No positive clues have so far emerged on the identity of the killer of Miss Raonaid Murray, the 17-year-old girl stabbed to death near her home in Glenageary, Co Dublin.
Raonaid was buried yesterday after a concelebrated Mass at St Joseph's Church in Glasthule attended by hundreds of teenagers and young people who knew her or her brother and sister.
The funeral was also attended by pupils from the Institute of Education in Dublin and Raonaid's former school, St Joseph of Cluny. Students from Presentation College, Glasthule, where her father, Mr Jim Murray, is headmaster, also attended.
Detectives leading the murder investigation at Dun Laoghaire Garda station took time off to attend the funeral before resuming their search for the murderer.
Gardai were yesterday still trying to establish the route Raonaid took home from the centre of Dun Laoghaire on Friday night after leaving a friend in Scott's public house in George's Street.
Friends indicated that she took two regular routes home on foot, one taking her up on to Corrig Road, Lower Glenageary Road and through the laneway from Silchester Road to her home in Silchester Park.
However, she also frequently walked along "The Metals", the laneway running along the DART line from Glasthule and up another path to Silchester Road. It was at the end of this laneway that she was murdered.
The investigation team yesterday had only a limited response to the televised reconstruction of the route she might have taken home.
The motive for the murder remains unclear. Raonaid was said by friends to have been a very popular girl with no known enemies. She was neither robbed nor sexually assaulted. It is presumed she was killed by a male given the force of the knife attack.
Garda investigators are appealing for anyone who is suspicious or knows of a man or youth who might be capable of such an attack to contact them immediately. Statements have already been taken from most of Raonaid's friends and acquaintances.
At her funeral yesterday, Father Eamonn McCarthy, a family friend, spoke of how Raonaid's family and friends were struggling to come to terms with the "awful finality" of her death.
"Separately and collectively we grieve for a beloved daughter, beloved sister, beloved niece, beloved grand-daughter, beloved friend. We grieve for all the promises of life, talent and personality that day by day have been maturing in Raonaid, lost and brutally terminated.
"We grieve for the 17 wonderful years in which she has grown from childhood to the verge of adulthood during which she has become known and loved."
Raonaid's friends brought gifts to the altar in remembrance of her. These included a teddy bear with a denim back-pack, a guitar, some of her clothes, jewellery and tapes of music she liked. A relative told the congregation Raonaid had wanted to become a writer. She had finished her Leaving Cert this year and intended retaking her exams to achieve higher results.
The Mass was concelebrated by Bishop Martin Drennan, Father Denis Kennedy, curate at Glasthule, Father Patrick Mangan, parish priest of Dun Laoghaire, and Father Thomas Nash, vice-president of Blackrock College. The President was represented by her aide-de-camp, Capt Pauline O'Connell.