Murder, Mystery & Makeup - The BDSM Texts That Exposed a Killer: The Elaine O’Hara Case (Podcast Exclusive)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Less than an hour from downtown Toronto, you'll feel a world away with Durham Tourism's new discovery guide, open skies, explore day trip destinations, overnight getaways, and 129 must-try experiences in Durham region, from historic sites to starry nights and delicious days to downtown dates. Want to keep your luggage light and your dollars in Canada? Discover Durham region's open skies. To get your guide, visit durhamtourism.ca.ca slash discover. Hi, friends. How are you today? I hope you're having a wonderful day so far. My name is Bailey Sarian and I like to welcome you to my podcast, Murder, Mystery, and Makeup. Now, you might follow me over on YouTube where you can actually watch these episodes, but today we have an audio exclusive. That's right. You're only going to hear it here. So don't forget to subscribe for these little exclusives I do. But now let's get into today's story. Listen, it's August 2013 in County Wicklow, Ireland. The water levels at Vartree Reservoir had dropped way low, and a couple of fishermen wandering across the bridge started noticing things in the shallows that weren't normally visible. Now, first, they figured it was just junk, you know, random debris.

Starting point is 00:01:21 But when they pulled it out, no, not junk. What they found was a collection of restraints. handcuffs, leg irons, a gag, a blindfold, and even a knife. I mean, imagine you're out by the water expecting maybe to find like an old boot or some trash, you know, and instead you're holding shackles and a knife. These aren't the kind of things that just happened to end up in a lake. These are tools of control, tools of violence, into investigators. They weren't just creepy odds and ends.

Starting point is 00:01:58 They were the very first clue in unraveling the tragic disappearance of a woman named Elaine O'Hara and exposing the dark, double life of the man who murdered her. Listen, today's episode contains discussions of mental health struggles. suicide, sexual violence, and murder. So listener discretion is advised. Elaine O'Hara was 36 years old, living in Kaliney, Dublin, a coastal suburb known for its beaches and rolling green hills. From the outside, you know, Elaine's life seemed pretty normal. She worked as a child care assistant,

Starting point is 00:02:52 picked up shifts at a news agent, and was even taking night classes hoping to move into Montessori, teaching. But listen, behind the scenes, Elaine definitely had her struggles. Since she was a teenager, Elaine was seriously bullied, bad, okay? And this sent her into a deep spiral of depression and isolation. When she was 16 years old, Elaine started to self-harm, and that same year, she was admitted to St. Edmondsbury Hospital for the first time. This hospital was a mental health facility that provided a range of treatment programs. And over the span of the following 20 years, Elaine was admitted to this facility a total of 14 times. That's once every year and a half.

Starting point is 00:03:38 And for much of this time, she was seeing a psychiatrist named Dr. Anthony Claire. Now, Dr. Claire was kind of, he was kind of popular. He was kind of famous a little bit. He was a well-known psychiatrist who even had his own like BBC radio show called in the psychiatrist chair. Under Dr. Claire's care, Elaine was diagnosed with depression and borderline personality disorder. Borderline personality disorder, or BPD, is a, this is a simple version, okay, but it is a condition where someone often feels overwhelming emotions, struggles with fears of abandonment, and can have unstable relationships,

Starting point is 00:04:25 even while deeply wanting love and connection. With all this in mind, it made sense that according to Dr. Claire, Elaine just wanted to be loved, but also really struggled with her, like, sense of self. Elaine's sister, Anne, would describe her as very naive and that she would trust people very, easily and that she never really matured like the rest of her siblings. Sadly, Elaine's

Starting point is 00:04:52 mental health went from bad to worse when her mother passed away in March of 2002. After her passing, this was a major setback for Elaine. She really struggled and she started self-harming again. Years went by and in 2006, Elaine's mental health hit a dangerous low. She took an overdose of pills and slipped into a coma that lasted for 24 hours before she was revived. It was one of the several moments in her life where her pain felt overwhelming, and it showed just how much she was struggling beneath the surface. And then just as, you know, she's holding things together, tragedy struck again. In 2007, her longtime doctor, Professor Anthony Claire, someone she saw as a mentor, and even like a parental figure, he passed away.

