Gardai were in a race against the clock. A double murderer was on the loose in Sligo and investigators, fearing he was using a gay dating app to lure his victims, had to warn any men who could be in imminent danger.
They enlisted the help of Anthony Burke, a local night porter who had been stabbed in the eye days earlier by a date he met on Grindr. Burke joined a convoy of armed gardai travelling to the homes of other men on the app who needed to be alerted to the threat last year.
The main suspect — who used a false moniker online — popped up on Grindr as they went door-to-door, Burke recalled, the bearded young man’s location showing he was just a few hundred metres away at one point.
“It was our belief that he would kill again,” a senior source told The Sunday Times last week. “The hunt was on the whole time; it just took on an added degree of urgency after the second man was killed.
“The priority that night was to find these other men, establish they were alive, make sure there was no one there that could cause them harm, and make sure they were aware that there was a killer on the loose.”
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The killer, Yousef Palani, was apprehended in the early hours of the next morning, April 12, after a garda tactical unit broke through the front door of his parents’ house on the outskirts of Sligo town.
Last week the 23-year-old was jailed for life for the April 2022 murders of Aidan Moffitt and Michael Snee, and for the brutal knifing of Burke. The Central Criminal Court heard that Palani was motivated by his “hostility and prejudice” towards gay men.
The three attacks happened within a few kilometres of each other last spring. In the first, on the night of April 9, Palani left Burke blinded in the left eye after stabbing him in the street with a kitchen knife. Burke said Palani had wanted to tie him up when they met earlier at his home, but that he refused.
On April 10, Palani murdered Moffitt, 42, after arranging through Grindr to meet at the businessman’s home. Moffitt’s decapitated body was discovered the next day. On April 12, Palani killed Snee, a 58-year-old retired care assistant he met on Grindr. Snee’s nieces found their uncle’s remains in the bedroom of his home. Like Moffitt, he had been restrained.
Palani comes from an Iranian-Kurdish family who were resettled in Ireland in 2006 as part of a United Nations programme. In primary school, he was described as a “messer” who struggled academically. By secondary school there were some signs of trouble, but nothing those who knew him thought amounted to more than teenage rebellion.
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Palani is said to have once ripped the urinals off the wall in the school bathroom. In his last year at Summerhill College, a former classmate said Palani — a boy who kept fit and was into martial arts — attacked another pupil in front of a packed cafeteria.
“Yousef just launched himself at this other lad, punching the head off him,” the classmate said. “He landed several blows on the back of the boy’s head and kept on punching him. He came at him from behind.”
The ex-classmate said the attack looked to be unprovoked but later heard rumours that a nasty comment by a different student had sparked Palani’s outburst. “No one could say for sure what triggered him. Anyways, it showed he could be violent — it was a brutal enough assault, he just sprang up and started battering away.”
The former pupil, who asked to remain anonymous, said there was “always something a bit off, a bit odd” about Palani but that he was friendly enough, and “not a loner”. He said: “I got on OK with him. Apart from that one incident there was nothing really that would mark him out as a killer.”
Residents in Markievicz Heights, the well-kept estate where Palani lived with his parents and seven siblings, described an intensely private family that kept to themselves.
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Residents said Palani’s father, who has rarely been seen in public since the raid last year, surprised some locals when he exercised in the estate bare-chested, even in the depths of winter. “He’d be out doing karate kicks in the street,” said one neighbour.
Another said: “There’s no such thing as racism here. We’ve a beautiful Chinese family and the most fabulous Indian family. We’re peace-loving, we all work very hard, we’re there for everybody.”
Palani’s mother declined to speak to The Sunday Times last week and demanded that photographs of her home were deleted.
It has been 18 months since the four-day spree of savagery was visited upon Sligo, the bustling town on the northwest coast that made headlines for being a hunting ground for gay men.
The local LGBT community last week recalled their terror after hearing that gay people were being targeted by a possible serial killer. Dee Utting, who runs Tully Crafts, Sligo’s LGBT merchandise shop, said her friends on Grindr reported being inundated with messages warning them not to meet up with people. She said the attacks also caused a degree of paranoia at local events, such as at coffee meet-ups and the Pink Friday sessions in the pubs.
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“The feeling among the community was one of sheer horror and terror,” Utting said. “Everybody was just looking at each other and thinking, ‘Is it you?’ Some people weren’t going out of the house. One of the victims is a family member of a close friend, which brought it very close to home. It was terrifying to think that this sort of horror could be on our doorstep.”
Catherine McCann, the co-ordinator of Smiley, a youth group for LGBT teenagers, said the case came up in discussions in the aftermath of the attacks and again last week following Palani’s sentencing.
“There was fear, of course they had a fear, but we talked through it,” McCann said. “Yes, it happened here in Sligo, but really it was a hate crime and it could have happened anywhere. I think they now understand that this was a guy who hates gay people — and that’s part and parcel of being LGBT in the world.”
Collateral damage was also inflicted on Sligo’s small Muslim community. Palani was known to visit the local mosque. Most of the negative commentary was confined to the internet, but after Palani’s arrest, some Muslims felt the familiar glare of the spotlight at their meeting places.
“We were scared,” said one man after sunset prayers last week. “Everybody was worried, even our children.” The man said a Muslim shop owner’s front window was smashed after Palani was named. “They stoned his window. But thank God the gardai came a couple of times and they were patrolling at that time.”
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Another man said a guy turned up at the mosque and shouted obscenities in the days following Palani’s arrest. “At the time, when it happened, definitely we had to be a little bit more careful,” he said. “You would have to be careful walking in the town.”
Palani pleaded guilty to the murders of Moffitt and Snee and to causing serious harm to Burke. Last Monday, Justice Mary Ellen Ring handed down mandatory life sentences for the two murders and imposed a 20-year sentence for the assault on Burke.
Palani was active on Grindr hours before his arrest, with sources telling The Sunday Times that he was in communication with at least one other person on the app. Investigators believe he would have killed again had he not been caught.
On the night of his attack, Burke said he and Palani had engaged in consensual sex acts in his home, but that he knew something wasn’t right when the would-be killer insisted on tying him up. “I wanted to get him away from me because he was very persistent,” he told The Sunday Times.
Making the short walk from his council house to the scene of the stabbing, Burke re-enacted the attack. “He shoved the knife into me and said, ‘There you go’ with temper, and I went down to the road. He just stood there watching me and then he turned around and cycled away. I was afraid I might pass out because he would have come back and killed me.”
The only survivor of the three sadistic attacks said his life has been for ever changed. Burke doesn’t answer the door to strangers and keeps his curtains drawn. He prefers to be alone with his two dogs, Bella and Chase. “I don’t get into company in pubs or anything any more,” he said. “I’m more wary now of being gay, fearful so I am now.”
Burke, who wasn’t openly gay before the stabbing, said he had received countless messages of support from the mothers of gay sons, commending him for speaking publicly about his experience. Burke writes back: “Just make sure he’s loved.”
