{"id":590405,"date":"2026-07-17T12:44:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T12:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/590405\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T12:44:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T12:44:16","slug":"what-hungarian-police-found-on-the-laptop-of-dublin-murderer-lorcan-murphy-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/590405\/","title":{"rendered":"What Hungarian police found on the laptop of Dublin murderer Lorcan Murphy \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cEverything I did, I did because Kenzie asked me. I didn\u2019t want to take her life. I\u2019m so sorry, I didn\u2019t know, I\u2019m very sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is what Lorcan Murphy told a Budapest<\/a> court two days before he was found guilty for the murder of a US<\/a> nurse who was visiting Hungary in November 2024.<\/p>\n

Murphy, a law and marketing graduate and entrepreneur who grew up in south Co Dublin<\/a>, received a 14-year prison sentence<\/a> last week for murdering Mackenzie Michalski (31), from Portland, Oregon. <\/p>\n

The 38-year-old attempted to paint himself as an ordinary guy, a digital nomad travelling around Europe and trying to set up an internet marketing company as a freelancer.<\/p>\n

It was all an accident, he claimed in his testimony to the court in front of his victim\u2019s grieving family. It all started as an innocent one-night stand, he claimed. <\/p>\n

They both got drunk and it was Michalski, spending the last night of her holiday in Budapest, who initiated the rough sex, he claimed. <\/p>\n

At the first hearing of his trial, he claimed the nurse \u2013 known to family and friends as \u201cKenzie\u201d \u2013 had asked him to tie her up and choke her.<\/p>\n

However, as the trial went on, a different picture of Murphy emerged.<\/p>\n

\"MackenzieMackenzie Michalski, the 31-year-old nurse from Ohio who Lorcan Murphy murdered in Budapest <\/p>\n

At the second hearing in April, clinical psychiatrists who interviewed and studied Murphy in custody said they found clear signs of irritability, aggression and sexual aberration.<\/p>\n

They also told the judge that Murphy\u2019s account of the events of the night he met and killed Michalski shouldn\u2019t be taken at face value, as the Dubliner, who admitted drinking 200ml to 500ml of Jameson whiskey and about 10 beers on the night he met Michalski, had a tendency to confabulate, unconsciously filling in gaps in his memory with false memories.<\/p>\n

The clinical psychiatrists also revealed a serious porn addiction. <\/p>\n

Murphy told them he watched porn for hours on a daily basis and that he had been masturbating multiple times every day since the age of 15.<\/p>\n

He was also able to recall the exact number of sexual partners he has had: 61, he claimed \u2013 of whom 50 were one-night stands, he said during his psychiatric evaluation.<\/p>\n

Further revelations about the state of Murphy\u2019s mind and his actions came from a report Hungarian police produced after accessing the Dubliner\u2019s electronic devices shortly after detaining him.<\/p>\n

According to the report, police discovered \u201cdiary-style entries\u201d on the computer covering 2023 and 2024. The last notes on the diary were written on the day Murphy met his victim.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Was Lorcan Murphy\u2019s addiction to pornography a warning sign?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The Dubliner was keeping a detailed list rating and ranking countries and cities based on the looks of the girls in each country and their willingness to date. He rated Krakow in Poland and London highest. <\/p>\n

\u201cDublin is all right as well,\u201d he noted, but most women he had approached were in relationship so his \u201csuccess rate\u201d was lower there.<\/p>\n

He wrote that his goal was to visit different cities, mostly in eastern Europe, to pick up and date women and saw approaching random women as a game.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis thoughts constantly revolve around opportunities to meet women,\u201d the police wrote in their report.<\/p>\n

Murphy also revealed his plans for the future and his goals in life in his diary. <\/p>\n

He wrote that he wanted to make money from writing in future and planned to hack the computers of authors to steal their material.<\/p>\n

\"LorcanLorcan Murphy at his murder trial in Budapest. In 2016 he faced charges of engaging in threatening and abusive behaviour and assault in Dublin but was not convicted of any offence <\/p>\n

Murphy described himself as \u201cwriter\u201d on the public records for a short-lived Dublin 4 consultancy company of which he was a director a decade ago.<\/p>\n

