It was so hard to restrain myself as evil Puska stared & smirked at me...

THE boyfriend of murder victim Ashling Murphy has revealed he had to restrain himself as her killer Jozef Puska smiled at him court.

- BY PAUL HEALY Crime reporter

In the second part of our exclusive interview, Ryan Casey told of how the remorseless murderer stared and smirked at him and the family throughout his November 2023 trial.

He said: “You think this guy's pure evil. He is evil. I firmly believe it. I made eye contact with him the first day we came in and I never saw such evil in anyone's eyes in my life. Those grey eyes.

“He'd look over, make eye contact and he'd grin his little teeth. Nasty little things. Not an ounce of remorse.”

Ryan, who spoke exclusively to this paper's podcast Shattered Lives, told how he found it difficult to contain his anger.

He recalled: “There were a couple of times, where I had to get out of there. Me and my dad, we had to get out of there. We didn't trust ourselves.

“We didn’t want to jeopardise what the Gardai had worked so hard to put together, what was a strong and robust case.”

Ryan also told of having to sit through harrowing evidence of the six-week trial.

They heard how Puska knifed Ashling 11 times in the neck in broad daylight on January 12, 2022, and saw chilling CCTV of him stalking multiple women.

Ryan confided: “Looking back, we actually went into court and the immediate aftermath of it not prepared for what we were about to sit through.

COLD

“There's another element to it too, that took a lot of us off guard - how the human element of it was removed.

“It was very factually based and evidence-based. A lot of the human side of it was taken out of the question.

“That was one thing that was hard to accept at the beginning. It was just very matter-of-fact and it’s cold. It's tough to sit through that for six weeks.

“I guess it was important for a sense to bring some sort of humanity into the court. We wanted to be there and represent the person they're discussing.