Ashling Murphy's murder: Bad men need to be terrified of a certain type of good man.
A wolf man needs to know he could be met by a Wolverine.
Sometimes, there are subjects I don’t want to touch with a barge pole. The murder of Ashling Murphy feels like one of them. A wanton act of gruesome violence in the middle of a week day. A young woman, out for a run, in a sleepy provincial town. Perhaps, pounding the pavement or gravel listening to a song - full of hopes and dreams.
And then a man murdered her.
Official Ireland did all the right things. A week of non-stop quasi debate. A televised funeral, the President of Ireland and a who’s who, roll call, of all the usual social media people out in force. Stay out of it - I thought.
Yet, something was and is off. The fact, something is off, is the main reason I don’t want to talk about the murder. If people aren’t discussing the elephant in the room, it usually means, not that they don’t see it but that they instead, would prefer to ignore it.
Specifically, people are not talking about the actual murder. They are talking around the murder. Not many of the big media names are exercised about the specifics of the killing or catching the murderer. Some individuals want to take her name and run with a societal narrative, which is fine, I suppose, but have the decency to use at least some of your energies to hunt down her murderer too. As there is, in fact, at least one pyscho male, out there uncaught and much is needed to be learned.
Incidentally, the only reason I noticed the offness, oddly enough, is that I recently dived back into the crypto world with a few shekels. As a result, I started tracking obsessively a few new crypto twitter accounts, to add, to the Irish media accounts that I already follow. It’s an odd mix to be following I grant you.
Yesterday, was January 17th, a date only significant insofar as it marked the first full moon of the year. A wolf moon as it happens. It occurred to me, scrolling through my feed, that out there, somewhere, was a wolf man in a wolf moon rising.
Full moons, as crazy as it sounds, play havoc with crypto markets. The markets normally slump in the lead up to them and for the duration of them. Sometimes they fall by a lot and sometimes by a little. Last night was no different, markets were jittery and still are as I write. No real explanation why. It’s an uncomfortable thought but I suspect it is also playing havoc with the evil man who murdered Ashling Murphy.
As I observed all the crypto drama on Twitter I couldn’t help but notice the conversations playing out in the Irish media twitter-verse about the young woman. A weekend comment by a professor Sam McConkey was causing a lot of controversy. Unless, you’ve been hibernating under a rock, you’ll have heard his throwaway line with Brendan O’Connor about boys or young men getting some kind of license or series of lessons before they are allowed to socialize.
Okay, But what about catching the murderer?
I went to take a closer look at reports of the conversation. Without wishing to be unkind, it was the considered thoughts of probably a good man. But unfortunately a soft man too. The use of soft is not meant as a put-down and I will get to the point of it’s use later in this piece. However, Professor McConkey triggered another thought bubble - Fintan O’Toole.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The West's Awake to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.