The company was dissolved in 2018, less than two years after it was incorporated. Murphy listed his address on the company\u2019s records as a house in Donnybrook. <\/p>\n

His diary also outlined how he hated all his previous full-time jobs. <\/p>\n

\u201cAll I want is to drink coffee, eat brunch, write and pick up girls,\u201d he declared in one of the entries.<\/p>\n

He admitted, however, that he would have to figure out how to replace these \u201csources of excitement\u201d that his lifestyle brought when he would have a girlfriend or a family in the future.<\/p>\n

He had wanted to become a lawyer previously, he wrote in his diary; he had hoped that this way he could become independent and have a pretty girlfriend.<\/p>\n

\"\"In court as Dublin man is found guilty of American nurse\u2019s murder in Budapest<\/p>\n

He referred to women he dated in derogatory terms, including describing them as \u201cwhores\u201d, stating they were reason why his efforts to find a girlfriend had been pointless.<\/p>\n

Murphy also revealed in one of the notes that he was furious with his parents because they would not permit him to have sex in their house.<\/p>\n

He believed that the fact that he was an aspiring writer, good-looking and funny should be enough for him to get \u201chot bitches\u201d, according to his diary. He wrote that he wanted to visit places frequented by attractive women, such as drama and dance classes or yoga.<\/p>\n

However, he wrote that in 2024 he wanted to switch from \u201cdaygame\u201d to \u201cbar game\u201d and focus on approaching potential sex partners in bars. <\/p>\n

The diary also revealed that he kept a count of how many women he had tried to pick up. <\/p>\n

In an entry dated October 17th, 2024 he wrote that he had spent four nights in Prague and had eight attempts to pick up women, taking his total to 762. <\/p>\n

He stated that his goal was to approach his 1,000th women within a few days, before leaving Prague for Budapest on his tour of Europe. Before travelling around Europe he said he had worked in property and earned \u20ac3,500 a month. Murphy\u2019s family is involved in the property business in Dublin. <\/p>\n

In an entry in his diary for November 1st, Murphy complained he had been unsuccessful that night because girls in Budapest tend to be in pairs or groups, not alone.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0The \u2018rough sex\u2019 defence didn\u2019t work for Lorcan Murphy. He wasn\u2019t the first to try itOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Three days later Murphy approached Michalski, who entered Budapest\u2019s most famous \u201cruin bar\u201d, Szimpla Kert, alone.<\/p>\n

Hungarian police also found a \u201cspy pen\u201d in Murphy\u2019s possession. From the \u201csmall camera disguised as a pen\u201d police recovered video footage recorded in the city centre of Dublin, likely in the summer of 2020. <\/p>\n

Officers identified the location based on bus numbers and destinations as well as buildings visible on the footage.<\/p>\n

The recordings show Murphy approaching 16 young women on the street, trying the same pickup line each time.<\/p>\n

Murphy had come to the attention of garda\u00ed in Dublin years before these recordings. He was charged but never convicted of any offences in the Republic.<\/p>\n

The incidents over which he was charged appeared to take place during St Patrick\u2019s Day celebrations 10 years ago. He was accused of engaging in threatening and abusive behaviour and assault \u2013 on March 18th, 2016 \u2013 outside Bad Bob\u2019s nightclub in Temple Bar and at nearby Essex Street in Dublin city centre.<\/p>\n

However, the assault charge was withdrawn by the State, meaning that strand of the prosecution was dropped, with no finding of any wrongdoing against Murphy.<\/p>\n

The charge of threatening and abusive behaviour, which is effectively a disorderly breach of the peace, was dismissed by the courts.<\/p>\n

At last week\u2019s sentencing in Hungary, Murphy\u2019s lawyers said he was appealing his conviction for the murder of Michalski. <\/p>\n

The Budapest Court of Appeal is not expected to take up the case before November or December. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cEverything I did, I did because Kenzie asked me. I didn\u2019t want to take her life. I\u2019m so…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,52,13,14,6,25126,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-590405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-dublin","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-hungary","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116935384681928178","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=590405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}