CHILLING CCTV footage shows sadomasochistic killer Graham Dwyer prowling about the Dublin apartment block where his victim Elaine O’Hara lived.
The sicko became one of Ireland’s most notorious murderers after his brutal murder of the childcare worker in 2012 sent shockwaves across the country.
And a new Amazon Prime documentary on the brutal killing reveals startling images of the sex killer in O’Hara’s Dublin home.
Murderer Behind the Mask, released earlier this week, gives a behind-the-scenes look at the major garda investigation which eventually led to Dwyer’s conviction.
The two-part series features startling images of Dwyer and O’Hara separately entering Belarmine Plaza, despite the architect’s initial denials that it was him on camera.
Detective Sergeant Kevin Duggan told producers the task of trawling through footage was similar to looking for a “needle in the haystack”.
Speaking on the Amazon Prime show, Duggan explained: “On the day that Elaine O’Hara was reported missing, a decision was made by the detective superintendent in charge to seize the hard drive of all the CCTV footage for Elaine’s apartment block should we need it at some stage in the future.
“At the time of the murder investigation I was given the job to coordinate all CCTV footage relating to the apartment block where she lived.
“It was a fairly mammoth task to review this footage. There was something like over 5,300 hours. It was like looking for the needle in a haystack.
“We were looking through CCTV footage but we really didn’t know what or who we were looking for.
“At one stage while reviewing the CCTV, one particular individual enters the apartment block.
“We hadn’t noticed this male enter before. It was someone new to us.
“He piqued our attention a little bit when he seemed a little bit uncomfortable, he seemed to be hiding his face from the camera.
“Also when he went to push the button for the lift he covered his hand with his sleeve of his jumper.
“That alerted us a little bit, that was a bit of a red flag.”
In court, Detective Sergeant Duggan also gave evidence that he and his team had viewed hours of CCTV footage from the apartment block at Belarmine Plaza in Stepaside.
This was shown to Dwyer’s son and former co-workers during proceedings, and the man in the images was later confirmed to be Dwyer.
The new documentary follows gardai as they uncover a “very surprising suspect”.
Following a harrowing nine-week trial, evil Dwyer, from Foxrock, was convicted by unanimous verdict of stabbing 36-year-old Elaine to death in the Dublin Mountains in August 2012.
The married man, who was filmed knifing sexual partners and admitted having an affair with his vulnerable victim, was hit with the mandatory life sentence.
‘JUSTICE SERVED’
Following the high-profile case which gripped the nation, Elaine’s dad Frank O’Hara released a statement in which he paid tribute to his vulnerable girl.
He said: “We are relieved that justice has been served for Elaine but we suffer her loss and miss her greatly.
“We hope that this case will highlight the need for people to be careful when communicating using the internet and social media.
“We would like to thank An Garda Siochana for their sensitive and exemplary investigation.
“We would also like to thank the prosecution team, Garda Family Liaison officers, Victim Support at the court and extended family and friends for their support.
‘DIFFICULT AND TRAUMATIC’
“This has been a difficult and traumatic two and a half years for the family and while we respect the role of the media in providing accurate and important information, we ask that you respect our need for privacy as we attempt to move on from this heartbreaking and distressing period.”
Judge Tony Hunt told the court that he “110 per cent agreed” with the jury’s decision based on the evidence — which on three occasions was too gruesome for the public to be allowed to remain in the court.
The judge told the court: “The question of suicide simply wasn’t there.”
“He piqued our attention a little bit when he seemed a little bit uncomfortable, he seemed to be hiding his face from the camera.”
Detective Sergeant Kevin Duggan
The trial of the evil architect was a graphic depiction of bloodlust and unnerving perversion.
A huge swathe of evidence involved details of BDSM sex, the Gorean lifestyle of people living out a slave-master philosophy, and a window into the life of a sexual deviant.
Such was the shocking nature of some videos, photos, and documents revealed in court that the media self-censored on occasions.
The judge also cleared the public galleries.
One piece of evidence involved a document found on Dwyer’s computer which told a story of a woman being raped, another was a video of Dwyer knifing tragic Elaine on camera, and a series of others revealed unidentified women being stabbed by him during sex.