Starting point is 00:05:46 For Elaine, it felt like the people she depended on the most were leaving her, were disappearing, were gone. It was hard. So, time is going on. A year later, she turned to the internet to find, like, a sense of community. Now, this led her to certain websites where she was able to explore her interests in BDSM. I know. I was like, what? Kind of felt like it came out of nowhere. Now, BDSM is a form of sexual expression that stands for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism.

Starting point is 00:06:26 Listen, at its core, it's about role play and power dynamics, but it's important to note that in healthy BDSM communities, safety, and mutual consent are taken very seriously. For Elaine, these spaces offered an escape, a place where she could act on fantasies of restraint and submission. It was said that Elaine's fantasies started when she was young, around 12 years old. But it was only in 2008, at the age of 32, that she officially started seeking out BDSM encounters online. And this is a side note, but we know all this because later on they found Elaine's, she had like diaries and journals, and she would write about these types of things. That's why we know, like, it started young for her around 12 because she mentioned it.

Starting point is 00:07:14 Over the years, she made profiles on websites like alt.com and fetlife.com, where she went by the usernames of Chained Burnett, and at one point, helped me learn 36F. But unfortunately, her accounts also made her visible to predators who saw her not as a person, but as an opportunity. You know when you're laying in bed, trying to relax, maybe watching like a good old-fashioned murder or mystery documentary, and suddenly you're like, why do my sheets feel like sandpaper?

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Starting point is 00:10:03 So it's 2012. Elaine was working as a child care assistant and at night she was taking classes to get a job at a Montessori school. So she's doing all that and then she'd go home and she would continue her, you know, online relationships. But I guess it all became too much because in August of 2012, Elaine contacted St. Edmundsbury, the mental health facility that she was frequently admitted to. She contacts them and she tells them that she was really done. depressed and she wanted to take her life. So because of this, she was admitted one last time. After she was released, Elaine's psychiatrist said that she was in cheerful form,

Starting point is 00:10:49 spontaneous, smiling, alert, and even seemed happy. Elaine had plans to be a volunteer at the Tall Ships Festival on August 22nd and the 23rd. This was a big deal to her. This festival is massive. Old school like sailing ships from all over the world, they sail into different ports and basically, you know, throw big parties. Thousands of people show up, there's food, music awards, like it's a whole thing. And in 2012 at this time, Dublin was the final stop of this race. So it was exciting. And Elaine was volunteering to work the festival. So she had told her father and his father's partner about it, and everyone knew like she was excited about going.

Starting point is 00:11:37 Now, the part that's unclear is that if Elaine actually volunteered at the festival that day, but what we do know is that later in the day, Elaine went with her dad to Shangana Cemetery to visit her mother's grave. So after that, they went home. Elaine went to her apartment, her father went to his place, And then that evening, Elaine's neighbor saw her leaving her apartment around 505 p.m. A jogger later remembered crossing paths with her near the cemetery. So she is assumed to be back at the cemetery again.

Starting point is 00:12:19 This jogger said that Elaine had come up to him and asked if there was a bridge nearby. The jogger gave her directions, watched her like walk in that direction, and thought it was a little odd that she didn't say anything back. Like she didn't say, thank you so much. Okay, but, you know, she just seemed distant, almost like she was somewhere else entirely, according to the jogger. And then Elaine vanished. So when she didn't show up to volunteer at the Tall Ships Festival the next morning,

Starting point is 00:12:51 something she had been really excited about. Her father's partner, her name was Sheila, she grew very concerned. So she's calling Elaine's phone. Elaine's not answering. She goes by her apartment. There's no signs of Elaine at her apartment. Her car's not there.

