Pictured: Ashling Murphy’s killer Jozef Puska moments earlier than he struck – because it’s revealed he had stalked as much as 4 girls on day he murdered major trainer and was looking relationship web sites

The ‘monster’ who murdered Ashling Murphy was filmed stalking as much as 4 girls – together with one other trainer – within the hours and minutes earlier than he brutally stabbed his sufferer 11 instances within the neck.

Jozef Puska, 33, additionally vowed to kill himself because the profitable prosecution case in opposition to him closed however he was thwarted by jail officers, it may be reported for the primary time as we speak.

His trial was delayed after he threatened to take his personal life from behind bars in Dublin’s Cloverhill Jail final Tuesday – a truth hidden from the jury who convicted him yesterday after lower than two hours of deliberations. 

CCTV of Puska confirmed him biking by Tullamore, stalking girls and taking part in with one thing in his pocket, on the afternoon of January 12, 2022. The timings of the footage, and knowledge from Ashling’s Fitbit smartwatch, helped positioned him on the Grand Canal in Tullamore when she was murdered.

It additionally emerged that Puska, a married father-of-five, was a member of a number of relationship websites. Police sources in Eire know that he was making an attempt to fulfill girls earlier than he murdered major faculty trainer Ashling, who had gone for a run when he attacked her.

Initially from Lucivna, a tiny village of fewer than 1,000 residents, within the north of Slovakia near its ski resorts, killer Puska is of Romany gipsy descent. After spending time in Prague within the Czech Republic, he arrived in Dublin in 2013, aged 23, along with his spouse, two younger kids and different members of his prolonged household, who’ve been in court docket to assist him in the course of the trial. Puska and his spouse would go on to have two extra kids in County Offaly.

Though Puska had beforehand been employed on constructing websites, the household lived off the £166-a-week incapacity profit he acquired after slipping a disc in his again in a piece accident.

He informed police that he took painkillers and struggled as a result of he may now not play sport or run. However he was in a position to cycle round stalking girls on the day he killed poor Ashling. 

Puska had no earlier convictions in Eire. Police have unearthed no proof of hyperlinks to different crimes.

However it’s reported that he has one brush with the regulation in Slovakia and was handled by police for having underage intercourse, whereas he was additionally underage. The age of consent in Slovakia is 15.

Ashling’s mom Kathleen held a framed image of her daughter aloft and known as her killer a ‘monster’ after Puska was discovered responsible on the Legal Courts of Justice in Dublin yesterday. He shall be sentenced to life in jail subsequent Friday. 

Decide Mr Justice Tony Hunt stated Puska would face his ‘day of reckoning’ for stabbing 23-year-old trainer Ms Murphy to demise in a case that shocked Eire and the world.    

Ashling suffered 11 stab wounds by the hands of Puska, 33, who had left his dwelling in Mucklagh, County Offaly. However the court docket heard that he had adopted different girls – together with one who could have been the final particular person to see Ashling alive. 

One girl he adopted was unaware he was there – and he was taking part in with one thing in his pocket.

CCTV tracked the unemployed Slovakian on his three mile bike trip into Tullamore on January 12, 2022.

At 1.38pm, on the Church Street, he started to cycle slowly behind a girl in a maroon jacket, Beata Borowska. She was totally unaware of his presence, as he pedalled behind her alongside a collection of pavements and throughout a parking lot, one hand in his pocket, peeling away solely when she entered the Tesco retailer six minutes later.

After she went into the shop, Puska traversed the automobile park and made his approach again in direction of Tullamore. Detective Garda David Harney stated: ‘You see the bike pulling up. He’s reaching into his pockets with each arms… there seems to be one thing in his arms. That merchandise is in the end returned to his pocket.’

At 1.57pm, he was once more apparently stalking a girl, this time major faculty trainer Anne-Marie Kelly. Additional clips confirmed Puska biking behind Ms Kelly as she walked swiftly along with her canine alongside the trail in direction of Tullamore. Ms Kelly informed the court docket that she was effectively conscious of his presence and was scared by him.

‘I felt somebody was very shut and I rotated and appeared and there was a person biking a motorcycle very slowly behind me, and he was staring straight at me,’ she stated.

She stated he continued staring in an intimidating approach as he lastly handed and cycled away. She stated he had distinctive black eyes and eyebrows and appeared international.

Ms Kelly stated she continued her stroll in direction of the canal and that she had gone to the aspect of the canal which didn’t have a tarmac path, solely to come across Puska once more. ‘I let my canine off the lead and I seen him standing to the left of me,’ she stated. ‘I made a rapid resolution, and doubtless a silly one, that he wouldn’t be capable to deliver his bike down the grassy a part of the canal. I used to be nervous of the person, however I made a decision it was too mucky to cycle the bike down that aspect. I continued to stroll down the grassy aspect of the canal and I seen he was behind me, strolling fairly quick then with the bike.’

