Two years on, we still do not know why Jozef Puska opted to turn the advantages he had been given in life to the destruction of a beautiful, joyful soul like Ashling Murphy. At just 33, he had a wife, children and a suitable home in a decent welfare system that saved him the trouble of working to support them due to a bad back.

We know he was carrying a knife that January day almost two years ago and planned to use it on a woman. Any woman. He had followed a number of them that day before spotting Ashling out for a mid-afternoon run on the canal. When she put up a fight, he stabbed her to death.

Loved ones so savagely bereaved want one answer from a trial: why? All they got from Puska at his trial in November was further evidence of his monstrous cowardice, naked lying and self-pity. There were no answers, just speculation by gardaí that it was a sexual attack. At the sentencing, Mr Justice Tony Hunt noted that judges don’t have the authority in this State to impose a minimum period to serve; if they had, he would have considered a whole life term sentence in Puska’s case. Some day it will fall to an individual to make the decision about his release and that individual, said the judge, will have to take into account that we still don’t know why Puska murdered Ashling.

Ashling Murphy's mother Kathleen holding a photo of Ashling outside the Criminal Courts of Justice after Jozef Puska was found guilty of her murder. Photograph: Collins Courts

Although most women are killed by........

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