Starting point is 00:13:11 And then later on, Elaine's car was found parked at the cemetery. So her family went to the police to report her missing. But given her long history with depression and self-harm, the assumption was only. almost immediate. Elaine must have taken her own life by jumping from the nearby cliffs that were by the cemetery. There's like signs and everything by the cemetery warning people about these cliffs. So they assumed she must have gone to the cemetery. She was really upset about her mom's death. And then she probably just jumped. And that was really it. For over a year,

Starting point is 00:13:51 like that was the story. There was no body. There was no evidence. There's no signs of foul play. to investigators and to everyone, it just seemed like a tragic ending for a woman who had like fought her mental health demons for a long time. But the truth, the truth was far darker. And it wouldn't come out until by sheer look a year later when strangers stumbled upon something in the water. For over a year, Elaine O'Hara's disappearance was a cold, case. Her family grieved, police quietly assumed suicide, and life just moved on. But then

Starting point is 00:14:36 everything changed. Literally almost exactly a year later, on August 21st, 2013, a woman, she was a dog trainer. She was out walking her dogs in a private area at Kiliki Mountain. This area is like very beautiful it's scenic but it's isolated it's an isolated area of the dublin mountains now this woman she had permission to be in this area you know what I'm saying I only bring that up because I was reading that in Ireland if it's private land they are very strict about private land and like you can't just go wandering on there it's a whole thing but she had permission to be there so this woman the dog trainer she's out she's walking her dogs you know and then one of her dogs like takes off running and like darted to a certain area and just would not come back.

Starting point is 00:15:28 So the woman, she goes and like to see what's going on. She saw her dog pawing at something in the dirt. When she looked closer, she was like, oh, it looks like bones. Now at first, the woman, she brushed it off. She assumed that these bones belonged to an animal, which was pretty common for like this area. About a month later, the lady, the dog trainer, she's again walking her dogs on that same trail and one of her dogs takes off again and she's like

Starting point is 00:15:58 struggling to get the dog to come back she heard her dog scratching at something in the underbrush refusing to come when called so she's curious you know um the woman so she pushed through the dense trail to see like what is going on and that's when she froze scattered on the ground were bones again but this time she saw the bottom of a track suit still clinging to what looked like a shoe. Her dog came like out carrying two large bones in its mouth, and that's when like the dread hit. These weren't animal bones, okay? The woman's like, oh my God, these might be human. So she's obviously like, you know, spooked, shaken, right?

Starting point is 00:16:45 So she calls the landowner. And she's like, you need to come out here. I think something's going on. So the landowner comes out and together they found what looked like a jawbone. So they immediately contact police. And when police come out to the area for like the final time, they found something else. There was a knife driven into the ground nearby as if deliberately left behind. Soon after, dental records revealed the jawbone belonged to Elaine O'Hare.

Starting point is 00:17:20 Now listen, in an instant, the story flipped. Elaine hadn't jumped from the cliffs. She hadn't simply vanished into the night. Now, she had been murdered, and the hunt for her killer was just beginning. Okay, so listen the other day I was looking in my bank account. And once again, I looked at something, a subscription I'm paying for that I, I've used once. And it wasn't like a cheap subscription. It was like 2599.

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Starting point is 00:20:33 way down. And like it was said this was very rare that the water levels would drop this low, but I guess it had to do with like the heat, they were having a heat wave, stuff like that. So it was just, it didn't happen often. But because like the water levels had dropped so low, things that were, you know, hidden under the water were now visible. So the fishermen, they're out there and they see something. So they're kind of like trying to fish it out, whatever it is.

Starting point is 00:21:00 They fished out what looked like scraps of clothing and like shiny bits of metal. But when they pulled the items onto the bridge, it wasn't random debris. It was a stash of BDSM gear, handcuffs, leg restraints, a gag, a blindfold, there was a knife. It was like, what? Now, at first, the men thought about just kind of leaving these items there. There's like, maybe someone just wanted to get rid of it or something, you know, not a big deal. But one of the fishermen just had a really, like, bad gut feeling about it all. So he bagged it all up and he brought it to the police.

Starting point is 00:21:39 When detectives went back to the scene, they ended up finding more. This is when they discover a set of keys, more bondage equipment, an inhaler, and other items. So on the keys, there was like a loyalty card for a store called Dunn's Store. Okay? It's a retail. It's a retail place. Okay. So investigators, they look into like, whose loyalty card this is?