She stated he was just a few metres behind her and had closed the hole to only one foot by the point they handed a person she took to be a farmer, with a van. She stated she greeted the farmer and stopped 50m additional on, both to tie her shoelace or name her canine.

Puska handed her after which walked very, very slowly forward, she stated. ‘I needed to decide,’ she continued. ‘I didn’t need any extra awkward encounters. ’

She ran on to Digby Bridge. ‘I didn’t see him after that,’ she stated.

Ms Kelly grew to become visibly emotional as she described how the final particular person she noticed and chatted to whereas she was strolling dwelling was a younger, ‘very pleasant’ girl in her 20s, who matched Ashling Murphy’s description.

‘I noticed a beautiful, pleasant lady, youthful than me, in a peachy colored hat. I stated “Hey” and he or she requested me about my canine,’ she stated. That was the final particular person I met’.

Due to the Fitbit smartwatch Ashling was sporting, detectives have been in a position to pinpoint the precise timing of the vivacious younger girl’s final moments, as she lay bleeding to demise on a canal towpath after being stabbed 11 instances within the neck.

At 3.21pm her heartbeat out of the blue dropped. By 3.31pm it had stopped altogether. She died alone in a muddy, bramble-strewn ditch earlier than paramedics may arrive to avoid wasting her.

Puska, 33, an unemployed Slovakian immigrant and father of 5, bowed his head and appeared distressed when the responsible verdict was translated to him by an interpreter. 

He positioned his arms in entrance of his face in a praying place, wanting in direction of his household in the back of the court docket, earlier than he was taken away by jail officers.

Decide Hunt informed the courtroom: ‘There’s evil on this room, surely.’ To the jury, he added: ‘Fairly actually, you made positive that no person acquired away with homicide’.

Ms Murphy’s sister Amy, brother Cathal and her boyfriend Ryan Casey breathed sighs of aid, and the jurors – a few of whom have been weeping – got a spherical of applause as they left the courtroom.

Exterior the court docket, Ms Murphy’s brother and boyfriend stated she was ‘stolen’ from them by a ‘vicious monster’ who must not ever be allowed to hurt one other girl.

Cathal Murphy stated: ‘Ashling was topic to incomprehensible violence by a predator who was not identified to her. Whereas we don’t glory in any conviction, we recognise the significance of holding accountable those that would commit such horrible atrocities.

‘The judicial course of can’t deliver our darling Ashling again, nor can it heal our wounds, however we’re relieved that this verdict delivers justice. It’s merely crucial that this vicious monster can by no means hurt one other girl once more.’

He stated the household could be eternally grateful for the jurors’ endurance and resilience throughout a troublesome course of.

Mr Casey added: ‘From day one, the outpouring of affection and assist was felt in abundance.

‘The Irish individuals, each at a nationwide and worldwide stage, have stood in solidarity with our household in mourning the lack of our stunning and proficient Ashling, and to sentence the gender-based brutality with visceral revulsion.

‘Ashling was a vibrant, clever and extremely motivated younger girl, who embodied so many nice traits and qualities of the Irish individuals and its communities.

‘Her life had a big impact on so lots of these round her, and he or she was the epitome of an ideal function mannequin for each little lady to look as much as and try to be.’

Puska’s household appeared upset and indignant on the verdict. His father spoke loudly in Slovakian, whereas an aged girl held up a small cross and shook it at individuals, saying: ‘Everybody on this room, Jesus.’

Decide Hunt stated he’ll sentence Puska on November 17.

Puska had denied killing Ms Murphy as she walked alongside the Grand Canal in Tullamore, County Offaly, on January 12 final 12 months. 

He informed the court docket that he was stabbed by a masked stranger, who then turned his knife on Ms Murphy when she walked previous on the towpath. Police and a translator informed the court docket that Puska confessed to killing Ms Murphy whereas he was in hospital. 

‘I did it. I murdered. I’m the assassin,’ he stated, earlier than saying that he was sorry, and had not supposed to.

Eire’s justice minister Helen McEntee paid tribute to Ms Murphy’s household.

She stated: ‘None of us can comprehend the grief and loss they carry day by day. Their stunning daughter, sister and good friend, a younger girl with a lot to supply the world, was taken from them.

‘Ashling’s homicide shocked us all. It moved us to motion, demanding an finish to violence in opposition to girls.’

Ladies’s Support additionally welcomed Puska’s conviction, saying the killing ‘despatched a shockwave’ by communities in Eire. 

