Monster Graham Dwyer would have killed again - if Gardaí had not caught him for murdering Elaine O’Hara, the detective who nailed him says.
“I have no doubt that if he wasn't caught, he would have built up to murder somebody again,” Peter Woods says.
And, in an exclusive interview with The Irish Mirror, Mr Woods reveals that the killer brazenly taunted him and another detective when they were questioning him about Elaine’s murder – by pointing at his own private parts.
Mr Woods, a recently-retired Garda detective sergeant who played a central role in bringing Dwyer, 53, to justice over the August 2012 murder of Elaine in the Dublin mountains, tells our Shattered Lives podcast the incident happened when he challenged him about his sick habit of looking at videos of images of women with stab wounds.
Mr Woods says Dwyer got angry when he was being questioned following his arrest on October 17, 2013 – a month after the remains of Elaine, 36, had been found in Killakee Wood, a discovery that prompted a massive murder probe.
Mr Woods says he challenged him about texts to Elaine that showed his sexual interest in bloodletting – and Dwyer became angry.
He says: “At one stage, he got very annoyed with me. I said to him: ‘You have a fetish for stabbing women, bloodletting.’
“He pointed at his penis. He said, ‘look, do I have an erection here? Do you think I have an erection? What do you think?’
“He got really pissed off with me reading out the content of (texts between Dwyer and Elaine).”
Mr Woods broke his silence to speak about the Dwyer case following his retirement late last year – and this month’s tenth anniversary of the twisted architect being jailed for life for Elaine’s murder, a charge he denies to this day.
Dwyer, a native of Bandon in Cork but living in Foxrock, south Dublin, was given the mandatory life term on April 20, 2015 following his conviction at the end of March in that year following a mammoth trial that shocked and gripped the nation.
The prosecution successfully argued that Dwyer – who had a fascination with gore and knives – stabbed Elaine to death for his own sexual gratification after luring her to a meeting at Shanganagh, south Dublin and bringing her to Killakee.
As soon as he was convicted, there was speculation Dwyer may have killed before, especially as a text he sent Elaine mentioned Raonaid Murray, a 17-year-old who was stabbed to death in Glenageary, south Dublin in late 1999 – a crime that has never been solved.
It’s understood Dwyer has been excluded as a suspect for that killing – and Mr Woods says he believes Elaine was the monster’s only victim.
He says some of the texts to Elaine clearly show he was building up to a murder – and give no indication he had previously killed.
He says: “If you look at the text messages, and I have done, it appears that he was building up to this.
“I don't actually believe that he killed before. I don't believe that, but that's (my) personal opinion. What informs me is the text messages. ‘I want to do a woman next’, and it built up from there.”
But he does say he believes Dwyer would have killed again after Elaine's murder to satisfy his blood lust – and his conviction prevented that.
He says: “This (murder of Elaine) is definitely in the category of a sexual offence.
“I know a bit about sexual offenders and what happens. And sexual offenders tend to build up to an offence, then they commit the offence, and then they stop for a while.
“And when they stop for a while, the urges build up in them again, and they get the urge and it becomes overwhelming, and they commit further sexual offences.
“I have no doubt that if he wasn't caught, he would have built up to murder somebody again.
“I'm sure that if he got away with this, and however length of time it took, the sexual fantasy that was in his mind would have built up again.
“And bear in mind that on the morning he was arrested, he'd been looking at some serious stuff on his phone the night before, you know, some stabbing of women in Brazil, really gruesome, gruesome stuff.
“I do believe he would have built up to get somebody else that he could have done that with.”
Mr Woods, who, with Detective Garda Jim Mulligan, questioned Dwyer for almost 24 hours after his arrest on suspicion of Elaine’s murder, tells us the cocky killer never thought he would be caught – and he believed he was smarter than the Gardaí across the interview table from him.
The officers had a plan to get Dwyer to give them details about his life that coincided with texts to Elaine – including that he had recently bought a bike, had become a dad again and had suffered pay cuts.
Gardaí needed those details to corroborate the texts and asked him about his life. He willingly answered – blissfully unaware he was helping Gardaí to build a case against him.
Mr Woods says: “He absolutely thought we were stupid. He absolutely did not think that what we were doing was all part of the plan.”
Mr Woods said he believed Dwyer felt superior to him and Detective Garda Mulligan.
He said: “You could see that during the interview. Dwyer is the type of fellow that if you fed into his ego, he would talk to you.
“So then we start talking about his life. And we talk about where he works, the fact that he's an architect. All these tiny things are important.
“We talk about his family life. We talk about the flying competitions. Each time, bang, we're putting him in a location where the phone is.”
Dwyer was later charged and convicted – and made repeated challenges to his conviction, even going as far as the Supreme Court, but lost every time.
But Mr Woods says Dwyer was so confident at every stage of the investigation and trial that he never believed he would face justice.
He says: "He never thought he'd be arrested. He certainly never thought that he'd be charged.
“When he was charged, he most definitely believed he'd get bail.
“When he didn't get bail, he said at the trial that it was only a matter of time that all the forensic evidence cleared him and that he would get out at the trial.
“And his confidence didn't even wane when he was convicted. He had the civil case going on in relation to the retention of phone data, and he believed that he would win his appeal.
“Right up to the Supreme Court, he was confident that he would get out.”
Mr Woods - who kept a photograph of Elaine in the Garda file to remind him who he was fighting for – also speaks of the moment Dwyer was convicted in March 2015, following the massive trial at the Central Criminal Court in front of Judge Tony Hunt.
He says he and other members of the team met Elaine’s family in a room after the verdict.
He says: “We go up to the family room, and we met the family. And we had a nice moment. We had hugs, and there were tears.”
And he adds it was important for the team to get justice for Elaine.
He says: “It doesn't bring Elaine O’Hara back. It wasn't going to bring her back, but it was going to get justice for her and it proved that she was a human being that did nothing wrong.
“I think it's very, very important to families that justice is done for them.”
And when asked if he still thinks about Elaine, he says: “Quite a bit. I’m still friendly with (Elaine’s father) Frank and the family. I absolutely think of her, in particular every August.
“I think about her regularly. She was a very, very decent human being, trying to get on with her life, trying to live her life independently.
“She, no doubt, had difficulties, like everybody has, and she just wanted to be loved, really.
“She wanted someone in her life that would love her and take care of her.
“And she went down a specific route into how she might find love and, I suppose, that is where she ended up where she was.”
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