The next time Ashling’s family saw the pink bobble hat and camogie top that she wore walking was in court, bloodsoaked in an evidence bag
The sight of their tragic daughter grabbed from grainy CCTV footage made her parents hang their heads and cry audibly
IT was a New Year promise that brought Ashling Murphy to the banks of the Grand Canal in Tullamore on the afternoon of January 12 last year.
Like many others, the 23-year-old newly qualified teacher had decided on a healthy start to the year, and to exercise every day after work.
She had just started back at her job in Scoil Naomh Colmcille in Durrow, Co. Offaly, where she began teaching first class the previous September, after the Christmas break.
It was her first job after graduating from Mary Immaculate Teacher Training College in Limerick. She loved her young six, and seven-year-old pupils, and they loved her. On the last school day before the Christmas break, her desk was filled with gifts that she took home to show her parents.
She believed passionately in education and, after teaching all week, she taught traditional music to young children at the weekends. Her father Ray, an accomplished banjo player – who previously played with the Fureys – had taught her to play.
It was a little after 2.30pm when Ashling closed the door behind her at the national school and made her way across the school car park to her small red 05-registered Seat car.
Driving in the bright crisp winter sunshine, she was in Tullamore in a little under ten minutes, and she parked up at the Daingean Road car park beside the Grand Canal.
At 3.31pm her fitbit said her heart had stopped
The canal was busy with walkers, cyclists and joggers, eager to get out while they could on the dry day which followed a stormy wet spell.
Nearby, a grandmother pushed a little boy on a tricycle he had been given for Christmas.
At 2.50pm, Ashling began walking, her steps recorded on the Fitbit device she bought herself the previous November – and also on CCTV, which would be shown several times during the murder trial of Jozef Puska.
The sight of a still photograph grabbed from this footage caused her father – and mother Kathleen – to hang their heads and cry audibly.
Despite the black and white grainy image, it somehow still manages to capture Ashling’s youth and vitality; a woman with her whole life ahead of her, striding confidently, never imagining for a second what horror is about to befall her.
She was wearing her bright blue Nike runners, dark leggings, a tight navy jacket zipped up to her neck against the cold. Underneath, she wore her white camogie sports top from her local Kilcormac Killoughey GAA Club. Her pink bobble hat was pulled own tight over her ears.
The next time her family saw these clothes was when they were presented in court, blood soaked and in clear plastic evidence bags.
By the time she set off on her walk, Jozef Puska, since described by people who knew him as ‘a loner’, ‘weird ‘ and ‘aggressive’, was already on the canal. The unemployed Slovakian father-of-five, who had been in Ireland since 2013 with his wife Lucia, was living in a five-bedroomed house in the village of Mucklagh, eight kilometres from Tullamore.
He was off work due to a splipped disc in his back. During the day, he cycled around the town on his bike, sometimes spending time in Mucklagh’s gaming arcade.
Other times, he was browsing eastern European dating-websites that had followings in Ireland.
Despite having a wife and five children, he posted his profile looking to meet women.
We now know he had been stalking at least two other women since leaving his home before midday, on the day he killed Ashling.
One of those women, Anne Marie Kelly, who was out walking her dog, said he was just one yard behind her on the Grand Canal
Earlier that day, he followed her in Tullamore town, cycling slowly on his distinctive dark grey and green Falcon Storm bicycle, starring at her, with one hand in his pocket.
She got away after she became aware of him behind her. Another woman, Beata Borowska, a Polish national who’d been living in Tullamore for some time, also unwittingly gave him the slip.
The young blonde woman wasn’t even aware Puska was following her, when she went into Tesco to do her grocery shop. The murderer initially waited for her outside, but he gave up after a short while and went on after Ms Kelly, his next target.
Poignantly during the trial, Ms Kelly described the last person she met on the canal that day as she finished her walk with her dog Joey.
‘I saw a lovely, friendly girl, younger than me, in a peachycoloured hat.
‘I said: “Hello” and she asked me about my dog,’ Ms Kelly told the murder trial.
