00:04
It's the morning of Wednesday, February 16th, 2000, in Ballalee, County Galway.
00:10
The small and quiet townland straddling the edge of the County Roscommon border wakes to a bitterly cold, raw midwinter morning.
00:18
Over the last couple of days, the temperature has barely hovered above freezing.
00:24
The biting northwesterly wind sweeps in gusts across the small scatter of family farms and detached homes along the main Galway to Roscommon Road.
00:34
In one of those houses, a man looks out his window across to his neighbour's place.
00:39
Nancy Nolan is 80 and she's lived alone in her two-storey home since her husband died some years earlier.
00:46
Checking on her is part of daily life in this tiny rural community but this morning he's looking a little harder.
00:54
He notices Nancy's car is still on the road out the front.
00:58
He knows she usually puts it in her garage overnight but it's still there.
01:04
The man's phone rings and it's Nancy's daughter.
01:09
She's been trying to get true to her mother but still getting no answer.
01:13
He tells her he hasn't seen her since Monday, Valentine's Day.
01:18
He says he'll go straight over and check on her.
01:21
There's a sense of shared comfort knowing he has a key for times like this.
01:27
He walks over and finds himself at her door.
01:31
He knocks.
01:33
There's no answer.
01:34
The house is silent.
01:40
Noticing her post hasn't been collected, he hesitates with the key and decides not to open the door.
01:48
He'll go home and call Roscommon Town Gardie.
02:07
Thank you.
02:15
When someone is killed in Ireland, the Gardaí call in a specialist unit of forensic crime scene examiners from the Technical Bureau.
02:23
This is Ireland's real-life version of CSI, but it's nothing like the movies or TV shows.
02:29
For 25 years, I was one of the detectives on that team.
02:33
My name is John Sweetman.
02:35
My job as a guarded detective in the technical bureau was to read the evidence that could not speak for itself.
02:42
I learned to see what others might miss.
02:45
Fingerprints smudged on the handle of a door. Weapons disguised as everyday objects. Handwritten notes that revealed more than the writer ever intended.
02:55
The smallest traces often unraveled the bigger story.
02:58
And now, I'm here to tell you those stories.
03:02
In this podcast from Goloud, I take you inside some of Ireland's most haunting investigations.
03:09
This is Lines of Inquiry, a Goloud original podcast that follows the evidence step by step and tries to uncover the real story behind the headlines.
03:20
In this episode, a community haunted by past crimes and an elderly woman who sparked national change.
03:38
On the 16th of February, 2000, in Roscommon Town, Gardie received a call from a concerned neighbour to go and check on Nancy Nolan, 20 kilometres away in Ballalee.
03:49
Being right on the county border, Ballalee and nearby Ballygar Town fall directly under the Galway East Roscommon Guarded Division.
03:58
At 1pm, three Gardie arrived to the two-storey house.
04:03
Her neighbour handed over the key to Nancy's front door.
04:07
Knowing she was 80, they were concerned that she may have had a medical episode.
04:13
Gardee opened the door.
04:16
As they went to step inside, they were confronted with Nancy lying in the hall.
04:23
The officers approached her.
04:25
They noticed she was face down with a large amount of blood around her.
04:30
Looking closer, they noticed severe head and facial injuries.
04:35
There was nothing to suggest she'd had an accident.
04:39
The doors were locked and there was no sign of a break-in or a robbery.
04:44
Everything seemed perfectly in place.
04:48
Outside on the road, Gardie looked inside Nancy's car and discovered her groceries had not been brought in.
04:55
Knowing her car had been on the road since Monday the 14th, they realised she may have been deceased for almost two days.
05:03
As they explored, they noticed that Nancy's glasses, which she always wore, were missing.
05:12
Gardie cordoned off the house and forensics were called in to comb every inch of the area.
05:18
At the divisional headquarters in Roscommon Town, Chief Superintendent Bill Fennell set up a special incident room and every officer from the area was put on the case.
05:30
Ballalee is home to less than a few dozen people.
05:33
The townland centres entirely around a few farms and the National School, one of the oldest in the country.
