The murder of Mackenzie Michalski by Irishman Lorcan Tadgh Murphy – who was sentenced last week to 14 years in a Hungarian jail for the brutal killing of the 31-year-old, which he is understood to be appealing – was unquestionably monstrous behaviour. It is natural for us to want to assure ourselves in such cases that the killer was always destined to become a monster, but that is often a mistake. Sometimes these individuals are remarkable for how ordinary they appear on the surface.

Murphy and I grew up in the same community, we went to the same primary school and our families were friends. I played sport with one of his siblings. Murphy was the product of a typical childhood: he had a good education, studied law and marketing in college, worked in property and aspired to be an entrepreneur and writer. Like most young Irish men, he also – we now know – consumed pornography regularly. In common with one in five Irish men under 55, he used it every day.

According to court reports, Murphy’s pornography use had become obsessive.

The pornified nature of the behaviour described in court is unmistakable: secretly filming his advances on women and teenage girls, rating European cities on how “hot and how willing” the women were, using a “spy pen”, making derogatory comments about women in his diaries. In the encounter with Michalski, using restraints, beating her, biting her and the prolonged strangulation. His filming of her lifeless body is reminiscent of the recent case, reported by CNN, of tens of thousands of videos of drug-facilitated sexual assault and rape of unconscious women made available online. His reliance on the “rough sex gone wrong” defence and his attempt to........

© The Irish Times