On 25th September, 2001, 28 year old German tourist Bettina Poeschel took a train from Dublin to Drogheda, Co Louth. She wanted to visit Newgrange – an ancient monument in the Meath countryside. She decided to make the 10km walk from the town to take in the countryside while there.
But Bettina never made it to Newgrange.
She had disappeared into thin air.
Continue reading “107 – The Day Trip: Bettina Poeschel”In 1987, Brian McGrath disappeared. His wife, Vera, said he’d gone to Holland to find work. That he was abusive and delusional. But 6 years later, their eldest daughter Veronica told police that her mother, and her fiance at the time, had beaten Brian McGrath to death and buried and burned his body at their home in Coole, Co. Westmeath.
Who murdered Brian McGrath?
Continue reading “47 – Family Secrets: The death of Brian McGrath”In October 1971, on a rural lane south of the village of Ratoath, Co Meath, Una Lynsky disappeared while walking a short distance from a bus stop to her home. Around that time, screams were heard and a strange car was seen driving up and down the lane. But three local lads, Dick Donnelly, Martin Kerrigan, and Martin Conmey found that they were the ones who had drawn the attention of the notorious Murder Squad of the Garda Siochana.
By the end of the year, two young people from Porterstown Lane would be dead. Two trials would follow and a series of appeals to try and clear a man’s name of guilt that did not belong to him.
Continue reading “34 – The murder of Una Lynsky, Wrongful Convictions & fight for Justice”The small town of Ada Oklahoma was rocked in the early 80s by two unrelated murders of young women in the town. But by the mid 90s, that would change. The town would come under scrutiny for miscarriages of justice, where two and possibly more men were convicted of crimes they did not commit.
Last month, Netflix released The Innocent Man, a 6 part series looking at these crimes and their aftermaths. This week on the podcast, we take an in-depth look into just one of those cases, that of the murder of Debbie Sue Carter and the wrongful convictions of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz.
Ron and Dennis had very different journeys through their appeals processes, but both of their fates lay in the testing of DNA evidence. Would new science finally exonerate them?
Continue reading “32 – Ron Williamson, Wrongful Convictions & Murders in Ada (Part 2)”