05:40
Around 70 or so kids attend the primary school, with very few teachers.
05:45
But with its 130-year history, it's been an anchor for generation after generation of local children.
05:52
Although long retired, Nancy Nolan and her late husband Tom were pivotal to that history.
06:00
Nancy was a much-loved teacher there and Tom had been the principal.
06:05
After retirement and into old age the couple remained in their home just twenty metres down the road.
06:12
With no shops in Ballalee, Nancy would drive the few kilometres to nearby Ballygar village almost every day, which, with a population of around 600 people, was the hub for the farming communities all around it.
06:26
The two communities are inextricably linked, tightly threaded by the bonds that generations of families have built.
06:34
On a broad scale, the annual music festival and almost century-old Ballygar Carnival bring the whole region together, while on a smaller, deeper level, the heart of the community still beats from St. Mary's Catholic Church.
06:49
Balilee had once had its own thatched, wattle-and-daub church, but by the mid-1800s it had begun its deterioration into the ruins still there today.
07:00
People began to travel to St. Mary's in Baligar, strengthening the ties between the two places.
07:07
Nancy and her husband, Tom Nolan, were long-time parishioners of St. Mary's and were also deeply entrenched in the community around them throughout their lives.
07:20
After retiring in 1984 Nancy continued her service via various voluntary groups including the church.
07:28
She was known as very down to earth and extremely kind.
07:33
She and Tom had one son and five daughters who had all moved away to various parts of the country and she was an adored mother and grandmother.
07:42
She enjoyed her independence and didn't mind living alone after Tom passed on.
07:48
Nancy was from a large family of ten kids, but especially close with her younger sister, who, along with two of Nancy's children, had visited her that weekend.
08:02
As her loved ones and community learned of her death, there was a deep sense of shock and sadness.
08:09
It just seemed unfathomable that this could happen.
08:16
Over at Ruscommon Town Garda Station, Chief Superintendent Bill Fennell had already put 40 Garda on the case.
08:24
Considering there was no forced entry, they had to consider that Nancy may have known her attacker.
08:31
They worried that the person may have been hiding, waiting for her to return home.
08:36
But who would want to kill an 80-year-old woman?
08:39
And why, when there was money in her purse, would someone take her glasses?
08:45
Gardie began door-to-door inquiries and distributed 1,200 questionnaires across the region.
08:53
As nightfall approached, the plan for a detailed comb of the entire area surrounding Nancy's house was postponed to commence at first light the following morning.
09:03
That evening, Chief Superintendent Fellow and Assistant Garda Commissioner Eamon Keating spoke to the public stating how shocked and appalled they were by Nancy's murder.
09:14
Gardie were trying to map out Nancy's last movements and asked the public to help.
09:20
An appeal was made to anyone who might have seen her between 2pm on Monday and late on Tuesday night to contact the Gardie.
09:28
One of the top priorities of Gardie in the West is the protection of the elderly, Keating said.
09:35
Fennell assured the public that no expense would be spared to bring the person or persons responsible for the crime to justice.
09:43
the hunt for the killer would be ongoing.
09:50
For the safe and peaceful community, Nancy's death was devastating.
09:55
A selfless, elderly woman who had spent so much of her life helping raise generations of local children, murdered, and the possibility that the killer could be amongst them.
10:08
Neither Gardaí nor the community could fathom it.
10:13
Nancy's murder stirred up painful memories many in the community had tried to forget.
10:19
Just one and a half kilometres from Nancy's house, nearly 20 years earlier, in the summer of 1981, another local person, 73-year-old farmer Willie Mannion, was found murdered at his kitchen table.
10:34
The young man responsible, who was local and just 17 at the time, was charged and sentenced to life in prison.
10:42
The community was still haunted by it.
10:46
The 1981 murder of Willie Manion was part of an upsurge in attacks on the elderly across the country. In 1984, 432 elderly people were attacked in their homes, many of them living alone in remote areas.
11:03
Following this, the community development organisation Winter Natir set up a community alert scheme for the elderly, which proved highly successful in reducing those numbers.
