Irene White (43) lay in a pool of her own blood at her home on Demesne Road, Dundalk. She was on her back with her head pressed against the door of a dishwasher.

There was blood on the side of her face and smeared down the front of the dishwasher door.

There were two large stab wounds on her stomach and chest, turning her cream-coloured polo-neck jumper dark red.

The separated mother-of-three still had on her right hand a rubber glove from when she had been washing the dishes at the time that gardai believe her killer struck. Her left hand was bent behind her back.

The strike was fast and brutal, according to the wounds which caused internal damage to her vital organs, with a series of blows of a blade struck into her heart, liver and lungs, resulting in death by massive blood loss and haemorrhage.

Irene White's family believe that what her mother Maureen witnessed on the morning of 6 April last year led to the widow's own death six months later. She "died inside" the day she found Irene's body, the murder victim's sister, Anne Delcassian, told the gathering at her mother's funeral last October. Maureen McBride had passed away at Louth County Hospital, having been rushed there after she collapsed. Tragedy has never been far from the family.

Maureen's son, Michael, died in a road accident when Irene and Anne were young children, and her husband Matt died from cancer in the 1970s.

Delcassian, who lives in Manchester, is now the sole surviving member of Irene White's immediate family following Maureen McBride's death. She has said that her mother's last hope was that justice would be done in catching the person who murdered Irene.

One month after the murder, Crimestoppers posted a 10,000 reward for information leading to the identification of the woman's killer. Yet, almost 12 months after the brutal slaying, the case has not only failed to yield any significant developments but has inexplicably dropped off the public radar.

Contrast In contrast to the similar killings of north Dublin mother-of-two Rachel O'Reilly, and south Dublin hotelier and mother-of-one Siobhan Kearney . . . both of which also occurred in their own homes with signs of brutal force . . . little media attention has been focused on the probe into Irene White's death.

"I think some of that is because, since Irene's mam passed away, there isn't someone around locally that is at the centre of keeping the thing going, in terms of keeping pressure on people to remember, " says Dundalk Fianna Fail councillor Peter Savage, a distant relative of the family.

To date, despite the large reward offer from Crimestoppers, no major new information has been provided. The response to the appeal was not significant in comparison to other investigations, according to a Crimestoppers spokeswoman.

What effect this lack of attention will ultimately have on the success of the investigation remains uncertain. But behind the scenes, gardai are working to make a breakthrough in the case. That could come sooner than later. It is understood that detectives from the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigations (NBCI) are currently sorting through hundreds of mobile phone users whose details have been gathered by triangulating the signals of all calls made in the area on the morning that White was murdered.

Someone, they believe, may have information that may prove crucial to the probe into Irene White's own movements on the morning of her death, and into the movements of a man who was seen acting suspiciously in the vicinity of her home that morning.

The route that Irene White took that day was not unusual. She left her house just before 9am in her maroon Mazda 626, dropping her eldest daughter Jennifer (17) off at the Marist College secondary school on St Mary's Road in the town before driving to Mill Road, where she dropped off her two younger children, seven-year-old daughter Dairine and five-yearold son, Damhan, at Realt Na Mara primary school around 9.10am.

She spent the next 40 minutes speaking with another mother outside the school before getting back into her car and driving off. Gardai have learned that she went from there to St Helena's Park in the town, but where she went from there is not clear. Did she meet someone and, if so, who and at whose request? Some of these answers may be found in the extensive cross-check of mobile phone calls.

It was not until some hours later, at 12.30pm, that Irene White's body was found. The victim normally shared a cup of tea with her mother around noon. Irene's mother Maureen had lived at the family home in Omeath, Co Louth, before coming to stay with her daughter in Dundalk. The pair were great friends, according to sister Anne, and shared a very close bond.

Irene White was popular locally, having worked for several years as a receptionist at Fyffes in Dundalk, and as an agent for Avon cosmetics. Shortly before her murder, she had begun to practise reiki and aromatherapy treatments in her home.

The fact that it was the murdered woman's mother who was to inevitably discover her bloodied remains may not have been an accident, Anne Delcassian insists.

Speaking after her mother's funeral, she speculated that the killer would have been likely to know the regular routine shared by mother and daughter, and would have timed the strike specifically between the time when the youngest children were dropped at school and the regular noon-time cup of tea.

Maureen lived in a chalet at the rear of the property and had access to the rear of the house. That morning, the door was open when she approached. Not realising anything was unusual, she walked in to find her daughter in a pool of blood.

The crime scene itself gives some clues about the nature of the attack. Crucially, perhaps, despite the gruesome and violent nature of the killing, there was little disturbance to the scene.

Beyond minor damage such as a broken glass on the floor, there was no indication that the attack was as a result of a botched robbery. Nor is there any indication that the killer broke into the house forcibly.

The fact that the victim appears to have been washing dishes at her kitchen sink prior to being fatally stabbed suggests that not alone was she unaware of a potential threat to her life, but also that the killer may have lurked for a time inside the house, waiting for her to return from her school run that morning.

The killer is believed to have brought a knife with him/her as no item was missing from the house.

The murder weapon has not been recovered.

Key to the garda probe are the actions of a man seen behaving suspiciously around the house that morning. At around 10.15am, a man was seen running from the vicinity of the house.

He ran through Ice Hill Park and exited into another nearby park before getting into a darkcoloured car that was parked there. The man is described as being aged between 30 and 40 and wearing jeans, a dark jacket and a cap.

Anyone who may have seen the man at or around this time could provide gardai with a crucial breakthrough in the case. But without consistent media focus on the probe, it may prove difficult to alert members of the public who may have been in the area on the day to recall any observations they have of that morning.

Aside from an occasional mention in local newspapers, the Argus and Dundalk Democrat, there has been little focus in the national press on the facts which could jog the memory of the many people who passed through the town on that day. Gardai have also been reticent to brief journalists offthe-record on developments in the investigation.

This may be partly related to concerns among senior gardai who are also involved in the Rachel O'Reilly case, who believe that an over-enthusiastic and frequently inaccurate level of reporting by sections of the media may yet prove to be the undoing of any subsequent prosecution.

Anne Delcassian declined to comment on the case when contacted last week by the Sunday Tribune, and is said to wish to deal solely through the local press. It is understood that her decision may, in part, be influenced by an attempt by a reporter in one tabloid Sunday newspaper to obtain information from her by posing under a deliberately concealed identity.

There was only one brief flurry of media attention on the case when, a week after the murder, Maureen McBride secured an interim High Court injunction preventing Irene White's estranged husband Alan from selling the family home, and from entering or interfering with any assets of the dead woman, who died without leaving a will. The couple had been living apart since the previous February. Alan White works in security.

The couple had agreed to sell the detached house for 925,000 to Eircom and to split the money from the sale. The interim injunction was lifted the following month, by mutual consent. But there has been little to keep public attention focused on details of the case in the meantime.