14-YEAR-OLD ANA WAS STRIPPED AND BEATEN TO DEATH
Seasoned murder detectives horrified at scene of gruesome attack A MURDER investigation has been launched after a 14-year-old girl was found dead having been stripped and ‘severely’ beaten around the head in a derelict farmhouse in west Dublin.
Anastasia Kriegel suffered a ‘violent and gruesome’ attack, and seasoned murder detectives were ‘shocked’ by the bloody scene when she was discovered on the Clonee Road in Lucan at 1pm yesterday.
Senior sources say there are ‘initial indications’ the teenager was sexually assaulted before she was murdered
and gardaí suspect that – due to the severity of her head injuries – a weapon was used. Her clothes were found close to her body.
Anastasia – known as Ana – was brought up in a ‘loving and caring’ family environment and is believed to have been ‘very active’ online.
She was ‘particularly tech-savvy, as most teens are, and much more so than her parents’, senior sources told the Irish Daily Mail.
Ana had a boyfriend, a couple of years her senior, who has spoken to gardaí and is, in no way, considered a suspect.
One line of inquiry is that she may have met her killer after online messaging. However, sources stressed the investigation remains ‘wide open’.
The teenager went missing on Monday evening and the initial medical evidence is that she was murdered the same night. She
‘Drinking den’ for local teens ‘She was quiet and loved dogs’
left her family home in Leixlip, Co. Kildare, at 5pm.
A male friend, around the same age, called to her home and they went to nearby St Catherine’s Park in Lucan to meet a few school friends. Her home is within walking distance of the park.
A source said: ‘This would be a regular enough routine. She would go with her friends to the park and they would hang out, as teenagers do, in a very innocent way. The only thing was that Anastasia never returned home.’
Her parents reported her missing at 8pm on Monday. It is understood her father is a UK national and retired college lecturer. Her mother works in a legal capacity for a semi-state body.
Before contacting gardaí, her parents phoned the group of about four friends that she had been out with. They said they had last seen her at around 5.30pm in the park when they left to go home. Since the discovery of her body, gardaí again interviewed the friends. Sources say all of them are co-operating fully.
Gardaí had been conducting searches since Ana was reported missing on Monday night.
Ana was a first-year student in Confey College in Leixlip.
She was also involved in the performing arts, in Dance LA, a dance academy in Leixlip. She was well-known and liked in the school and community.
Her phone was last ‘pinged’ – or recorded – as being in St Catherine’s Park, where she was last seen with her friends.
The 200-acre site, which was searched by gardaí for three days, stretches from Lucan in Dublin to Leixlip in Co. Kildare and the nearby Clonee area.
The farmhouse where Ana was discovered is a ‘drinking den’ for local teens and is within the vicinity of the park.
It has been set on fire on a number of occasions. The remnants of drink and drug use and graffiti are evident. Several windows are also smashed.
Gardaí held a press conference yesterday after the discovery of the tragic teen’s body.
Superintendent John Gordon, of Lucan Garda station, said: ‘Gardaí today, at approximately 1pm, while conducting a search in relation to a missing person, Anastasia Kriegal, otherwise known as Ana, discovered a body in a disused vacant farmhouse on the Clonee Road in Lucan.’
He said Ana may not have been alone before she went missing and that will form part of the investigation. When asked how the family were dealing with this news, Supt Gordon said they were ‘extremely distressed’ and they were asking for privacy at this time.
‘They have another child in that house and so they need to be very careful around that,’ he said.
Gardaí said a post-mortem would be carried out either late last night or early this morning, depending on when the forensics are finished at the scene.
‘We are appealing to the public for their assistance at this time,’ Supt Gordon said.
‘We are appealing to anybody who was here in St Catherine’s Park from 5pm onwards or thereabouts or on the Clonee Road on Monday, May 14, to contact the Garda incident room in Lucan Garda Station,’ he said.
‘We are particularly interested in people who may have been on the Clonee Road, who may have had dash-cam footage or may have just witnessed Ana in the park, or indeed any information they have in relation to this.’
Dash-cameras are the little digital cameras some motorists have on the dashboards of their cars. Some cyclists wear similar cameras on their helmets.
Local councillor Bernard Caldwell for the Celbridge-Leixlip area said that everyone is shocked by what had happened to the teenager. He extended his sympathies to her classmates and the teachers at Confey College and he described her as ‘intelligent’ and ‘pretty’ and said she had been ‘well-liked by everyone’.
A close friend of the family was distraught and said they didn’t know what to say to describe the girl who they had known since she was ‘a tiny tot’.
The friend added: ‘She was quiet, loved dogs and was from a lovely family. She looked older than she was because she was tall. She was really just a big kid.’
Dance LA in Confey, a dance and music theatre school, cancelled all classes yesterday.
Her instructors had taken to Facebook in recent days to appeal for information on her whereabouts.
Just last month Ana took part in a school fashion show in the Springfield hotel in Leixlip.
The show was held to raise money for the school’s fund.
She posed, alongside classmates and teachers, in a full-length gold patterned dress and long earrings.