11:14
Now, over 15 years later, with the media presence growing around Nancy's case, everyone's minds went back to that time.
11:24
The National President of Mwyntonateer, Mr Jim Quigley, attempted to reassure the community, reminding them that Roscommon had one of the lowest incidences of crime nationwide.
11:38
At Roscommon County Hospital, Deputy State Pathologist Dr. Mary Cassidy carried out Nancy's post-mortem, listing repeated serious head injuries and blunt force trauma as the cause of death.
11:54
She appeared to have been struck from the front, likely after opening the door, approximately eight times.
12:01
A couple of the blows were likely administered after she hit the ground.
12:06
The two main areas of impact were the right side of her head and forehead, believed to have been done by a small but heavy object with a striking surface of two to four centimetres.
12:18
Dr. Cassidy believed the magnitude of force used would have knocked Nancy unconscious immediately, and she wouldn't have survived for any length of time.
12:31
Little forensic evidence had been found, but a glimmer of hope lay in a small number of microscopic, almost invisible, polyester fabric fibres on Nancy's clothing.
12:41
Fibres that did not match what she was wearing.
12:46
These were sent for forensic testing.
12:50
The search of Nancy's home and property and the wider fingertip search didn't find the murder weapon and there still didn't seem to be any motive.
13:00
Search efforts quickly shifted towards the local bogs.
13:05
In rural Ireland, boglands are notorious locations for the disposing of criminal evidence due to their deep, wet and mossy terrain that can easily hide or quickly swallow items.
13:17
Once something is submerged in the wet, acidic and highly dynamic environment, critical forensic clues can be destroyed.
13:29
The case of Willie Mannion in 1981 stuck vividly in the minds of the older detectives, as did the hunt for his teenage killer, Thomas Murray.
13:39
Had it not been for Murray's eventual confession and description of exactly where in the peatlands of the Ballygar bog he'd hidden the murder weapon, in that case a knife, the Gardaí may never have found it.
13:52
And now, if the weapon used to murder Nancy had also been discarded in the Bogland, it would be like searching for a ghost in the fog.
14:03
On Friday, the 18th of February, Nancy's friends and family gathered in St. Mary's Church in Ballygar, the same church which had brought her and her people together so many times before.
14:15
This time, they were there to say goodbye to Nancy.
14:21
There was a profound sense of sadness and disbelief in the church.
14:26
On the altar, over ten priests, including the local bishop, co-celebrated the Mass for Nancy Nolan.
14:33
Her first cousin, Father Enda McDonough, stood before the mourners.
14:38
He spoke about how kind and gentle Nancy was, and how she always seemed to anticipate the needs of others and soothe their sorrows.
14:48
Talking about her teaching career, he said that she had taught the local children what it meant to be human.
14:57
Nancy was laid to rest next to her husband as family and friends attempted to make sense of what had happened to one of the most beloved members of their community.
15:07
Thousands of people had gathered to express their condolences to her grieving friends and family, throwing their arms around them as only a tight-knit community can.
15:18
Her murder had shattered everyone's belief in the greater good and dismissed any notion that their elderly were safe and protected.
15:27
Breej Gormley, a friend of Nancy's, spoke to the Ruscommon Herald at the time and told them how the murder had made her feel extremely nervous.
15:37
She said, I was a very brave girl before this, but I think the braveness is gone out of me now.
15:48
On February 21st, five days after Nancy's murder, Gardie set up road checkpoints near her home, seeking information from motorists.
15:58
If they were going to get answers from the local people, they had to move with precision and piece Nancy's last movements together carefully.
16:07
That same day, a spokesman for the investigation team denied reports that detectives had a suspect for the crime.
16:15
The people of Ballygar had begun to whisper about Thomas Murray as the ground search widened to the water-soaked fringes of town and the local bog.
16:25
After all, decades earlier, Murray had been a student of Nancy Nolan's at the Ballylee National School.
16:32
And even though Murray, by this time 36 years old, was serving a life sentence for murder, over the years he had been granted different versions of supervised and unsupervised day release.
