Life Sentence For Tourist Attacker

The 54-year-old convicted killer who raped an English tourist in a Dublin hotel has been sentenced to life in prison.

Escaped psychiatric hospital patient Michael Murphy, of no fixed abode in Manchester, was on the run for almost six months before the attack on the woman, who was on holiday in Dublin with a friend.

Murphy had escaped from a medium security unit in Manchester in November 2006 where he was being held after raping a woman and stabbing her 33 times in 1994.

He had also killed his father in 1975 but received a suspended sentence for manslaughter.

At Central Criminal Court in Dublin, Mr Justice George Bermingham said the circumstances surrounding the offence committed in 2007 while he was unlawfully at large were 'deeply disturbing'.

The judge said Murphy posed such a grave threat that it merited a life sentence usually only applied in exceptional circumstances, and added he was a highly dangerous person who posed a real and ongoing threat.

The jury unanimously found Murphy guilty of raping the woman, a civil servant from the UK during the trial last month.

The court heard Murphy had been diagnosed with a psychopathic disorder after the 1994 rape and was sentenced to be detained indefinitely in a psychiatric unit but he escaped after hearing of the death of his mother.

(DW/JM)