THE two elderly women murdered at Grangegorman in Dublin were subjected to a frenzied knife attack and one may have been sexually assaulted.
Gardai were last night searching for their killer, who is believed to have broken into the women's house in the early hours of yesterday morning. Investigating officers had no immediate suspect.
The two women were out-patients at St Brendan's Psychiatric Hospital in Grangegorman and lived in a terraced housing complex at Orchard View Road, opposite the hospital grounds.
The elder of the two, a native of Cabra in Dublin, was subjected to a sustained and brutal knife attack. The 61-year-old woman, whose relatives had yet to be contacted by gardai last night, suffered multiple stab injuries and her night clothes had been torn off, suggesting there may have been a sexual assault. Her body was found in an upstairs bedroom.
The body of Miss Sylvia Shields (57), a native of Cork, was found in an adjoining bedroom. She was stabbed to death, but not apparently subjected to the same level of violence as the other murdered woman.
A third woman out-patient who was in a ground-floor bedroom of the house apparently slept through the attack. She found the bodies at 6.30 a.m. yesterday and raised the alarm by alerting the complex supervisor, who contacted hospital security and gardai.
A Garda source said two knives found upstairs in the house were the likely murder weapons. The intruder appeared to have entered by breaking a rear window.
Gardai said the murder scene suggested a highly-disturbed person carried out the attacks. Officers were concerned that the killer was still at large and might attack again.
The bodies were removed from the scene yesterday evening and a full post-mortem examination was being carried out last night.
Forensic experts made a detailed examination of the scene, using a new electronic method of detecting fingerprints on bodies.
Chief Supt Dick Kelly, who is leading the investigation, said the attack was "particularly gruesome". He said there did not appear to be anything missing from the house and appealed for anyone in the area who saw or heard anything suspicious to contact gardai at the Bridewell station.
Gardai said the murdered women were last seen on Thursday evening, one at about 5.30 p.m., the other at about 11.30 p.m.
The murders sparked a furious row between the Eastern Health Board and the Psychiatric Nurses Association. "Former patients who reside in the house are unsupervised, with no nurse supervision at night, a situation which we have raised with the board on numerous occasions", the union said. It called for more staff to be assigned to out-patients' homes.
The EHB said it was "appalled that an association representing nursing staff should appear to use this tragic event to pursue trade union objectives".
It said the three women in the house "lived a very full and happy life in the community". Two worked at a nearby health board centre while the third was their housekeeper. "On the night before the tragedy one of the deceased ladies went to the local chip shop for fish and chips and shared these with the resident nurse in a nearby hostel", the EHB said. This showed that the women enjoyed "a good quality of life and met the board's philosophy of integration and normalisation".
The health authority fears the murders might be used to undermine its "care in the community" strategy.
Last night extra EHB staff were preparing to stay overnight in some EHB homes in the area to comfort out-patients shocked by the murders.