A core team of about 30 detectives has been kept working on the Raonaid Murray case at Dun Laoghaire Garda station, following evidence as it emerged. A motive has yet to be discovered for the brutal stabbing.
Two men have been arrested. One man was arrested in Galway last month and yesterday a Dun Laoghaire man was held for 12 hours for questioning at Shankill Garda Station. Both were released without charge.
The detectives at Dun Laoghaire have been examining thousands of statements and pieces of evidence. A list of suspects was drawn up and by yesterday two men had been questioned. The homes of a number of young men on the investigators' list have been searched.
The investigators, according to one Garda source, have uncovered an active social life in the area of south Dublin where young people from diverse social backgrounds mixed and socialised in and around the pub and club scene in Dun Laoghaire. On the night of the murder, a girl Ms Murray was to have met missed their appointment to go together to the Paparazzi disco in the Dun Laoghaire Shopping Centre. It is not clear if Ms Murray then decided to go home for the night or merely go home to pick up some money to go back to the disco on her own.
The "eyewitness" accounts of Ms Murray's movements were confused and contradictory and this led to difficulties for gardai in determining her movements after leaving Scotts pub in George's Street. It was finally decided that she had visited the Paparazzi night club before leaving for home.
There was also a series of conflicting statements about the route she took home and events that took place. Initially, detectives issued a statement and photofit about a man who might have had stains on his clothes hailing a taxi from the centre of Dun Laoghaire to Blackrock.
This apparently erroneous report led some potentially important witnesses to gain the impression that gardai had a specific suspect - a man with short dark hair in dark clothes.
After later appeals for eyewitnesses, gardai received other statements that seemed to fit more closely the likely course of events in the last moments of Ms Murray's life.
Garda suspicions are now that she was stalked, possibly by a man who knew her socially. It is thought this man might have followed her, either walking with her or taking a route that brought him to the laneway near her home off Silchester Park before she got there.
Ms Murray was stabbed repeatedly with a broad-bladed knife like a carving knife in a frenzied attack. She suffered a severe gashing wound to her side, possibly as she stumbled after the initial attack. There were wounds to her forearm as she tried to fend off blows. The fatal injury is thought to have come from a plunging blow down through her shoulder and upper chest. The knife has not been recovered.
It is understood the escape route taken by her killer is still not clear. Someone was seen running along Silchester Road towards the laneway known as the "Metals" that runs along the DART line towards Glasthule. Again there were other accounts, some discounted, of a young man making his way on foot from the murder scene.
Gardai interviewed more than 600 people who were in the Glenageary/Dun Laoghaire area on the night of Friday September 3rd. According to detectives many of the statements were confused.
Gardai interviewed one man, in his 20s, with whom Ms Murray had had a recent friendship but he was quickly discounted from the list of suspects.
Another young man is understood to have been questioned after it emerged he had changed clothes during the night but he did so in order to gain entry to another night club in Dun Laoghaire.
A number of men in the area, including at least one with a record of serious sexual assaults, were questioned but were able to supply alibis.