LARRY Murphy will be 45 when he is released from jail, still fit and healthy and, gardai believe, still the biggest single threat to the lives and safety of young women in Ireland.

In prison since his arrest the day after he kidnapped, repeatedly raped and attempted to murder a young Carlow woman, he has never shown any remorse or made any sttempt to seek counselling or any professional help.

He is an absolute and total loner. During his brief court appearance, when he pleaded guilty to rape and abduction charges, Murphy sat utterly impassive, never averting his gaze straight ahead at the court clerk's desk.

Some of those present in the courtroom who watched Murphy later said that he had never blinked during the two-hour hearing. When Judge Paul Carney sentenced him to 14 years, taking into account Murphy's guilty plea (which spared his victim a harrowing cross examination in the witness box), the rapist made no reaction.

His stare only broke when a prison officer took his arm to lead him down to the cells. He made no eye contact with any one in the court room.

His victim, an attractive Carlow woman in her mid-20s, was still quaking as Murphy was led away. Judge Carney asked twice if she was prepared to give evidence. Twice she said that she was unable to. A description of what happened the young woman was read out by prosecuting counsel.

She had closed her shop shortly after 8pm, with her takings of around €700, and had crossed to the secluded car park where she parked her car every day.

As she approached the car she noticed a man who appeared to be searching for something on the ground. As she opened the car door he pounced, shouting: "Give me the money." He then struck her on the face, fracturing her nose, and she fell backwards into the car.

He forced her into the footwell of the passenger side and told her to take off her bra. She was stunned and confused and did as he said. He tied her hands with the bra and ordered her to take off her shoes. As she was unable to, he tore them off her.

He drove her car to another darkened laneway where he had parked his Fiat Uno and forced her to crouch in the passenger footwell. He drove the car out of the town 13km to a spot between Moone and Beaconstown. There he stripped off her clothes and then his own and raped her.

Afterwards he put on his own clothes and told her to do likewise, again tying her hands with the bra. He spoke to her at this point, telling her he was married and even naming his two daughters. He told her he was taking her back to Carlow to set her free.

Murphy felt comfortable identifying himself in this way because he fully intended the young woman would not be alive to testify against him.

He then forced her into the boot and drove another 25km or so up into the Wicklow Mountains near Kilranelagh House, only a few miles from his home above Baltinglass.

There, in the darkness of a lane through the forest, he stripped her again and raped her another three times

Finally, he placed a plastic bag over her head and with her hands tied behind her back he began strangling her.

It was at this point in this most isolated spot that two local men, who had been out "lamping" deer, drove down the lane and caught Murphy and his victim in the headlights of their Land Rover. Murphy jumped into the Fiat and drove off.

The two men did their best to calm the woman, who was naked and had run into a barbed wire fence in her terror to escape. They covered her with a coat and brought her to Baltinglass Garda Station from where she was brought to Carlow Hospital.

Murphy drove out of the wood and dumped the car a short distance from his home where his wife and daughters were sleeping and climbed into bed. He knew that he was caught. The two hunters were from the area and they had immediately recognised him.

They told gardai who sent two squad cars to park outside Murphy's house until a warrant could be sworn for his arrest early next morning.

Murphy made no statement to gardai and appeared calm throughout his interrogation, processing and charging. He was placed in the high security wing of Cloverhill Prison and there communicated with neither prison officers nor other prisoners.

His wife visited him a number of times in Cloverhill where he told her he was innocent and would be pleading not guilty. He was lying. He knew that a guilty plea would mean a lighter sentence.

After he pleaded guilty, his wife never visited again. In fact the only people who have visited Murphy since he joined the other sex offenders in Arbour Hill are gardai investigating the unsolved murders of other young women in or around the Wicklow Mountains. Murphy remains the chief suspect in at least three murders: those of Deirdre Jacob, Jo Jo Dullard and Annie McCarrick.

From the moment the two hunters told gardai in Baltinglass they had recognised Murphy on the lane, Murphy was suspected of being a serial killer. At his initial interrogation he was asked if he had anything to say about the disappearances of these young women. He said nothing.

He was quizzed again in prison three years later by a cold case team, under the name Operation Trace, headed by the Garda's top detective, then Chief Supt Tony Hickey. Again he said nothing.

The Operation Trace detectives were able to ascertain from records kept by contractors who had employed Murphy as a self-employed joiner that he had been working in Newbridge, Co Kildare on July 28, 1998, the day that the 18-year-old student, Deirdre Jacob, disappeared. Deirdre was seen only minutes before she disappeared as she walked the short distance from the town's post office to her home.

As can be seen from the way Murphy abducted the woman in Carlow, he was a person capable of waylaying, knocking out and abducting a fit young woman in seconds.

He was a practiced predator. He had been spotted in and around Carlow town for a month before he had abducted his victim. He was stalking her, working out the safest place and time to pounce. He was working in Newbridge for at least a week before Deirdre disappeared.

Murphy fits every profile description of a serial killer. Most serial killers first kill within a short range of their homes, then move outwards.

His home turf was the Wicklow Mountains. He hunted there, mostly on his own, and knew the network of roads on the western flanks of the hills. His work took him around the east Leinster area from Waterford to Dublin.

In the 18 years before Murphy's arrest, nine women disappeared in the Leinster area and are believed murdered. Since his arrest none have disappeared. Gardai have no information to link Murphy to any of these killings but in two cases there is some circumstantial evidence.

As well as being in Newbridge on the day that Deirdre Jacob disappeared, there is a tenuous link between him and the last sighting of 21-year-old Jo Jo Dullard on the night of November 9, 1995.

Jo Jo had been hitchhiking from Naas to Callan in Kilkenny and the last known location for her was in Moone, where she had called a friend from a coin box. She cut the call off saying a car had pulled up. She was never seen again.

A strange aspect of the abduction and rape that Murphy was convicted of was the fact that he took her to the field outside Moone to commit the first rape.

There is no apparent logic to this. Gardai believe Murphy's decision to take the young Carlow woman to this spot, before taking her up the mountains to kill her, might be linked to Jo Jo.

- Jim Cusack