h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ireland is all a-buzz about a recent murder trial. The murderer was only found by a series of bizarre events and coincidences.

The guy concerned got a thrill from stabbing women in the stomach while having sex with them. He had an extended relationship with one woman, who was timid and lacking in confidence. She was last seen walking across a cemetery in South Dublin, then disappeared. A passing jogger was able to give the exact time because she asked him for directions, and he was tracking his run with the Map My Run app, one of only two times when he did so.

A year later, due to a long drought, the level of a reservoir in Wicklow went to record lows, about 20 feet lower than its normal level. A volunteer gamekeeper was looking out over the reservoir from the bridge looking for poachers. He saw something shiny at the bottom of the lake. His friends arrived at this point for a chat and they joked about the shiny thing in the lake, so they got a strap with a hook on the end from their van and went fishing. They uncovered a stash of goods which later revealed a load of bondage equipment, a set of keys and two mobile phones.

A few days later the woman's body was discovered by a dog-walker in the mountains - so badly decayed that there was no way of giving a cause of death.

The two mobile phones were still working despite being under water for a year. They were a pair - each sent texts only to the other, one known as Master and the other as Slave. Ireland was introduced to the concepts of Bondage and Domination. It soon became clear that the disappeared woman was Slave, but who was Master?

The guards (Ireland's police) managed to track the phone down to a particular individual through various oblique references in the text messages, and through tracking his location and the location of the phone over a long period. It was established beyond doubt that he had arranged to meet her at the cemetery the day she disappeared. He had also given strong indications in the text messages that he was going to kill her, but this could have been just talk to make the liaison more exciting. The woman was unstable and could have commit suicide, or he could have killed her for the ultimate in excitement. But if she had committed suicide, how did his phone come to be with hers and her car keys at the bottom of a reservoir, while her body was in a different location?

The guy was found guilty of murder and everybody breathed a sigh of relief.

Fascinating.

It reads like an episode of some television crime drama. Most murder cases are quite boring in reality.

Not for the people involved.

Strange set of coincidences that led to the solution. You wouldn't make it up.

I could imagine that as the plot of one of the mystery novels I read.