In May of 1994, Philomena Gillane was 7 months pregnant. On the morning of Wednesday the 11th, she left her home early to head to work. But she never arrived. She was found dead in the boot of her own car 25 miles away, at Athlone Train station.
Her family would spend the next 3 years in and out of courts dealing with the fallout from her brutal murder, and in a search for justice that was never fully achieved.
Continue reading “84 – Dark Saga: The Murder of Philomena Gillane”On Saturday, September 9th 2017, a group of women were celebrating a 25th birthday in a house in Rhyl, Wales. Tyler Denton was hosting the party for her new girlfriend Hayley Barnett. It was supposed to be a girls night but Tylers room mate Redvers James Bickley had crashed the party.
None of the young women could have predicted that by the end of the night one of them would be dead, and 3 others would be seriously injured.
Continue reading “82 – Frenzied: Redvers Bickley”In October of 2012, 30 year old Aoife Phelan went missing without a trace. Aoife had simply left a friends house and vanished with no sign of what might become of her. A garda investigation began to find the woman who had told hr family she was 4 months pregnant.
It would be a long two weeks before police discovered what had become of her.
Continue reading “81 – A Voyage of Fiction: The murder of Aoife Phelan”In the early hours New Year’s day, 2014 Wayne McQuillan stumbled out of a house in Rathmullen Park, Drogheda Co Louth. He was covered in blood. Paula Farrell, his partner would face trial for his murder three times.
But did she have a defence?
Continue reading “80 – Trauma: The murder of Wayne McQuillan”In February of 1996, 16 year old James Healy was found brutally beaten in a field near his home in Tralee. It wouldn’t be long before gardai zeroed in on their prime suspect – a 25 year old man diagnosed with anti social personality disorder.
In fact, police feared that he would one day murder.
Continue reading “79 – Savage: The murder of James Healy”Just before Christmas 1994, Patch O’Driscoll went missing from his bedsit in Cork City. When the garda investigation began into his missing persons case, it was discovered two other men had also disappeared from the very same house on Wellington Terrace. Though there was no evidence of a crime scene inside the large dilapidated building, the cause was certainly within.
But there would be few answers and no justice in the case.
Continue reading “76 – House of Horrors: Cork’s missing men”In May of 1991, the bodies of Lesley Clarke and Trevor Buchanan were discovered in a fume filled car, parked in Lesley’s deceased father’s garage. The deaths were ruled a tragic double suicide – probably the result of the affair that Lesley and Trevor’s spouses were carrying on together.
But 18 years later, a startling confession would launch a renewed investigation into the deaths, this time as a case of murder. The prime suspects were the victim’s spouses – Colin Howell and Hazel Buchanan.
Continue reading “75 – Pathological: The murders of Lesley Clarke and Trevor Buchanan”In the early hours of New Years Day 2003, Rachel Moran decided leave her parents house and make the 20 minute walk to her own flat. Her worried mother tried to stop her, but Rachel said she would be fine: she’d ring as soon as she got in.
But the phone call never came.
And Rachel was never seen alive again.
Continue reading “71 – A Walk in the Dark: The murder of Rachel Moran”In 1967, a teacher was shot in her classroom in Dundee.
In 1976, two men escaped a mental hospital and killed three others in the process.
In 1979, three women were found beaten and strangled in a flat in Dundee.
All of these horrific events had one thing in common.
The name Robert Mone.
Continue reading “70 – Lives of Violence: Robert Mone”In 1925, while the Irish Free State was still in its infancy after the close of the civil war, the body of a young woman was found dead lying at a lonely cross roads in South County Dublin. Her name was Honor Bright, a woman who made her living as a sex worker in town.
Two men were tried for her shooting death, but was her killing a the result of her “unfortunate” status, or part of an attempt to keep scandal away from the halls of power in a newly-independent Ireland?
Continue reading “67 – Honor Bright: Murder in the Free State”