Graham Dwyer filmed himself murdering Elaine O’Hara – and hid the video of the gruesome crime, the investigator who nailed him says.
“I have no doubt that he did film it,” Peter Woods says in an exclusive interview with The Irish Mirror today.
And, speaking for the first time since Dwyer’s jailing for life in April 2015 for the murder of Ms O’Hara, he says he and other officers carried out a search for the video – but could not find it.
Mr Woods spent 32 years in the Gardaí until his retirement late last year and investigated serious crime for most of his time in the force – but says he has never seen anything like Dwyer’s murder of Ms O’Hara in the Dublin Mountains in August 2012.
He tells us: “I've been involved in a lot of cases, including where fellas have gone after minors for sexual purposes and all that.
“But I've never seen anything like (Dwyer). I don't think there are too many of those individuals around here. I'd say he's very, very unusual and rare.”
Dwyer has been locked up ever since then Detective Sergeant Woods and colleagues from Blackrock Garda Station in south Dublin called to the architect’s home in Foxrock on October 17, 2013 to arrest him for Elaine’s murder.
The arrest came just over a month after the remains of Elaine were found in Killakee Wood, also in south Dublin, following her disappearance more than a year earlier.
The find – and the recovery of phones, Elaine’s keys as well as sex toys in Vartry Reservoir in south Dublin a few days later - sparked a massive murder probe that saw Dwyer identified as the prime suspect, and someone who had killed Elaine for his own perverted gratification.
Mr Woods said he was shocked when Garda experts managed to extract texts from both phones that showed Elaine had been talking about stabbing, BDSM, and murder with a mystery man - and he was determined to track him down.
He says: “It was unbelievable.
“When we're in the investigation, you read them, and you think, ‘Oh, my God’.
“You absolutely do as a human, as a person.
“But you are looking at things (thinking) ‘how am I going to identify this guy?’”
He and his team identified Dwyer as the prime suspect within a fortnight of the discovery of Elaine’s body and moved to arrest him on October 17, 2013 at his home in Foxrock.
He says he called to the Dwyer home at 7.06am to arrest him – and thought briefly that he was going to escape.
He says: “I knocked on the door, rang the doorbell.
“We expected that he would be awake. We expected that he would get ready to go to work.
“He comes down the stairs in his pyjama bottoms, he had no top on, and he comes to the door.
“I showed my ID at the door, and he comes towards the door, and then he goes back up the stairs.
“I said ‘oh shit…what’s happening here?’ I thought he was going to bolt out the back or do something.
“But he only went off to get the keys.”
Dwyer was later charged with Elaine’s murder and his 2015 trial heard that he stabbed her to death at Killakee wood after luring her to a meeting - and Mr Woods says he and other investigators believe he filmed the sick slaying to watch it again and again and again.
And he says some of the hundreds of messages Dwyer sent Elaine show he was not only obsessed with knives – but with videoing wounds.
He tells us he believes Dwyer filmed the murder, and adds: “One hundred per cent, yeah, I absolutely do.
“If you look at the messages, he talks about ‘send me pictures of the stab wounds’.
“So she had to send pictures of the stabs that he had inflicted on (her) the night before. That’s several times in the text messages.
“He talks about looking at videos and watching in any of his writings.
“So I have no doubt that he did film it.”
And he says officers searched for the SD data card containing video of the murder, but it is so small it could be hidden anywhere.
He says: “We searched, believe you me. We looked, we searched. You know what a micro SD card can hold. You could hide something in the back of a curtain. The house was searched upside down.
“You're going to want to hide that somewhere where nobody finds it, but you're also going to want to have to hand, something that he would want to have close to hand - we didn't find it.”
Dwyer’s mammoth trial in 2015 heard that he had previously been in a BDSM relationship with Elaine, but it ended around 2008.
Dwyer rekindled the relationship in March 2011 – and Mr Woods said he purely did that so he could groom Elaine, who was vulnerable and had mental health problems, for murder.
He says: “One hundred per cent he targeted her.
“There’s no doubt that the plan was laid out early. He knew Elaine O’Hara had been suicidal at one time in her life, and had asked him to kill her.
“In my view, he was grooming her to eventually kill her.
“He met her initially on a website called Alt.com. There are a lot of vulnerable people who use these sorts of sites. It is a BDSM site.
“They had been in contact and they had met for a number of years and then the contact stopped.
“He again made contact with her in March 2011 on a phone that was not registered to him.
“You can see from the messages that he wanted to stab Elaine O’Hara while having sexual intercourse with her.
“I have no doubt that both things were there for him, that he could use her for his sexual fantasies, while stabbing her, while having sexual intercourse with her, but also his ultimate goal was to kill a woman.”
But, he says, Elaine did not want to play his sick games.
He says: “She did not want to be stabbed.
“She didn't want blood, she didn't want anything like that. Yes, she had things that she wanted done, but that was not what she wanted.
“And it appears from the start of the text messages that he wanted to rekindle the relationship so he could get her back under his thumb again.
“If you look at the messages, he knew that she was suicidal, and she had asked him at one point to kill her.
“And from the very, very start, the messages are insidious. ‘I will end you one day, I'll finish your life. I'll help you. I'll bring you to the woods and stab you.’
“You might say it was a fantasy of his. But the fantasy did become a reality.
“And there's no doubt about that, that his fantasy became a reality with Elaine. And he had Elaine, I suppose, emotionally attached to him, that he could do what he wanted.”
Dwyer has now been locked up for more than a decade – and Mr Woods says he should not be released any time soon.
He says: “He absolutely is a narcissist.
"And I think he would compartmentalise certain things in his life, the BDSM aspects.
"He would see himself as a pillar of society, that this was only a thing that went on at the side.
“He’s a murderer. He's a man that committed murder. He took advantage of Elaine and took advantage of others that I am well aware of for his own gratification.
"This was planned for a long time. He got his own sexual gratification from doing what he did to Elaine and others, and he certainly planned to kill Elaine and the jury found that.
“Do I think he's evil? You could describe him as that, yes. I would describe him as evil, yeah.
“A life sentence is around 21/22 years. Should he be released? Maybe, if he showed some remorse, or had shown that he was going to integrate back into society, maybe day releases here and there, but not for a long time.
“He's a man that should serve a long, long sentence.
“He preyed on her vulnerabilities, he preyed on (Elaine’s) suicidal thoughts, and he preyed on her for his own gain.
“I don't have any time for him.”
Peter Woods was speaking to the Mirror’s crime podcast Shattered Lives. You can listen to the full interview on Friday. Find it via the Irish Mirror Youtube channel or search “Shattered Lives” on Spotify or Apple podcasts.
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