16:45
Every Monday, for those early weeks of 2000, Murray had been seen somewhere around Ballygar.
16:52
And there was talk that he was around that past Monday, the day Nancy was murdered.
16:59
People were frightened he'd be back the next week too.
17:03
The public didn't know that Gardaí had already searched Murray's property or that they were awaiting forensic testing of his clothing.
17:12
The Gardie appealed for further information and released CCTV footage via the press and on RTE's crimeline of Nancy Shopping in Ballygarre.
17:25
Just over a month after Nancy's murder, on March 20th, 2000, Gardie announced the arrests of two men on suspicion of Nancy's murder.
17:35
The Gardies spoke to the press because they didn't want any assumptions to be made.
17:40
They revealed that the two men were being held for questioning.
17:44
The first was a married man in his 60s who was arrested at his home near to where Nancy lived.
17:50
The second man, in his thirties, was arrested from Castlereagh Prison.
17:55
Both men were taken separately to Ruscommon Town Garda Station to be interviewed, Without naming the men, they said that one man in custody was also being questioned over the unsolved murder of local taxi driver Eileen Costolo O'Shaughnessy from two or so years earlier in 1997.
18:15
He is our only suspect in both crimes. We are building the case against him, an unnamed senior officer said.
18:23
The officer also revealed that one of the men being questioned was on day release the days that both murders occurred.
18:32
Every single local person knew exactly who they were referring to.
18:36
36-year-old Thomas Murray.
18:51
Since their murder inquiry began, Gardie had been looking directly at Thomas Murray.
18:57
Inspector William Gallagher had already received warrants to carry out two separate searches.
19:03
Gardie and the prison authorities had already cancelled all Murray's future temporary release days.
19:10
One team of Gardee were dispatched to the land owned by the Murray family at Clune Line just outside Ballygar, bordering the Ballygar bog.
19:19
Another team, including Inspector Gallagher and Detectives Alec Dempsey and Joe Conboy, travelled to Castlereagh Prison to search Murray's property.
19:29
The prison was originally a mental health hospital and a tuberculosis sanatorium, before being converted to a medium-security prison in 1996.
19:39
The original layout of the buildings remained, where separate houses originally used for TB patients were transformed into a medium-security prison.
19:49
Inmates, including Murray, lived share-house style rather than in cells.
19:57
When Gardie met with Murray, he agreed that on the day of Nancy's murder he had been on day release, but he insisted he had no knowledge of it whatsoever.
20:08
Searching his room, they found nothing untoward.
20:11
The only thing they could do was take the clothes he had worn out that day away for forensic testing, a black knitted jumper and a beige coloured jacket.
20:22
As rumours swirled about the arrests and the searches of the Murray property and Castlery prison, hearts fell across a community angered by the present and haunted by the past.
20:35
Back in 1981, on a bright Sunday morning in July, the community spirit was in full display as the annual Ballygar Carnival got underway.
20:46
After mass that morning, the townspeople milled around the front of St Mary's, chatting in the sun.
20:53
One of those friendly conversations was between a well-known bachelor farmer, 73-year-old Willie Mannion, and a 17-year-old, Thomas Murray.
21:03
Mannion, known as a typical man of his generation, was a popular and social member of the local community, who had a friendly and open character.
21:13
A farmer who often left the door open for anyone to drop in for a cup of tea.
21:19
The Murrays owned the farmland bordering Willie Mannions, but lived a few kilometres away.
21:25
That morning, Willie and Thomas walked and talked from St. Mary's Church up the street before parting ways.
21:33
That afternoon and evening, after listening to a Gaelic football match and having tea with his family, Murray got on his bike.
21:41
He went back and forth to the carnival a couple of times and visited his uncle who lived nearby.
21:48
At around 10.30pm, as his father headed for the pub, Thomas Murray left the home again.
21:55
This time, instead of going to the carnival, Murray cycled to Willie Mannion's rural homestead.
22:01
He passed by the local bogland, where he'd hidden a knife he'd taken from his uncle's place earlier.
22:08
Willie let Thomas in, and they sat down at the kitchen table.