‘That this might occur tapped right into a visceral feeling that so many women and girls are socialised to really feel – that the danger of male violence is in every single place. That nowhere is protected.

‘The homicide of Ashling Murphy was a stunning instance of risks posed to girls and the case put a highlight on the inherent danger of male violence in society.

‘Each girl ought to have the precise to be protected, each in their very own houses and of their communities.’

Decide Hunt thanked the jury for his or her service to the group.

He stated that regardless of his a few years within the courts, he had not discovered the case straightforward to take heed to, though legally he described it as an ‘totally easy’ matter.

‘Thanks on your exhausting work on this troublesome and upsetting case,’ he stated.

The choose exempted the jurors from additional court docket duties for 20 years.

Ashling Murphy achieved a lot in her 23 brief years. Think about what she would have achieved if she hadn’t run in to that monster

Ten minutes was all it took for Ashling Murphy’s life to ebb away. Ten minutes to rob the 23-year-old major faculty trainer of her future and alter the lives of her mother and father, siblings and boyfriend eternally.

Due to the Fitbit smartwatch she was sporting, detectives have been in a position to pinpoint the precise timing of the vivacious younger girl’s final moments, as she lay bleeding to demise on a canal towpath after being stabbed 11 instances within the neck.

At 3.21pm her heartbeat out of the blue dropped. By 3.31pm it had stopped altogether. She died alone in a muddy, bramble-strewn ditch earlier than paramedics may arrive to avoid wasting her.

Ashling’s mindless and brutal homicide despatched shockwaves, not solely by the small city of Tullamore, 60 miles west of Dublin, the place she was killed, however throughout Eire and past.

Her mom Kathleen stated: ‘She had a lot to provide to the world.’ After her demise on January 12, 2022, the six-year-old pupils she taught at Naomh Colmcille Main Faculty in close by Durrow, County Offaly, made a shrine to her of their classroom.

It included a cross, a candle and handmade playing cards with drawings, prayers and heartbreaking tributes saying: ‘I like you Miss Murphy.’

Ashling’s class of 28 kids additionally shaped a guard of honour at her funeral, every holding {a photograph} of their trainer on her commencement day, together with a single purple rose.

These closest to her have been naturally devastated, however lots of of hundreds of others additionally attended vigils in Dublin, Limerick, Cork and different cities throughout the nation in solidarity in opposition to such a barbaric crime.

Coming within the wake of the brutal killings of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa in London in 2021, campaigners stated it was a ‘watershed second’ for violence in opposition to girls.

They lamented how a younger trainer, simply ten months into her profession, who dreamed of constructing her own residence along with her boyfriend of six years, Ryan Casey, 25, could possibly be so brutally murdered in broad daylight whereas exercising on a busy canal towpath.

Poignantly, the stretch the place Ashling was killed is called Fiona’s Method after one other younger girl, Fiona Pender, who was 25 and pregnant along with her first baby when she went lacking from Tullamore in 1996 and is presumed murdered.

Yesterday, Ashling’s attacker, Jozef Puska, an unemployed Slovakian immigrant who had come to Eire along with his household a decade earlier, was convicted of her homicide at Dublin Central Legal Court docket. The jury of 9 males and three girls took simply over two hours to succeed in their unanimous verdict.

Talking after the decision yesterday, Ashling’s brother Cathal stated his youthful sister had been subjected to ‘incomprehensible’ violence by Puska, whom he described as a ‘vicious monster’.

‘The judicial course of can’t deliver our darling Ashling again, nor can it heal our wounds, however we’re relieved that this verdict delivers justice,’ he stated. ‘It’s merely crucial that this vicious monster can by no means hurt one other girl once more.’

Mr Casey, who beforehand described Ashling as his ‘soulmate,’ stated: ‘Ashling was a vibrant, clever and extremely motivated girl. Her life had a big impact on so lots of these round her and he or she was the epitome of an ideal function mannequin for each little lady to look as much as and try to be.

‘She was not solely an integral a part of our household, however she was additionally an enormous shining mild in our group.’

Puska, 33, is more likely to obtain a hefty minimal time period when he’s sentenced to life in jail subsequent week. Trial choose Mr Justice Tony Hunt, who described Puska as ‘evil’, is unlikely to look favourably on the truth that he refused to confess what he had achieved. By pleading not responsible, he compelled Ashling’s family members to take heed to harrowing particulars of how she fought in useless to remain alive.

How she was unable to scream for assist as a result of she had been stabbed within the neck so violently and repeatedly that her voice field was sliced in two, and the way witnesses noticed her desperately ‘scissor-kicking’ her legs to attempt to break away as he pinned her down.

