Jozef Puska was soaking wet, ashen-faced, shaking with cold and covered in scratches and bruises when he arrived home about six hours after he had stabbed 23-year-old schoolteacher Ashling Murphy to death.
By then, Ashling’s violent killing led every news bulletin and flashed across social media. Another man, entirely innocent as it would later become clear, was in a Garda station being questioned on suspicion of her murder.
It was obvious to the adults in the Puska household that Jozef (then 31, now 35) had been involved in something terrible.
Much of the detail of how Jozef Puska murdered Ashling Murphy came out during his trial in 2023. The trial of his brothers Marek (36) and Lubomir jnr (38), and their wives Jozefina Grundzova (32) and Viera Gaziova (40), over the past few weeks gave insights into the Puskas’ lives. Their statements, made in the days after the murder, give further detail of how the killer, his brothers and their wives tried to thwart the Garda investigation.
On Tuesday, a jury by unanimous verdict found Marek and Lubomir jnr guilty of withholding crucial information from investigating gardaí. Jozefina and Viera were found guilty by majority verdict of burning the killer’s bloodstained clothes in an effort to obstruct his prosecution.
All of them had pleaded not guilty to all charges.
In a voluntary statement two days after Jozef Puska killed Ms Murphy, Marek Puska gave details of the family’s background, of their moving from Slovakia to Czechia and finally to Ireland.
Jozef arrived in Ireland in 2013 and lived in several places before, in 2020, securing a four-bedroom house in Lynally Grove in Mucklagh, Co Offaly, near Tullamore, with his partner Lucia Istokova and their five children. Soon Marek and Jozefina moved in with their six children and Lubomir jnr and Viera with their three.
Marek spoke in glowing terms of their life together in Mucklagh.
“We don’t feel alive without each other, we’re so close,” he said.
None of the three men was working. They spent their days sleeping, drinking coffee or beer and going into Tullamore by bike, car or taxi.
“It was the golden times, the best of times. I swear to God, everyone says they don’t see a family like this getting on. We sit and talk and don’t argue. Any problems, we talk about it,” said Marek.
He said they solved financial problems among themselves and the “kids are at the top of everything and get everything”. Jozef he described as the “go-to man” who would help everyone.
On January 12th, 2022, Marek said he got up at around 12.30pm, “the same as every day”. Lubomir jnr, the only person in the house with a car, had earlier taken the children to school, and at 11.30am brought Viera to the dentist in Tullamore.
Lubomir jnr would tell gardaí that Jozef declined to go with them because Lucia was cooking scrambled eggs for him.
About 30 minutes before Marek got up, Jozef finished his breakfast, drank a cup of coffee and left on his bicycle. Lucia told Marek she didn’t know where Jozef had gone and that he had left his phone behind.
“I wanted to be with him,” Marek said, so he went to Tullamore to search for his brother. He said he tried a local casino and other regular haunts where people would know Jozef, but nobody had seen him.
Marek returned home but left again, this time with Lubomir jnr, to continue the search. By now concerned about his whereabouts, they checked the emergency department at the hospital. When that turned up nothing, they reported Jozef missing at Tullamore Garda station. It was shortly after 5pm.
By now, gardaí in Tullamore were focused on the inexplicable and brutal murder of Ashling Murphy, which had happened at about 3.30pm. Two women out running at Cappincur alerted gardaí after they stumbled across a man attacking Ashling in the briars on the steep bank by the canal towpath.
Gardaí arrived within minutes but Jozef Puska had already escaped and there was no chance of saving the young teacher, who had suffered multiple, fatal stab wounds to her neck.
Jozef Puska would spend the hours after the attack scrambling through thick briars and into a nearby field, then walking to the N52 and into Tullamore. Shortly after 9pm, he knocked on the door of Rostislav Pokuta, an acquaintance who drove a localschool bus.
Pokuta was surprised to see Jozef Puska, who was soaking wet, white in the face and frightened looking. Jozef did not want to talk, other than to say he had been beaten up and to beg for a lift home. Pokuta agreed.
In his original statement, Marek Puska did not mention seeing Jozef that night. Four days later he told gardaí he had more to say.
Under caution, he said he and Lubomir jnr had been in Tullamore looking for Jozef, when Lubomir jnr got a call saying Jozef was at home and “in a poor state, beaten up”.
After his arrest on January 26th, Marek gave further details. By the time he got home, he said, he was crying because he is sensitive about his brother. He and Lubomir jnr went into Jozef’s room and closed the door.
The accounts given by Jozef Puska of what had happened were described as “obvious nonsense” and “garbled lies” by barristers in the trial.
Marek told gardaí that Jozef claimed he was trying to take his own life by stabbing himself in the stomach when a woman came upon him and tried to pull the knife away. Recalling the same story multiple times, Marek gave differing accounts of what Jozef had said.
In one, he had Jozef in pain on the ground with holes in his abdomen when the woman grabbed his hand and tried to drag it away before he “cut her ... around the neck area”.
In another account, he said Jozef “struck out and cut her” but said the latter couldn’t remember what else he had done. Jozef knew it was “probably bad” but then didn’t want to talk about it any more.
In another account, he said Jozef told him he “cut her with a knife” while they were “fighting on the ground”.
[ Who is Jozef Puska? From anonymous father-of-five to notorious killerOpens in new window ]
Marek, crying, told his wife Jozefina that Jozef had “hurt this woman” and that he “must have killed her”.
Somebody contacted Jozef’s parents, who travelled to Mucklagh. Viera Gaziova would later tell gardaí that Jozef’s mother was “visibly afraid” and demanded to know who had beaten up her son. She begged Jozef to go with her back to Dublin. He went with his parents.
With Jozef gone to Dublin, the family in Lynally Grove discussed what they had heard while Lubomir jnr poured shots of vodka for everyone. Each would tell gardaí they didn’t believe the various accounts that Jozef had stabbed or cut or killed a woman.
Viera spoke to gardaí on January 17th and 18th. By then the family had been moved to the Central Hotel in Tullamore. Gardaí wore plain clothes and were careful not to draw attention to the family at the centre of a national outcry.
Viera said Jozef had scratches on his face and was “shaking uncontrollably” when he arrived home on the night of the murder. She said that Lubomir jnr and Lucia went to Dublin the following day, but that Jozef had been admitted to St James’s Hospital for surgery on stab wounds to his abdomen.
While Jozef convalesced, Viera said Lubomir jnr called her using Facebook Messenger to say that Jozef had asked him to “make sure that those clothes are burnt”. She knew what he meant.
Jozef had left his wet clothes in a bundle on the bathroom floor and Viera had taken them to the kitchen and placed them beside the bin.
She said she waited until the following morning after the children had gone to school. She lit the fire using paper and briquettes and let it burn for about an hour, until it was “very strong”. She took the clothes out of the bag, starting with the tracksuit top and T-shirt, which were stuck together as though Jozef had taken them off in one go.
Jozefina, who helped by burning the socks, would tell gardaí that she noticed “blood around the lower half of the T-shirt.”
When gardaí asked Viera why she had “misled the investigation” by failing to mention in her previous statement that she had destroyed evidence, she said: “We were afraid of the guards when they came. Nothing like this ever happened before. I was afraid I would end up on the street with my children. I was shaking. I didn’t want to say because I was afraid the whole family would go against me.”
