On a spring morning in June 2001 an eight-year-old girl gathers moss for her grandmother’s hanging baskets in a forest near Ballinamore in Co Leitrim. The child lets out a scream, she had discovered a body.  The remains belonged to Enniskillen businessman, Gerry McGinley and it was clear that he been murdered.  He had been killed by his own wife Julie and her lover, in fact they were already in custody over it.  But it wasn’t a simple tale of adultery. It involved hotel sex with strangers, lies, blackmail and videotape – and included many prominent people in Fermanagh.  

Andrew Madden researched this sordid story for the Belfast Telegraph. 

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30 years on from the violent killing of publican Tom Nevin, part two of this special podcast looks at how Nevin's wife, Catherine Nevin, emerged as the prime suspect; the murder trial and media blitz that followed; and why Ireland’s ‘Black Widow’ still fascinates us to this day.  

Host: Fionnán Sheahan  

Guest: Mary Wilson  

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Thirty years ago, Wicklow publican Tom Nevin was shot dead as he counted the takings following a busy day at Jack White’s Inn. Initially, the incident appeared to be a robbery gone wrong, but grieving wife Catherine Nevin would eventually emerge as the prime suspect and later come to be known as ‘The Black Widow’.

On the first of a two-part special, we look back at how one of Ireland’s most famous criminals came into the spotlight. 

Host: Fionnán Sheahan 

Guest: Mary Wilson

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Roger Casement was hanged in August 1916 for treason against the Crown. Formerly Sir Roger, his assistance to Germany during the First World Ward was undeniable and from a British point of view he was a traitor.  

From from an Irish nationalist point of view, he was a rebel and a hero who now took his place in history among the martyrs of republicanism and the leader of the 1916 Rising.  

No knight of the realm had faced treason charges for centuries, let alone be executed. His story was without precedent.  

A Protestant Anglo-Irish man who had been a loyal servant of the British empire, he had exposed horrific abuses of indigenous people in Africa and South America. But he then came to believe Ireland urgently needed to free itself of Britain. 

Who was this complex individual and how did he end up being killed by the state he had served?   

Casement is a subject of a new book – A Rebel And A Traitor – by Rory Carroll, the Guardian's Ireland correspondent. 

He joined Sam McBride on the BelTel.  

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Belfast poet, Sinéad Morrisey, was brought up in a Communist family. Hers was a childhood lived in the little world created by the party, a world apart from others and from the Troubles.  

It involved smoke-filled rooms, endless meetings, and dreams of a future utopia – coupled with a belief that east of the Iron Curtain, there were people already living in it.   

The fall of Communism in the eastern block was more than an historical event for her family – it was the end of a dream and of a way of life.  

Sinéad Morrisey’s new memoir is called ‘Among Communists’. She joined Ciarán Dunbar to explain the book and her story. 

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Members of the jury in the Noah Donohoe inquest have been asked to indicate their availability for the month of May.  

The inquest officially began on the 19th of January and was expected to finish up in mid-March.  

Fourteen-year-old Noah’s body was discovered in north Belfast on the 27 of June 2020 - six days after he had gone missing.  

This week an anonymous witness at the inquest denied being the caller who informed police that Daryl Paul had been trying to sell Noah Donohoe’s laptop. 

Liam Tunney has been covering the inquest for the Belfast Telegraph. 

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It was supposed to be an oral record of the Troubles, made by the paramilitaries, and initially the ‘Boston Tapes’ project seemed like a really good idea, albeit one which would include descriptions of violence and terror. 

The concept was simple – former paramilitaries would be interviewed, the tapes would then be kept in storage, and their stories only revealed after the interviewee’s deaths. 

But it became clear that the scheme was flawed and that the recordings were not as secret as participants assumed.

Now the Belfast Telegraph can reveal that the Boston College tapes archive has been formally closed - and will remain so for 75 years from when it was first created

• What was the Boston Tapes project?
• What went wrong?
• And why have the records been sealed?

Ciarán Dunbar is joined by Belfast Telegraph reporter, Andrew Madden.

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Murderer Stephen McCullagh has been aptly described as “a monster hiding in plain sight”.

A week on from his conviction there has been a lot of reaction to the the nerd-culture YouTuber’s conviction of murdering Natalie McNally.

He denied the killing, but the jury unanimously found him guilty in a matter of hours. He has yet to be given his tariff, but Natalie’s family says he should never be let out. 

They say he is simply “too dangerous to let out on the street”.

Meanwhile, the Sunday Life has revealed that a film made by McCullagh as a student chillingly foretold the murder and how he pretended to be one of our journalists to find out what evidence the cops had on him.

The Sunday Life’s Angela Davison joins Ciarán Dunbar with some of the stories which could not be told whilst the trial was ongoing and what has emerged since McCullagh’s conviction.

This podcast was amended at 10:00 am on Monday 30th March in order to correct an error. A previous version mentioned in the podcast intro that 'McNally' made a video whilst a student, when it should have said 'McCullagh' made a video as a student.

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The jury at the inquest into the death of Noah Donohoe has now heard nine weeks of evidence – the process could last until May.  

This week they heard more on how police dealt with CCTV footage of the missing teenager and how his school books were found in a Belfast flat.  

A police officer also revealed that he was briefed before he spoke to the inquest. 

Liam Tunney is covering the Noah Donohoe inquest for the Belfast Telegraph.

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‘How I stumbled on Stormont’s new policy of extreme censorship - which means we’ll understand NI’s past less fully’.  

 That was the stark headline on a recent comment piece from my colleague Sam McBride – the Belfast Telegraph’s Northern Ireland editor.  

 He discovered the unannounced policy whilst exploring declassified files in London - a policy which has been used to cover-up official attitudes to the Famine.  

 Sam McBride joins Ciarán Dunbar to explain the story behind the headline.

Stormont’s extreme censorship of Famine remarks – and how we unravelled it

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