‘That was the last person I met… she was probably in her mid-20s, very friendly and smiley and chatty. She asked what breed he was – my dog had gone running up to her and she was petting him for a few minutes.’
After the brief exchange, Ashling Murphy continued to walk east along the Grand Canal before reaching Digby Bridge and turning back.
At 3.20pm she was exactly 3km into her brisk walk.
Seconds later, Puska struck. He pulled Ashling into a ditch, slit her throat and stabbed her 11 more times in the right side of her neck.
At 3.21pm, the GPS locator on Ashling’s phone began to spin ‘violently and erratically’ and her heart rate dipped alarmingly.
With her voice box severed, Ashling could not cry for help, not even when two women came upon Puksa killing her. They were standing just metres from Ashling as she fought for her life.
Jenna Stack and Aoife Marron gave emotional and dramatic testimony of having to flee the scene for help because neither had a phone on them as they were out for a run.
Just five minutes later, one of the people they managed to flag down, a cyclist called Enda Molloy, put a call into the public office of Tullamore Garda Station.
Garda Tom Dunne took the call. Later, giving evidence in the trail, Garda Dunne said Molloy was distressed and wasn’t making much sense, but he did manage to tell him: ‘There’s a body in the ditch.’
Gardaí were at the scene within minutes of the call.
They attempted CPR on Ashling, but it was too late.
At 3.31pm her Fitbit recorded her heartbeat had stopped.
The garda investigation immediately swung into action, and within an hour, an eastern European male who’d also been on the canal that day, was arrested.
It was the wrong man, but the arrest may have aided Puska, who was able to sneak through the town that night back to his home at Mucklagh, before leaving for Dublin in the early hours of the morning.
One witness, Roy Jennings, a popular presenter on Midlands Radio, passed Puska as he crept through
the town in the shadows that night. He initially thought he may have been the murderer, but then dismissed the idea as the ‘gardaí had someone in custody’.
But when DNA evidence ruled out the first suspect and he was released at 10.30pm the following evening, police attention came to focus more sharply on a man who had arrived by ambulance at St James’ Hospital, 100km away in Dublin, claiming to have been the victim of a stabbing in Blanchardstown, west Dublin.
Crucially, he told officers he had come from Tullamore the previous day. The connection was quickly made.
Gardaí in Blanchardstown contacted their colleagues at the incident room in Tullamore and two detectives were dispatched to St James’ Hospital to interview the suspect. Within 24 hours, a crying and self-pitying Puska had confessed the murder.
Through a Slovak translator, who was on loudspeaker on a detective’s phone, Puska said he wanted to make a statement.
‘I did it. I murdered. I am the murderer,’ he said, before adding: ‘I’m sorry, I regret it. I did not do it intentionally.’
Minutes later, he told Detective Garda Fergus Hogan how he had met ‘a girl he had never seen,’ before saying: ‘I told her go, I won’t hurt you.’
He put his finger to his lips to demonstrate how he told Ashling to be quiet, and said: ‘When she passed I cut her. I cut her neck. She panic, I panic, and then it happened.
Gardaí had to wait another four days before Puska was discharged from the hospital.
They arrested Puska and brought him to Tullamore Garda Station on Tuesday, January 18, the same day that Ashling’s funeral took place in the town.
In five interviews that were carried out over two days, Puska insisted he could not remember his confession and invoked his right to silence.
By the time he was eventually charged with murder and brought to Tullamore District Court on December 19, a large crowd had gathered outside the courtroom.
Despite the efforts of gardaí, who formed a human chain around Puska as he was transferred from a garda van to the courtroom, a man managed to break the chain and shove the accused.
Gardaí managed to bundle Puska into the van, which took off with its back doors still open in a scene resembling a Hollywood movie.
During the trial, defence counsel Michael Bowman put it to another Slovakian man, a friend of Puska’s, that the atmosphere in Tullamore was ugly.
‘It was more than that,’ replied Rostislav Pokuta who was not accused of any wrongdoing.