Starting point is 00:22:09 and it led them directly back to Elaine O'Hara. So once police realized that Elaine was considered a missing person, this was like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, they're, uh-oh, right? So they send out the underwater unit to go out and conduct more searches of the area. And when they did this, they found a pair of glasses, sunglasses, a rucksack, and two Nokia cell phones. So the prescription from the glasses matched Elaine. And they were able to confirm the owner

Starting point is 00:22:49 of one of the SIM cards from the phones also belonged to Elaine. Now listen, even though these phones were underwater for over a year, forensic teams were able to recover thousands of text messages. You remember those Nokia cell phones? They were bricks. You could not destroy those things.

Starting point is 00:23:11 Listen, so they were able to pull like thousands and thousands of text messages. And what they saw was insane. There were tons of text messages that were sadistic, violent, and they revealed like the terrifying hold that someone had over Elaine. There were texts that said like, quote, if you ever want to die, promise me I can do it. And then Elaine replied, yes, I promise, sir. Another message read, it's your fault I want to kill, and you won't let me stab you. It was like, uh, what is it going on? It was through these phones that investigators piece the puzzle together.

Starting point is 00:23:56 The messages, the movements tracked by cell tower data, and the photos later found on the devices, connected a man named Graham Dwyer. to the case. So on paper, Graham Dwyer looked like the kind of man who had it all. He was a successful architect. He was well respected in his field. He was married with two children and he was living in like this wealthy suburb of Fox Rock just outside of Dublin. His house had even been featured in the Irish Times for a restoration project that he and his wife had done. Now to neighbors and to co-workers, Graham was like just another asshole corporate guy trying to like climb the social ladder. I say asshole because co-workers said that like he had

Starting point is 00:24:53 quite the temper and was difficult to work with. So you know, the asshole corporate guy. Honestly, if you look up a picture of Graham, he is that very forgettable man. You know what I'm saying? He's like wears the suit, clean cut. Like, you would never even think this guy had a secret life. Because Graham, he really did have a secret life that nobody knew about. Listen, he was a man consumed by violent sexual fantasies. Now, long before Elaine, he had confessed to a former partner that he had fantasized about stabbing a woman during sex.

Starting point is 00:25:35 It was said with this partner, he even brought knives into the bedroom. And like when they were getting it on, he would like press the knives against her. And it was deeply uncomfortable. This partner was like so disturbed that she never spoke to him again. So like Elaine, Graham was into BDSM. He was also active on websites like alt.com and fetlife.com. where he went by usernames architect 72, which is like, okay, and fetish boy. I feel like architect 72 is kind of giving yourself away there, boy, but this is what he went by.

Starting point is 00:26:21 Listen, Graham, he was married, though. His wife, Gemma, she had no idea that Graham was into anything like this, let alone fetishes like stabbing and watching people bleed. She was apparently completely unaware of the Double Life Graham lived on these websites. Then, in 2008, while Graham was still married, he started engaging with Elaine. Now the messages between them say a lot. Graham Dwyer wasn't just like indulging in role play. He was testing limits. He was manipulating Elaine.

Starting point is 00:27:02 He was feeding her insecurity. and suicidal thoughts and slowly grooming her into the role of, like, his ultimate victim. Have you ever heard of the quote, unquote, Slayer rules? Basically, it's a law that says if you murder someone, you can't inherit their stuff.