Not solely was Puska’s DNA later found underneath Ashling’s fingernails and his fingerprints discovered on a mountain bike deserted on the scene, when detectives questioned him two days later he informed them: ‘I did it. I murdered. I’m the assassin.’

‘When she handed [me] I lower her, I lower her neck,’ he informed detectives from the Gardai. ‘She panic, I panic . . . after which it occurred.’

Puska later retracted this confession, suggesting it had been made when he was drugged up on painkillers in hospital, after inflicting stab wounds on himself. As an alternative he concocted a ‘contemptible’ tissue of lies, claiming a wierd man had stabbed him within the abdomen on the towpath earlier than knifing Ashling.

Witnesses noticed him crouching over her as a result of he was being a Good Samaritan, making an attempt to assist stem the bleeding when the thriller attacker ran away, he claimed.

Yesterday, the jury concluded that there was no thriller man and Puska was, actually, the stranger answerable for Ashling’s horrible homicide.

So precisely how did Ashling’s world come to collide so devastatingly with Puska’s on that chilly however sunny afternoon?

The court docket was informed that January 12 was a Wednesday and Ashling had stated goodbye to her mother and father, with whom she nonetheless lived, like she did day by day earlier than she left for work. ‘The very last thing she’d say within the morning going out was ‘Mam, I like you,’ ‘ Mrs Murphy stated after her demise.

The youngest of Mrs Murphy and her husband Ray’s three kids, Ashling had certified the earlier 12 months and started her first educating job at a major faculty in Durrow, in March 2021. 

On the day of her homicide, she completed classes simply after 2.30pm and drove her little purple Seat automobile the 37 miles in direction of her dwelling, within the small village of Blue Ball, stopping off in Tullamore to go energy strolling beside the Grand Canal, a well-liked route for joggers and canine walkers.

The jury was informed she had been given the Fitbit watch the earlier November and made it her New 12 months’s decision to train day by day after work.

In addition to being an award-winning fiddle participant, who performed with the Irish nationwide people orchestra, Ashling was a proficient sportswoman and represented her native membership within the Irish ballsport of camogie.

Knowledge from the Fitbit gadget later revealed that she had walked briskly alongside the towpath for a mile when she determined to show again. However quickly after this she encountered Puska.

Unbeknown to Ashling, the daddy of 5 had spent the earlier 4 hours touring Tullamore on his mountain bike in search of a sufferer.

Detectives trawled greater than 25,000 hours of CCTV and caught him driving carefully behind or ‘stalking’ at the very least two girls, the prosecution stated. A kind of he adopted by the city and on to the canal towpath, round 90 minutes earlier than attacking Ashling, was one other major faculty trainer named Anne-Marie Kelly.

She informed the jury his behaviour was intimidating and unsettling: ‘I felt somebody was very shut, and I rotated and appeared and there was a person biking a motorcycle very slowly behind me, and he was staring straight at me. I finished to let him move, however he would not move.

‘So I continued to stroll however I felt very uncomfortable. I made a decision that earlier than the trail narrowed I might cease, and simply take a look at my cellphone so he must move me.

‘He did move me and as he handed it was in actually, actually gradual movement.’

After operating away down the towpath, Ms Kelly remembered passing a ‘pretty, pleasant lady’ she later realised was Ashling, who stopped to pet Ms Kelly’s canine, Joey, when he ran as much as her.

Quickly afterwards Puska dragged Ashling into the brambles beside the canal. There, he launched his vicious assault, stabbing her 11 instances on the precise aspect of her neck. He continued even when interrupted by two feminine joggers.

‘He was crouched over holding her down,’ witness Jenna Stack stated. ‘She was kicking so exhausting, like a scissors kick. She was transferring no matter a part of her physique she may to get assist.’ Puska snarled on the pair to ‘go away’ and tried to lunge at them, so, fearing for their very own lives and with out their cell phones, the ladies ran to summon assist.

‘I believed the man was going to rape her,’ Ms Stack stated, though detectives discovered no proof to counsel Ashling had been sexually assaulted.

The joggers alerted two employees who have been tidying the towpath, and so they in flip requested a passing bicycle owner to trip again to analyze. He found Ashling alone, barely alive, and dialled 999. Garda Tom Dunne, who was first on the scene, informed the court docket there was ‘an terrible lot of blood’. He tried to provide her CPR however by the point paramedics arrived she was already useless.

Because the pathologist outlined Ashling’s horrible accidents and her bloodstained possessions, together with her tracksuit, pale pink bobble hat and gold necklace which spelt her title, have been proven to the jury, Mr and Mrs Murphy brazenly wept within the public gallery.

