Ex-garda John ‘Spud’ Murphy is sharing jail wing with two other shamed former gardaí

Story by Patrick O’Connell • 16 Oct 2022

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Shamed ex-garda John ‘Spud’ Murphy is now housed in the Midlands Prison in a cell close to a fellow disgraced garda officer.

Sources have confirmed to the Sunday World that Murphy’s cell is on the E1 wing of the jail along with former garda Paul Moody.

Murphy (63) was sentenced to six-and-a-half years behind bars earlier this month after pleading guilty to possession of €260,000 worth of cannabis at his Dublin home last year, and is likely to face further charges in relation to confidential information being passed onto the Hutch gang.

Paul Moody, another ex-garda, was jailed for three years and three months over a four-year campaign of harassment, threats, assaults and coercive control against his cancer-stricken ex-partner.

The abuse came to light when Moody voluntarily handed in his mobile phone to gardaí after making a false allegation against one of the woman’s relatives.

Another ex-garda on E-wing is Stephen Cooper (37), who got a six-year sentence earlier this year for assaulting two women – including one in which he inserted his fingers internally into his victim after accusing her of stealing his drugs.

In 2014, he got a three-year sentence for offences when he was a serving garda.

One of the offences arose from his allowing another man to be wrongfully prosecuted for possession of drugs found during a search at the Electric Picnic music festival in 2009.

Cooper was also charged with stealing a bag of cannabis worth €560 from Sundrive Garda Station on May 27, 2010, but the charge was withdrawn by the prosecution.

Sources indicate there are at least two other ex-gardaí currently serving time for sexual offences who can’t be named to protect the anonymity of their victims.

Murphy was jailed earlier this month after being caught holding cannabis resin worth nearly €260k.

Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard that John Murphy (62) had built up financial debts of €855,000 due to poor business decisions made in the 10 years after he retired from the force.

Michael O’Higgins SC, defending, said that Murphy had “whatever the opposite of the Midas touch is” and that any investments he made “went down the drain”.

Counsel said that Murphy was consuming large amounts of alcohol every day “for as long as anyone could remember” and was a functioning alcoholic. He said his drinking had “clouded his judgement and brought him to this sorry pass”.

Sentencing him, Judge Martin Nolan said that Murphy was holding the drugs for some type of financial reward in order to alleviate his debts but that “he should have known better”.

Murphy came forward to the circuit court on signed guilty pleas entered at Dublin District Court to an offence of possession for sale or supply of cannabis at his home in Clontarf, north Dublin on September 29, 2021.

Garda Inspector Brian Hanley from the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigation told Maddie Grant BL, prosecuting, that in September 2021, gardaí acting on foot of confidential information obtained a warrant to search Murphy’s home.

During the search they found eight bags of cannabis herb in a bag in the walk-in wardrobe of an upstairs bedroom. Seven vacuum packed bags of cannabis were found hidden in a coal bunker at the back of the house and another five bags of cannabis were found in Murphy’s car.

The court heard that CCTV footage was harvested from an industrial estate in Co. Meath showing Murphy collecting the bags of cannabis and putting them into his car.