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Starting point is 00:28:54 quote.com slash makeup today to get started. That's select quote.com slash makeup. The two would eventually meet up, and they would have sexual encounters throughout the years. They even got burner phones so they could keep in touch and text each other. Graham later described the Nokia phones as, quote, master and slave phones that he and Elaine used to send sexually explicit messages to each other on. I mean, there were a ton of text messages recovered from their master slave phones, but, you know, it was like if you ever want to die, promise me I can do it. It's your fault. I want to kill and you won't let me stab you. And there was one that from Graham that said, I want to stop. I want to

Starting point is 00:30:00 my knife into you in another text from 2011. So their relationship was on and off for years. There was another text where Graham texted Elaine that he had been watching the news about a stabbing victim. And he wrote that he would have loved to have like stabbed a woman and that he could imagine the knife going in and out saying that the suspect was quote, a lucky. guy, end quote. Then on August 22nd, 2012, Elaine received an ominous text from Graham. It told her to, quote,

Starting point is 00:30:42 go down to the shore and wait, and quote. This was the last day Elaine was seen alive. Five days before Elaine's death, Graham texted her that he had scouted the Dublin Mountains. He told her there there were plenty of lonely walkers there. He also said he just needed to find a route back with no cameras and that he was quote very excited. Then a few days later Graham wrote the following to Elaine saying quote we go into the woods I take off your clothes stab you, bury you and leave your clothes in the car near the sea end quote adding that he'd make it look like she drowned Throughout the text, police were able to gather evidence linking Graham as their main suspect, but what they really needed was his DNA. So on September 27th, over a year after Elaine went missing, police went to Graham's home in the early morning and saw that he put his garbage out.

Starting point is 00:31:47 So they went through his bins and found, you know, some stuff they could get his DNA off of. After running the DNA, they found it was a match with a sample fares. on Elaine's couch from her apartment. So they got that. So then investigators, you know, they start like diving into the fetish websites. They end up finding Graham's email addresses and they find his profiles and whatnot.

Starting point is 00:32:16 And they discover at least nine videos of him having sex with bound and gagged women. And they were like aggressive. On top of that, They found a video of Graham cutting Elaine O'Hara and suffocating her with a plastic bag as part of their sex play. He, Graham, or someone literally uploaded the videos to the websites. It was like, okay, all right. Oh, dear.

Starting point is 00:32:49 Police also used something called metadata from the Nokia phones to figure out, you know, who own them. Now, I'm sure you are familiar with metadata, but it's basically the phone's digital footprint. It doesn't just say what was sent, but when it was sent and where the phone was when it happened. And when investigators pulled that information, the movements of those burner phones lined up perfectly with Graham's own whereabouts. Police dug even deeper and uncovered CCTV footage of a man who looked like Graham leaving Elaine's apartment carrying a rucksack. You know, a bag, you know, yeah, you get it, okay. And it was that same rucksack that would later turn up in the reservoir with the rest of the evidence. Did I mention they found that in the reservoir?

Starting point is 00:33:46 Well, they found a rucksack in the reservoir with all of the other stuff, the glasses, the keys, the inhaler, and all this stuff. The one thing about the CCTV footage, though, you couldn't see Graham's face. Like, he was very self-aware that there were cameras around. And also, when he was touching, like, the doors and whatnot, he was covering his hands. So fingerprints wouldn't be left behind.

Starting point is 00:34:13 And the only reason that police, you know, thought it was Graham is because it matched his height, his weight and all that stuff, but the rucksack was the same one that was. was found in the reservoir. So after all of this, police believed, okay, they had enough evidence to finally arrest Graham Dwyer. On the morning of October 17th, police moved in and arrested Graham Dwyer

Starting point is 00:34:36 at his home in Fox Rock. So over the next 24 hours, he was questioned five different times, and oddly enough, he refused the chance to even like rest or sleep. It wasn't until the fourth interview that Graham finally crashed, admitting for the first time that he and Elaine had been sexually involved.

Starting point is 00:34:57 After this, like the very next day, he was officially charged with her murder. So he was sent to prison and denied bail with the court ruling he posed a danger to other women. Now, Graham was saying he was innocent, not guilty. And to be fair, they didn't have, like, quote, unquote, solid evidence on him. they had like okay his rucksack matched the one that they found they had the text messages but they didn't have like his DNA like on her body or anything like that you know what i'm saying so he was like no we were just we were just role playing like i didn't kill her he was denied to nine to nine and that was his major defense so fast forward a couple months it's january 2015 and graham dwyer was standing trial

Starting point is 00:35:43 in what would become a landmark case listen it was landmark because this would be Ireland's first major conviction to heavily rely on large-scale phone metadata. This had not been done before. Like that was mainly a lot of their evidence, was like the stuff on the phone. Over six weeks, the jury listened to nearly 200 witnesses, combed through thousands of text messages, and heard all of Graham's dark fantasies that were found on his personal computer. Like, he had very detailed dark stories that he wrote, saved on his computer. Like, you know, going into great detail about rape and stabbing people and stuff.