Having simply brutally killed Ashling, Puska then set about protecting his tracks and spinning an online of lies.

He had left his bicycle on the scene, so lay in a ditch in a close-by discipline for a number of hours till it went darkish, earlier than going to see a good friend, whom he persuaded to take him the 4 miles dwelling to Mucklagh, the place he lived along with his spouse and kids.

That night he shaved off his beard, organized for his garments to be burned and acquired a elevate to his mother and father’ flat in Dublin.

Sooner or later he additionally stabbed himself within the abdomen, as a result of the next day he started vomiting blood and was taken by ambulance to the town’s St James’s Hospital, the place he had keyhole surgical procedure for 3 knife wounds. 

He lied to medical doctors, saying the self-inflicted accidents had been brought on when he was stabbed by two random males in broad daylight the day before today.

They known as the Gardai to analyze, however when officers started questioning Puska, who had seen scratches on his arms and brow, they have been instantly suspicious.

Detective Inspector Shane McCartan stated: ‘It simply didn’t add up… We got here to the conclusion that the data we have been in possession of could also be of fabric help to the investigation of the homicide of Ashling Murphy.’

Two detectives from Tullamore have been dispatched to interview Puska. However medical doctors refused to permit them to talk to their affected person that night and so they needed to wait till the next day – January 14 – to ask him about Ashling. It was then that Puska made his bombshell confession. However 4 days later, after he was discharged and formally arrested, he modified his tune.

Puska invoked his proper to silence, or stated he could not bear in mind what occurred on the day of the homicide.

Initially from Lucivna, a tiny village of fewer than 1,000 residents, within the north of Slovakia, Puska is of Romany gipsy descent.

After spending time in Prague within the Czech Republic, he arrived in Dublin in 2013, aged 23, along with his spouse, two younger kids and different members of his prolonged household.

The couple had one other baby shortly earlier than transferring to Tullamore two years later, the place they lived with Puska’s older brother. They’d two extra kids and shortly earlier than the homicide managed to safe a five-bedroom council home in close by Mucklagh.

However neighbours stated the couple ‘had no respect’ for his or her dwelling, which was located in a well-kept cul-de-sac.

One aged resident informed the Mail: ‘I might be very comfortable if I by no means hear that b******’s title ever once more.

‘I bear in mind him being right here. I bear in mind the mess that was within the entrance of the home, baggage of garbage in every single place.

‘There have been at all times individuals coming and going in any respect hours. There was noise. There have been issues with rats and every part.’

Though Puska had beforehand been employed on constructing websites, the household lived off the £166-a-week incapacity profit he acquired after slipping a disc in his again in a piece accident.

Puska informed the jury he spent his days serving to his spouse with the home tasks and taking the youngsters to high school.

A supply informed the Mail that Puska, who insisted on an interpreter to assist him perceive the court docket proceedings, appeared to have a greater grasp of English when arguing for a much bigger dwelling than the ‘damaged understanding’ he displayed on the trial.

One native who knew Puska in Lucivna informed reporters they could not imagine he was accountable.

‘He’s from a good household,’ the native stated. ‘He has three brothers and all of them, together with their mother and father, progressively moved to Eire. They went there for a greater life, as a result of in our nation it isn’t doable to reside decently when you do not have a job.’

It’s not thought Puska has any earlier legal convictions, however one other former classmate from Slovakia claimed he was ‘no harmless.’

‘He was a weirdo and aggressive,’ the varsity good friend stated. ‘He was usually preventing, his behaviour was unhealthy.’

Sources informed the Mail that Puska, who wears his shoulder-length hair slicked again in a ponytail, tried to cheat Ashling’s household of justice halfway by the trial by making an attempt to kill himself in jail, the evening earlier than taking the stand in his defence.

He failed to point out any regret all through, showing cocky and generally winking or nodding at his household from the dock.

Earlier this 12 months, on the anniversary of Ashling’s demise, a memorial fund was arrange in her title. Due to her love of Irish music – she taught youthful musicians in her spare time – the fund goals to boost cash to advertise Irish music, dance and tradition amongst younger individuals. A scholarship has already been arrange on the faculty the place she educated to turn into a trainer.

Her father Ray stated ‘considered one of his greatest losses’ was listening to her educate her college students on Saturday afternoons. ‘I might take heed to them for half an hour whereas I used to be ingesting my cup of tea. It was pretty [but] that is gone now,’ he stated.

‘Life will go on and we are going to have fun all the nice issues, however she had a lot extra to provide to everybody. What she did in her brief 23 years, had she had one other 23 years, what would she have achieved? That is our horrible loss.’