22:13
The two talked for a while about the football that had been played that weekend.
22:18
When Thomas walked out of the house that night, Willie was slumped at the table, covered in blood.
22:25
He had over a dozen stab wounds to his neck and face.
22:30
His hands were covered in defensive stab wounds.
22:34
Investigators would soon find that Willie had clung to life for around an hour before he died.
22:40
Around £200 was found in Willie's pocket and a further search of his home found more cash in a secret hiding place.
22:48
It was clear the motive wasn't robbery.
22:52
That night Thomas Murray overdosed on medication meant for his brother.
22:57
In an initial interview, he denied having anything to do with the murder.
23:02
A week later, he admitted to it, saying he didn't know why he did it.
23:07
And, I wouldn't do it again in a million years.
23:12
He was very cooperative with the Gardaí and told them everything he could about how he'd planned and carried out the attack.
23:20
The only thing he couldn't explain was why he had done it.
23:26
Thomas Murray was charged and convicted with the willful murder of Willie Mannion and sentenced to the mandatory life imprisonment.
23:35
Given the frenzied nature of Willie's attack, psychiatrists formed the view that Murray was of low intellect with a personality bordering on the psychotic, with some element of schizophrenia.
23:49
Nearly 20 years later, as Gardie investigated whether Thomas Murray could have possibly been responsible for Nancy Nolan's murder, the similarities in both violent and frenzied attacks were too hard to ignore.
24:03
Gardie needed to undertake a meticulous investigation.
24:10
By the time he murdered Willie, Murray was already known to the Gardaí.
24:15
As a kid, he was well known as a troublemaker, even as far back as primary school when he attended the national school and was taught by Nancy Nolan.
24:24
He was known for puncturing kids' tyres and poked others with a compass.
24:29
He only lasted a year at secondary school and after that he worked full time on his family farm.
24:37
In 1979, at the age of 15, he sent obscene letters to a female neighbour, who he didn't like.
24:44
But as the matter was about to go to court, he apologised and the case was dropped.
24:50
All in all, Thomas Murray navigated his youth with few friends, and most people found him strange and difficult.
24:58
Two of the very few people who gave him their time and didn't ignore him were Willie Mannion and his old primary school teacher, Nancy Nolan.
25:07
When many people in the community feared ever seeing Thomas Murray in public and opposed his day release over the years, Nancy Nolan was known to have been kind to him.
25:18
Nancy's sister, Eileen Glynn, said Nancy never indicated that she had any fear of him and would probably have thought speaking kindly to him would help.
25:28
This made Nancy different from her neighbours, who were terrified of him, according to Eileen.
25:34
She said, you could feel it at her funeral, as if they knew who might be responsible for this, but were afraid to say.
25:44
People wanted answers. They wanted to know how a man who had been sentenced to life imprisonment for the brutal murder of Willie Mannion had been granted day release into the community in the first place.
25:56
Conversations circled around how Murray had been granted various versions of release for over seven years by this point.
26:04
Just over ten years into his life sentence, at 28 years old, he was given his first temporary release from prison, allowing him to go home accompanied by his father.
26:14
That year he was also allowed to go home for seven days over Christmas, despite the fact that he had tried to intimidate a female teacher in prison.
26:25
He continued to be granted occasional release over the following years, attending a workshop in Ballinasloe, and later to live at home in Ballygar. In 1996, during one of these releases, he was suspected of setting hay bales and other items on fire.
26:43
They were the property of a local guard, but there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute.
26:48
Every time it was found that Murray was out in the community, there were complaints from several members of the Gardaí.
26:56
And every time they complained, they got pushback.
27:00
As the community and Gardaí wrote and pleaded for Murray to remain behind bars, they were all ignored.
27:08
In Barry Cummins' book, Lifers, he writes that eventually terrified locals were forced to accept that they were liable to meet Murray in Ballygar at any time.
27:22
By late 1997, the prison had sourced a labourer's job for him on a builder's site in Galway City and he was granted full temporary release.
