Graham Dwyer loses final murder conviction appeal
Graham Dwyer pictured outside court in Dublin in 2013
- Published
A sadomasochistic killer who stabbed a vulnerable woman to death has failed to get his murder conviction overturned by Ireland's highest court.
Graham Dwyer, formerly an architect from Foxrock in Dublin, was found guilty of murdering Elaine O'Hara in 2015.
Ms O'Hara, who was a 36-year-old childcare worker, disappeared in August 2012.
Her skeletal remains were found in the Dublin mountains just over a year later.
Having failed in his latest appeal at the Supreme Court, it is expected that Dwyer will now have to serve the remainder of his life sentence.
Mobile phone evidence
Elaine O'Hara was killed on the day she left a psychiatric hospital
The original murder trial jury found that Dwyer stabbed Ms O'Hara to death on Kilakee Mountain in Rathfarnham on 22 August, 2012.
She had been suffering from depression and had left a psychiatric hospital earlier that day.
Dwyer was a married man at the time and had met his victim through a website.
The trial had heard he was a violent sadomasochist who had been filmed stabbing sexual partners, one of whom gave evidence against him.
Mobile phone data played a large part in the prosecution case as it helped link Dwyer to Ms O'Hara and to locations connected with the murder.
Dwyer later won a significant legal challenge against the inclusion of the mobile data in his trial, having argued that accessing retained data contravened EU law.
He tried to overturn his murder conviction at the Court of Appeal, but that case was dismissed on all grounds last year.
Family relieved by ruling
Dwyer then took his case to the Supreme Court - the highest court in Ireland.
On Wednesday, its judges ruled unanimously that the mobile phone evidence used to convict him was legally admissible during the 2015 murder trial.
After the ruling, Ms O'Hara's family released a statement which said they were relieved the Supreme Court had upheld the Appeal Court's verdict.
They said they had experienced a long and arduous criminal trial, with many challenges to the jury's verdict over the years.
The family thanked Gardaà (Irish police) and the detectives who investigated the murder.
They added that they hoped Elaine could now finally rest in peace.