After Ashling’s funeral, there was a massive outpouring of grief for the murdered schoolteacher, which spread from her home town to all corners of the country and beyond – to the UK, the US and Australia.
Makeshift shrines sprung up and prayers were offered as vigils took place in towns and cities across the country. A hashtag – #She was just going for a run – went viral.
On the day she was buried, President Michael D Higgins and then Taoiseach Micheál Martin attended the church at Blue Ball outside Tullamore, where Ashling was born and raised and continued to live in the family home until her brutal murder.
Outside the church, pupils from Social Naomh Colmcille formed a guard of honour.
A charity was launched in her name and a memorial bench was placed on the spot where she was killed.
At times, the attention from the public and the media was overwhelming for the Murphy family and her Ashling’s devastated boyfriend, Ryan Casey.
A friend told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘They had to bring the child [Ashling] home at midnight’ for her wake.
‘They brought her at that time because of all the crowds.
‘They are just a very normal family and the nicest people you could meet, very affable ordinary people with a small holding.
‘Both parents work, all the children were educated to a good standard. How could anyone see something like this coming?’ the friend added.
Ashling’s heartbroken parents, Ray and Kathleen, her siblings Cathal and Amy, boyfriend Ryan Casey, along with extended family and friends, attended the trial.
They wrapped arms around each other and comforted one another when the evidence became at time almost unbearable to hear.
And although they maintained a dignified presence throughout, at times their grief was simply too much and they broke down.
Sometimes Ashling’s mother had to leave the courtroom.
At one point, Justice Tony Hunt was moved to gently remind the prosecution barrister, Anne Marie Lawlor, there could be no outbursts in the courtroom for fear it might provide grounds for a later appeal by Puska’s defence team.
All the while, Puska sat in the dock beside his translator, his eyes frequently swivelling towards the back of the courtroom where members of his family, including his wife, mother and father, and brothers and extended family, sat day after day.
Every day, he would smile and wink at them, sometimes even when the court was sitting, seemingly oblivious to the solemnity of the evidence being heard.
But sometimes the mask would skip. At one point, when Jenna Stack was giving evidence, he gritted his teeth and shouted at her, shaking his head emphatically.
By the time he finally took the stand in his own defence on Friday, November 3, his demeanour was one of arrogance.
He betrayed no nerves and sat back, addressing the court confidently, at one point becoming impatient with his female interpreter, who stumbled over his words.
Two days earlier, he made a ‘half hearted’ attempt on his own life at Cloverhill Prison, where he is currently on remand.
Prison sources had described Puska’s apparent suicide attempt as a delaying tactic, to buy himself more time.
For much of the trial, Ryan Casey, an engineer by profession, stared at Puska.
But Puska made sure never to meet his victim’s boyfriend’s gaze.
When the guilty verdict was read just after 2pm on Friday, Puska bowed his head and then buried his face in his hands.
Judge Tony Hunt told the court there was ‘evil in the room’, and the jury were given a round of applause by the extended Murphy clan as they left the box.
Judge Hunt said there was ‘evil in the room’
Ashling’s mum repeated “monster, monster”
Ashling’s mother held up a large framed picture of her daughter in the direction of Puska and said: ‘Monster, monster.’
Earlier in the day, Ashling’s brother Cathal and boyfriend Ryan, practised the speech they wanted to give on the steps of the courtroom.
But after the verdict, gardaí spoke to them and urged them not to speak to the media until after Puska’s sentencing next Friday.
Nonetheless, they emerged from the courtroom around two hours later to face a bank of cameras, expressing their thanks and satisfaction that the ‘monster’ Jozef Puska had received justice.
Cathal said: ‘Ashling was subjected to incomprehensible violence by a predator who was not known to her. It is simply imperative that this vicious monster will never harm another woman again.’
Then they were gone, back on the bus that had ferried them to and from Tullamore for every day of the gruelling trial.
A family friend told the MoS the family would probably stop at a pub in Offaly on the way home: ‘But it’s not a celebration. It’s just some relief. The road ahead is still very long. It’s unending really.’