Starting point is 00:36:35 And it's like, are these low-key confessions, or is he just, like, writing for fun, you know? And then he also had Photoshopped images saved of women who appear to be dead from stab wounds. on his computer? There was a lot. His defense. They tried to argue that Elaine had consented. What happened between them was role play. It was part of the BDSM world that she had willingly entered.

Starting point is 00:37:04 The defense tried to cast Elaine's death not as murder, but potentially a suicide, pointing to her lifelong mental health struggles, and focused on the fact that there was no solid forensic proof of homicide. Just fantasy role play. So listen, Graham's wife, she ended up taking the stand, and I was like, ooh, what does she have to say? She was obviously deeply disturbed by her husband's secret life. She testified about their relationship, how they renovated cottages together. They made model airplanes together. They shared like certain families. routines and everything was just normal to her like they were this kind of power couple and when she was cross-examined she stood by the fact that she had no clue like what was really going on and then

Starting point is 00:38:02 during the trial a letter from graham to his wife was read aloud so he wrote her while he was in jail okay and in the letter he told her to not believe the police that they had no evidence on him accept his name and phone number from that quote awful girl's diary end quote he acknowledged that he knew elaine but that he was quote helping her end quote it was like helping her how but other than that he said in the letter that he was being framed he asked his wife to deny anything authorities were saying and to help protect him what an asshole the jury spent seven and a half half hours deliberating before reaching a verdict. When everyone was called back into the courtroom, Graham was sure. Like he was positive. He would be found innocent. He believed they had

Starting point is 00:39:00 nothing on him. Again, it was all roleplay that there was nothing. Literally, he told people he was going to walk right out of the courtroom and be asked to appear on the late late show, a nightly talk show. He's like, they're going to ask me to be on that show. I'm going to be a guest and everyone's going to know, like, I'm innocent. Some people also reported that Graham had planned a homecoming party after all of this. But things did not go as planned for Graham. On March 27, 2015, after seven and a half hours of deliberation, the jury returned with their verdict. Guilty. Graham Dwyer was sentenced to life in prison. The judge even told the jury he agreed with their decision 110%. So the court had decided that Graham Dwyer killed Elaine O'Hara. And here's what they believed happened.

Starting point is 00:39:58 Elaine and Graham, you know, they met through their BDSM master slave role play websites, right? Well, on the day Elaine vanished, the prosecution said Graham lured her. to the Dublin Mountains under the guise of their quote unquote play. But instead of role play, he actually carried out his dark fantasy for real. That's where he stabbed her to death. And, you know, the jury heard all the receipts, the hundreds of text messages, especially him telling her to like, where to meet him. And they believed that Graham went and dropped all of those personal items,

Starting point is 00:40:40 the bags of restraints, the knives and all that. stuff out into the reservoir. Not thinking it was anyone was ever going to find it. What confirmed it for a lot of people were the text messages and the fact that he filmed kind of creepy little videos about it. During the reading of his text messages, there were tons and tons of messages about him, you know, stabbing her or mentioning stabbing during sex. And he was just obsessed with this idea. So that's what they believed. happened. It's just crazy to me, like, okay, in my mind, I'm like, this can't be the first time he's done something like this, because he really covered his tracks. Like, there were no