WHO WAS ELAINE O’HARA
ELAINE O’Hara was 36 years old when she was murdered by Graham Dwyer.
She was last seen in August 2012 in a park in Shanganagh, south Dublin.
Born on St Patrick’s Day, March 17, in 1976 in Dublin, Elaine was raised in the capital and educated in Ballybrack and at St Joseph of Cluny secondary school in Killiney.
As a teen, she was bullied at school and lost a close friend in a road accident.
This led her to spiral into isolation, becoming withdrawn and self-harming on occasion.
Two major setbacks in her life were the death of her mother in March 2002 and the death of Prof Clare in October 2007.
She was admitted to St Edmundsbury Hospital in Lucan, Dublin – now St Patrick’s Hospital – 14 times between 1992 and 2012.
Elaine revealed to specialists she had been tormented by a “play in her head” – an obsession with being restrained – since the age of 12.
She was under the care of Professor Anthony Clare for 16 years, who said she did not have psychosis but diagnosed her with borderline personality disorder and depression.
Elaine also suffered from asthma and diabetes and was dyslexic.
She moved out the family home in Killiney in 2005 to an apartment in Blackrock.
Eventually she’d move to Stepaside in 2008.
She took night classes in Dun Laoghaire to become a Montessori teacher and worked as a childcare assistant at a school in Ballybrack and part-time at Ken’s newsagents in Blackrock.
A month before her murder, in July 2012, she had contacted St Edmundsbury herself and got admitted.
Her dad Frank and multiple doctors said they thought she’d been “doing better” before she vanished that August.
Her family, in a victim impact statement read to court in 2015, described Elaine as a “very intelligent girl who never fully realised her potential due to her psychological difficulties”.
They added: “She was prescribed a lot of medication and this did have an impact on her ability to be a regular teenager, particularly socially.
“She was emotionally immature and very trusting of anyone who showed her kindness.
“In later years her medication was reduced, hospital stays became less common and she functioned more effectively. However, she had missed out on those important, formative teenage years.
“She had a strong work ethic and loved working with children, as she could relate to them better than to adults.
“She was always there to help and assist others, giving lifts, covering shifts at work or collecting many of the items for the Christmas Fair at school.
“Elaine adored her niece who was also her goddaughter and loved reading, painting and playing with her.
“Elaine’s ambition was to be a teacher and she was studying Montessori.
“In 2014, we collected a BA in Montessori education which was awarded to her in St Nicholas Montessori school.
“She would have been so happy and proud to stand up in her gown and hat to accept that degree herself after overcoming many obstacles to finally get the qualification she longed for, but unfortunately this was not to be.”
Images and links from a phone Dwyer owned – dubbed the ‘master’ phone – included women being stabbed, strangled or killed, some of which came from a gore website.
On the face of it, married Dwyer was living a normal life in a well-to-do part of south Dublin with his wife and children, working in a successful architects’ practice and enjoying a hobby of flying model planes.
Meanwhile all along he had been developing a deviant sexual affair after meeting his victim online.
Dwyer was charged with murdering childcare worker O’Hara, 36, from Stepaside, Co Dublin, on August 22, 2012, hours after she had been discharged from hospital for psychiatric treatment.
TROUBLED LIFE
Her troubled life was played out in court including her depression, borderline personality disorder, attempted suicides and her interest in bondage and a slave-master relationship.
A search of her apartment recovered a printout from a website on Gorean lifestyle based on books in which women are slaves who only exist to please men.
Deluded Dwyer had pleaded not guilty ahead of the trial and did not give evidence, confident he would walk from court a free man.
The prosecution case summed up with the assertion he was “a sadistic and brutal pervert with nothing on his mind other than murder”.
Evidence from mobile phones used by Dwyer and his victim were central to the prosecution.
EVIDENCE FROM TRIAL
One text from the killer stood out in the evidence: “I want to stick my knife in flesh while I am sexually aroused. Blood turns me on and I’d like to stab a girl to death some time.”
Another sick message said: “My urge to rape, stab or kill is huge. You have to help me control or satisfy it.”
