In June 1973, seven-year-old schoolboy John Joseph Horgan from Palmerstown, Dublin was bludgeoned with a wooden club in a field close to his home while his mother was out visiting her next-door neighbour in hospital. She had entrusted the neighbour’s grandmother to watch over her son until she returned home. This is one of the most complex and disturbing murder cases we have ever covered. A case Irish authorities chose at the time to shove into what we refer to as Ireland's Pandora's Box.  

Imelda Keenan, 22, of Mountmellick, County Laois, was living in Waterford City, Ireland when she was reported missing on January 3rd, 1994. She was living in a rented flat in Waterford town on William Street. Imelda Keenan’s fiancé, who would regularly stay at the flat, would later state to gardai that she told him she was going to the post office to pick up her unemployment benefit and some cat litter at a shop around 1:30 pm. Her brother Ned would formally report her missing that evening. However, in reality, no substantive and confirmed evidence ever emerged of Imelda for the two weeks prior to January 3rd and the previous Christmas period of 1993. This is a case with a multitude of different questions and anomalies that soon arose for Imelda’s family and gardai investigating her missing person case. 30 years on, we still don’t have many of those answers.  

On the 2nd of March 1999, a car pulls up on Nassau Street in Dublin, Ireland late at night. 24-year-old Layla Brennan from Clondalkin is walking on the street. The driver is ‘looking for directions’ but this hides his real predatory intentions. Three days later, Layla’s body is found dumped in Killakee Forest in the Dublin Mountains. This is the case of Layla Brennan and what happened to her. The subject matter will not be easy. Who was Layla Brennan and what happened to her?  

Larry Murphy is an Irish convicted criminal and predator of women. After his conviction for kidnapping, repeatedly raping, and attempting the murder of a young Carlow businesswoman on 11th February 2000, in the Wicklow Mountains, he was jailed in January 2001 for 15 years with a third of his sentence suspended or later reduced in prison. His release from Arbour Hill prison less than 10 years later drew widespread public and media criticism. His name has been erroneously and consistently connected to multiple cases in Ireland’s Vanishing Triangle—a series of missing and murdered women in the Leinster region throughout the 1990s. He is most often associated with the disappearance of Irish woman Deirdre Jacob close to her home in Newbridge, County Kildare in 1998. A file for prosecution was submitted to the Irish DPP but was later rejected on the grounds of insufficient evidence. To date (2024), Larry Murphy has only ever been charged, tried and convicted of offences in relation to his 2

In this final episode in our Missing & Murdered series, we examine The Forgotten Cases (Part 3). The episode follows on from the first two parts - six much lower profile unsolved cases of missing women, some presumed and some confirmed murdered. These cases are often considered on the periphery of the mythical Irish Vanishing Triangle and have sadly been neglected by the media, authorities and others in recent years and we should be honouring their memories and showing them the proper respect and support that they deserve.  

For the past three decades, through news media articles in print, TV and radio shows, podcasts, documentaries and dramas, we have been sold an unproven illusion, that one or more serial killers were rampant in Ireland during the late 80s and 90s. And one devious suspect was responsible for multiple such cases of missing person cases and the deposition of bodies found in the vicinity of the Dublin and Wicklow mountains and the man who may have been responsible for many of those cases is Larry Murphy. It’s time we addressed the core media myth of Ireland’s Vanishing Triangle and its real origins. Here is your first clue. No Irish police investigation ever mentioned the phrase ‘Vanishing Triangle’. Operation Trace was not set up with the specific intention of finding Ireland’s Serial Killer. In episode 51 of Radio Espial - Missing & Murdered: Ireland’s Vanishing Triangle - Misinformation, Brian Goggin explored the origins of media misinformation across a number of cases. In this epis