Starting point is 00:41:23 fingerprints or anything found on the knife. Um, his DNA wasn't found, like on her remains. Like, it's creepy. In my mind, I'm like, this is not someone who's, this was their first time in my personal opinion. You know what I'm saying? When the guilty verdict came out, you know, it finally gave Elaine's family some answers, but, you know, it didn't really bring them peace. In court and later in interviews, the family spoke about Elaine as someone who was kind, fragile, and constantly searching for love. Her father once said that despite their rocky relationship, he may have been her only real friend, which is sad. Legally, this case shook Ireland. Graham Dwyer's conviction was actually groundbreaking because so much of it

Starting point is 00:42:15 depended on the cell phone metadata, you know, mapping out his movements and tying him to those secret phones. And of course, Graham being Graham, like he wasn't going down without a fight. His lawyers, they jumped on it. They were arguing that all that phone data was collected illegally and that it violated his privacy rights. So now, like, for years, his appeals have forced Irish courts to go back and re-examine their entire data retention law, like are we protecting privacy or are we protecting killers? Even as recently as 24, the Supreme Court was still debating his case and if it was right or wrong. But luckily, his appeal was dismissed. So Graham, he's serving his

Starting point is 00:43:09 life sentence in Midlands Prison. And of course, you know what I was reading? I was reading, ugh, after everything, he reportedly used to receive love letters fan mail from female fans. I roll. Yeah, nothing says dream guy like convicted murderer. Jeez. Ladies and gentlemen, let me remind you, you can do better than that. Raise the bar. Dream bigger. you don't need a convicted murderer okay stop it but anyways um I said he used to because I was reading another interview where Graham had mentioned that he no longer receives like a fan mail from from women and it was like a huge hit to his ego he was like where's my fans I don't get letters anymore it's like good good at the end of the day the tragedy

Starting point is 00:44:09 of Elaine O'Hara is that she was a woman who just wanted to be loved, understood, and accepted, just searching for a connection. Instead, she crossed paths with someone who saw her vulnerability as a doorway to his own darkest desires. Graham Dwyer's case is a reminder that killers don't always look like villains. Sometimes they're the ones with stable jobs. a beautiful home with family photos on the mantle, a clean haircut, suit wearing, you'd never think twice about them type of person. And to me, those are the scariest types. In the end, investigators believed that grahamed lawyer probably recorded the killing of Elaine O'Hara. Now, this hasn't been proven or anything like that they never found anything. But what they did find,

Starting point is 00:45:06 like on his personal laptop and whatnot, they did find videos of him having sexual encounters with different women where he was stabbing and harming them. But again, it was, in court, it was said like it was role play. But investigators were like, is it fucking roleplay? Or is this actually someone like that he, he killed? And unfortunately, like, there's just no answers there. In my mind, I'm thinking this guy probably has like a storage locker or something where I would bet he probably has tapes of like him doing some shit. You know what I'm saying? In my opinion, I don't know. There's nothing to base that off of. It's just this guy was so clean with his attack, his murder of Elaine, that it's like there's no way in my

Starting point is 00:46:03 mind that this was like a one-time thing. There's just no way. But that's just a thought. There's no proof behind it. The good news though is that he will be locked away forever and I hope he has a very awful time in prison. And yeah, his wife, his family, they gave kind of like their statement after court. They were like, we, I had no involvement. We had no idea. please respect our privacy. And like that was that, that was that, haven't heard from them since and good for them. But also I was thinking, okay,

Starting point is 00:46:42 this is just another side note, a personal thought. You know, as a person, when you're dating someone, you always have that gut feeling, like something's, something's off. Like if he's up all night on the computer or something, you might have that feeling of like, what's he doing? I wonder what he's up to. Something, hmm. I just wonder if she,

Starting point is 00:47:03 ever had those little moments. You know what I'm saying? Because I feel like we always do. I'm not saying she knew, but like, I think maybe deep down there was something, huh? Well, friends, that is the tragic story about Elaine O'Hara. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I hope we have a wonderful rest of your day. Please be safe out there, especially with your sexual encounters. Make sure it's consensual, okay? And you make good choices. all right and I will be talking to you guys later. Goodbye.

Murder, Mystery & Makeup - The BDSM Texts That Exposed a Killer: The Elaine O’Hara Case (Podcast Exclusive)

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