Murphy smirked and remained silent when I confronted him

LARRY MURPHY has never spoken of his horrific crime or offered any explanation for his motivation.

Nor has he tried to deny any involvement in Deirdre Jacob’s disappearance.

And I should know, because I put those questions to Murphy on a number of occasions over a two-year period when, as part of an investigation for the Irish Independent, I tracked him across Europe.

Having served his full sentence – 10 years of a 15-year term – Murphy left the country and began moving around Europe where, after a period, the police lost track of him.

Then in May 2011, while working as a labourer in Barcelona, his passport was stolen and he was forced back into the open.

He returned to Dublin for a replacement passport and I, along with a news team, tried to interview him. But he smirked and remained silent as he walked to a waiting car.

A few weeks later he left the country on a ferry for Cherbourg and from there travelled to Paris where he bought a ticket to Barcelona. After that he disappeared again.

In the summer of 2012, we managed to track Murphy to an address in Amsterdam where he was living and working for a courier company.

The sexual predator was living anonymously in a residential area where there were no Irish citizens and he rarely socialised.

He appeared to have just one constant companion, a man who he worked and socialised with. At the weekend, they would spend days indoors, emerging only to buy food in a corner shop.

But then our enquiries turned up something sinister about the company Murphy was choosing to keep.

We revealed that Murphy’s friend had been identified as a Dublin man convicted of the rape of two women in 2001. During the attack, which security sources described as “absolutely horrific”, the friend held the two women at knife point in their apartment and raped them.

Like Murphy, the criminal offered no explanation and pleaded guilty to four counts of rape and was jailed for 10 years. He was the only person Murphy befriended on the inside and when the rapist was released, it was Murphy who helped him get a job in Amsterdam. When we confronted Larry Murphy at the time he seemed shocked to have been found.

But instead of making a comment he sprinted down the street.

Following the publication of our story, Murphy and his friend went their separate ways with Murphy ending up for a period in London.

His friend was subsequently arrested in Belfast on foot of a European arrest warrant issued on behalf of gardaí in connection with breaches of the sex offenders register.

Enquiries turned up something sinister about the company Murphy was choosing to keep