained GPS location, time and date and the device and model of phone the photo was taken on.

In addition, his computer is able to extract child abuse imagery and located a video file of a very young child being raped.

Det Gda Cullen gave him back these files and Det Sgt Grogan moved all the relevant images together, including the video.

“It was my first time [seeing a video like that],” he said.

That video and other files went to another unit, back in the NPSB – the Online Child Exploitation Unit (OCEU). 

They have a Victim ID unit and they traced the video to a video made in the early 2000s in the US. The child in that – aged eight – had previously been identified and taken to safety by authorities.

Gardaí re-arrested Boyle and members of the OCEU took part. He was released again while all the evidence was gathered by Det Gda Grogan and a file submitted to the DPP.

In March 2021, Boyle appeared in court on a total of 23 charges, including two counts of possession of child pornography [the legal offence for child abuse imagery], 12 counts of harassment, and nine counts of engaging in sexual conduct of an offensive nature.

He was granted bail, despite garda objections. He was unable to take up bail and was remanded in custody, pending trial, scheduled for March 2022.

A month out, they were preparing for trial as there was no word of a plea of guilty. Then word came through that his counsel had contacted the DPP to say a plea would be forthcoming.

Plea 

On 11 March 2022, Boyle, aged 45 and of Sandyford View in south Dublin, pleaded guilty to two charges: Harassment and child pornography.

“I think his own defence was quite overwhelmed with the amount of evidence we had,” said Det Gda Grogan. 

“We had a lot of technical evidence.” 

In addition, Det Gda Grogan's meticulous investigation file also included 12 women “brave enough” to give evidence in court.

“It was very difficult for them because they didn't want anyone to see those images," Det Gda Grogan said. "That was very evident speaking to them, but they made the decision that they were saying ‘No’ to this.

“The DPP mentioned how strong the case was, there was no deviating from the fact that these 12 women were all going to come to court to give evidence, so that made it very difficult for Paul not to plead guilty, or to contest the case.” 

He said it was a “huge relief” for them that they wouldn’t have to give evidence in court.

A psychiatric assessment described Boyle as being of medium risk of reoffending and said he had a “voyeuristic disorder”.

Judge Martin Nolan said Boyle had engaged in an “industrial scale” level of photographing young children and women.

Child rape video 

He said the video, which was 15-minutes long, was extremely explicit and the victim was just eight.

He took a guilty plea into account and a letter Boyle handed to him expressing his remorse and shame.

Judge Nolan sentenced him to three years’ imprisonment for the harassment and a five-year term for the child pornography – to run consecutive (on top of) the other sentence.

He suspended two and a half years and backdated it to when Boyle went into custody, in March 2021.

He ordered Boyle never to contact any of the victims and imposed a two-year post-release supervision.

On the wider lessons of this case, Det Gda Grogan said: “We can only deal with stuff that’s presented to us and in this case, there were a lot of lads on the ball for this investigation and it came together very quickly. But people need to report. I’m not saying it happens all the time. But there is a unit (SOMIU) that will look into it. In this case, we were very fortunate Karl was there.” 

Det Sgt Murray said that if people are suspicious of a person’s behaviour they could note any identifying numbers on a carriage, and the time and location, as there could be CCTV that might assist.

Reflecting, he is still left with the thought of how things could have been very different.

“It was pure chance," he said. "He could have turned the phone the other way and I wouldn’t have seen anything. He would have gone along."

But, it wasn’t just pure chance. Det Sgt Murray knew to be looking.