MORE than 200 men with records of sexual assault have been selected for questioning and DNA sampling in the investigation into the murder of two patients in the grounds of Grangegorman Psychiatric Hospital last month.
The Garda investigation, involving 30 detectives working full time, has not yet uncovered a likely suspect.
No significant information has arisen yet from the psychological profiling of the likely suspect carried out by London Metropolitan Police experts who were brought in to help.
The investigation has become the most intensive carried out by gardai since the murder of the journalist Veronica Guerin.
Detectives are concerned that the murderer of Ms Sylvia Shields (59) and Ms Mary Calanan (61) might kill again. The murders of the two long term psychiatric patients are among the most horrific ever encountered by gardai and unlike any other sexually related killings in living memory. Both women's bodies were mutilated, one repeatedly cut after death. The killer cut off and removed a body part from one victim.
The investigation has involved drawing up a substantial list of men who have been convicted of or suspected of crimes involving sexual assault with unusual violence and who were at large at the time of the Grangegorman murders on March 7th.
It is understood the list of offenders under investigation includes just over 200 names and that this number is likely to increase. The men involved are to be questioned and will be required to give DNA samples as part of the process of narrowing down the suspect list.
Meanwhile, a man who attempted to drag a female prostitute into a car in the Benburb Street area, not far from Grangegorman, on the same night the two women were murdered, has been identified and eliminated from the suspect list.
It is understood the man, who attempted to grab the prostitute, was identified by detectives in Donnybrook station through the victim's description of his car. It is expected that a charge in relation to this incident may be brought soon.