State lawyers claimed he toyed with the idea of three potential victims, including Darci Day, a young woman from Maine in the US, who also met Dwyer on the internet and gave evidence via videolink.
Childcare worker O’Hara’s remains were found in a forest on Killakee Mountain on September 13, 2013.
She had been reported missing 13 months earlier.
No murder weapon was ever recovered, and due to her badly decomposed remains dental records were used to identify her, and an autopsy could not explain how she died.
GRIM FIND
Only for a series of remarkable coincidences her disappearance may have gone unsolved.
A professional dog trainer made the grim discovery when one of her animals disturbed remains in the woods.
Three days earlier, 20km from the crime scene, anglers found a bag with handcuffs, clothes and a rope, exposed because of near-drought conditions at the Vartry reservoir in Wicklow.
Angler William Fegan, his brother James, and their friend Mark Quinn, later testified how they spotted a bag in the water on September 10, 2013.
LOW LAKE
The men commented on how low the lake was.
William said there would usually be about 20ft of water under the bridge, but on that day it had dropped to a record low of 12 to 18 inches.
He said: “At first, what drew our attention was a shiny metal object and some yellow rope buoyant on the water. We thought it was the ring of a bull’s nose.”
William managed to fish out handcuffs, cuffs, leg restraints, rusty bondage cuffs, a ball gag, a black blindfold, a hoody and a vest.
Confused by the find, Fegan placed the items on the dam wall and went to work.
CRUCIAL TO CASE
But in a decision that proved crucial to the case, he decided to go back and get them.
He said: “I drive at night. I’ve plenty of time to think. There was something niggling at me. I thought there was something not right.”
He put the objects into a bag, brought them to Roundwood Garda Station and handed them over to Gda James O’Donoghue.
This decision was to prove fatal to Graham Dwyer’s plan to commit the perfect murder.
“At first, what drew our attention was a shiny metal object and some yellow rope buoyant on the water. We thought it was the ring of a bull’s nose.”
William Fegan
Gda O’Donoghue then went to the bridge and looked down into the water. He recalled: “It was muddy and there was no visibility into the water.”
A day later, O’Hara’s skeletal remains were discovered by a dog walker in Kilakee forest, 30km away.
The next day — September 14 — while a major forensic search of Kilakee was under way, Gda O’Donoghue, due to “the nature of what was found”, said he went back to Vartry and began to “search and search”.
He went back again on the September 16 and this time the weather conditions had improved. He recalled: “I could see a shining object in the water.
KEY DISCOVERY
“What I saw on that occasion was the stock end and part of a loop of a handcuff. They were partially buried.”
He put his arms into the water and began searching by touch.
Garda O’Donoghue said: “While moving my hands through the muck, I felt something buried in the silt. I pulled them up and could identify them as a set of several keys.”
He continued his search and found another mask, a knife, an inhaler, the bull ring and a length of rope.
He also found Elaine’s keys and her Dunnes Stores loyalty card.
The garda ran a check on the card and learned it belonged to Elaine, who was a registered missing person, and this eventually resulted in Dwyer’s conviction.
PHONE DATA LEGAL CHALLENGES
Mobile phone data played a huge part in the prosecution case against Dwyer as it helped link the sicko to O’Hara and locations connected with the vicious killing.
Dwyer set out to fight the use of this evidence and argued that accessing retained data from phones contravened EU law.
His legal team had claimed his rights were violated during the trial because mobile phone evidence used to pinpoint specific places at particular times and dates was unlawfully acquired from what they termed “mass surveillance”.
In April 2022, the evil murderer won a significant EU court legal challenge against the inclusion of the mobile data in his trial.
APPEAL FAILURE
The Court of Justice of the EU ruled that law in the union forbids the general and indiscriminate retention of traffic and location data relating to electronic communication for the purpose of combating serious crime.
After this, Dwyer moved to try an overturn his murder conviction at the Court of Appeal in Ireland, but that case was dismissed on all grounds in 2023.
Dwyer then took his case to the highest court in Ireland – the Supreme Court – which decided in 2024 to rule against his appeal to have his murder conviction quashed after deciding the evidence was admissible.
- Murderer Behind the Mask is available to stream on Amazon Prime now.
