On the second day of his trial in July 2001, Moran pleaded guilty to the brutal rape of a 27-year-old Carlow woman.

But six days before he was sentenced, he travelled to Dublin airport, and boarded a flight for Boston, signing a visa waiver for a tourist visit that he would overstay. Eventually, his passport would expire, leaving him trapped there.

On 18 July 1999, his victim was walking home from a hen party in Carlow. Moran, who at the time had a job as a general operative in a factory in Naas, grabbed her from behind. He raped her, leaving her black and blue with bruises and with bite marks all over her body. When a passing woman came upon the attack, Moran tried to convince her that he was the victim's boyfriend. The witness rang the gardai, but Moran fled the scene before they arrived. His jeans, however, were covered in mud, a detail noticed by witnesses in the area who eventually helped to identify him as the attacker.

Moran's trial began on 23 July 2001, and the next day he pleaded guilty, before fleeing to the US. He said he couldn't remember attacking his victim, and that when he saw the dirt on his jeans, he thought: "I knew I had done something and that my worst nightmare was going to come true."

Gardai in Ireland had been searching for Moran since that time. They became aware that he had travelled directly to Boston following a lengthy microfiche search of documents at Dublin airport.

From Logan airport, Moran travelled to the old Irish Embassy Hostel on Friend Street in downtown Boston, what the American authorities called "a rooming house for Irish immigrants". By the time, gardai found this out and checked on his whereabouts, Moran was long gone with no forwarding address.

Boston Irish He began working as a labourer almost immediately and, in recent times, he branched out on his own, setting up a roofing business. According to sources in Boston, this venture operated under the name 'Weatherwatch Exteriors' and was quite successful, renovating houses in the Boston area. The US authorities believed he set up this business three years ago, but gardai think it was much later, probably only earlier this year.

Moran mingled with the large Irish community in Boston and kept in contact with his family in Carlow, calling them from phone boxes throughout the city. Gardai hoped that these phone calls would lead to them discovering his whereabouts, but with 5,000 phone service providers in the US, attempts to track his calls proved fruitless.

He became involved in a relationship with a woman . . .

Jennifer Shaw. She had a daughter whom, she says, Moran acted like a father to.

According to Shaw, Moran had a serious drink problem when they met, but has been sober for three years.

Gradually, gardai began to establish that Moran was living somewhere in the New England area. They prepared the paperwork, sending over extradition papers. The Boston police and the FBI were said to be exceptionally helpful. Earlier this year, the FBI convinced the television station Fox Channel 25 to run details of Moran's crime on a television programme called 'New England Unsolved'. As a result of that programme, an anonymous tipster contacted the Boston police, who then passed on the information to the FBI.

Although Moran never had a social security number in the US . . . and wasn't registered to vote, making him extremely difficult to track . . . his time under the radar was over.

His now ex-partner Shaw testified as a character witness for Moran during last week's hearing at Dublin's Central Criminal Court. "The person I knew bears no relation to that crime, " she said, adding that she has struggled to come to terms with what Moran did.

She said he was "gentle and loving." Shaw never had any contact with Moran's family while they were together, although Moran was close to her mother and her grandmother, who is now deceased.

"It is still hard to this day to get my head around what he did, " she said. Moran's present partner, known only as 'Louisa', has since moved to Ireland with their five-monthold son. They have been together for a couple of years.

Beneath contempt "You would not have expected any member of that family to be involved in anything like that, " a friend of Moran's family said this weekend. Others reiterated that they were a "decent and respectable" family. Moran has three brothers and one sister.

Last Monday, Justice Paul Carney sentenced Moran to seven years in prison. Moran said that he hoped his victim had got on with her life as he had with his. Carney said this was "beneath contempt", and that it must have been unbelievably difficult for the victim to think of Moran becoming a successful businessman in the US while she struggled without closure. The victim herself said it made her feel "sick to my stomach", and that she still could not go out and relax because "everyone in the town knows it happened to me and feels sorry for me, but I didn't want this."

Moran said he felt "immense shame and sorrow", and claimed not to remember the rape. "I will always be tormented by what I did, " he said.

"I am fighting hard against depression and I'm truly and deeply sorry for my victim."

But by last week, any hopes he'd harboured of a suspended sentence . . . something Carney had considered during the original trial in November 2001 upon hearing that four inmates from Arbour Hill prison had sent a letter to Moran saying they were "looking forward" to his arrival . . . had long expired.