27:32
Murray was effectively a free man, only having to return to prison once a month to sign on.
27:38
He lived in sheltered accommodation nearby, where he was supposed to be home by midnight each night.
27:45
That December, taxi driver Eileen Costello O'Shaughnessy was beaten to death in Galway.
27:52
Murray was almost immediately identified as a suspect when a witness reported seeing him at the scene.
27:59
He was arrested and questioned, but released when it appeared he had a firm alibi.
28:05
Eileen's killer was seen driving away in her taxi, abandoning it in Galway City.
28:11
At the time, Gardie believed Murray couldn't drive, as he had been in prison since the age of 17.
28:18
Murray remained in the community.
28:23
Shortly after this, in July 1998, just a year and a half before Nancy's murder, Thomas Murray was caught indecently exposing himself to a group of children in Galway City.
28:34
His release programme was revoked, and he was sentenced to a further six months in prison.
28:40
After serving that six-month sentence, the governor of Castlereagh Prison had sought another release for Murray.
28:47
He said the original offence had occurred 19 years before, and he felt it was reasonable to let him out with his father for a few hours once a week.
28:56
He noted that Murray had undergone 73 sessions of therapy during those 19 years.
29:02
Psychological evaluations described Murray as having been quick to violence and having a psychotic personality.
29:11
They also spoke about his tendency to bear grudges and how he had a fascination with blood.
29:19
Gardie continued to protest day release, both to the Department of Justice and the prison, expressing their concerns for the safety of the public if he was allowed out.
29:30
The community, too, felt strongly that it was only a matter of time before something even more terrible was going to happen.
29:37
Local people feared his presence.
29:40
The Gardaí's final warning described Murray's extremely violent nature and said his release would constitute a threat to the community.
29:50
Again, this was ignored.
30:00
In 1999, just months before Nancy's murder, Thomas Murray was granted day release Mondays.
30:08
He would not be accompanied by a prison officer and could be collected by his father, but had to be back inside the prison gates by 9pm or his release would be halted.
30:18
Over the following months, local Gardaí frequently reported that Murray was actively flouting his release conditions.
30:25
He was consistently violating his curfew, drinking heavily in local pubs and displaying volatile behaviour.
30:34
Gardie moved to retrieve the CCTV footage of Murray coming and going from the prison on Monday 14th February 2000.
30:43
As the grainy footage of that morning came up on the screen, officers watched as Murray's father pulled up to the front gate of Castlereagh Prison just before 9am, something wardens confirmed he had done every Monday morning for the past couple of months.
30:59
As the gate opened, Thomas Murray, wearing the black jumper and the beige jacket, walked out and over to his father's car.
31:07
He returned again twelve hours later.
31:10
Gardie started to piece together his movements for that day.
31:14
Quickly, they realised there was no stipulation on his release that he had to be monitored.
31:20
He was free to be alone in the community.
31:23
Gardie discovered that there were missing hours on the Monday when Nancy Nolan was murdered, where Murray was unaccounted for.
31:31
They knew that a community that looks after each other also takes note of unusual things that happen in their everyday lives.
31:39
Nailing those last movements didn't take long and soon the picture had become clear.
31:46
At 9am on the 14th of February, 2000, Thomas Murray walked out of the gates of Castlereagh Prison for his 12-hour release.
31:54
His father was waiting for him.
31:57
At the same time, 80-year-old Nancy Nolan was beginning her day at home on the Galway Road in Ballalee.
32:03
A few hours later, around 12.10pm, Nancy left her home, driving the two and a half miles to Ballygar village to run some errands.
32:13
Those who spoke to her in town noted she was in her usual great form.
32:18
Being Valentine's Day, she commented to a worker at the spa how beautiful the roses were.
32:25
At another shop, she chatted to some people she knew before putting her shopping in her car and driving home.
32:32
Around the same time as Nancy, Murray also arrived in town in his father's car.
32:38
He walked around town to check the barbers as well as visit his mother's grave.
32:43
After Nancy left the spar, Murray was seen in the same shop buying tobacco.
32:49
When Nancy went to her car to drive home, Murray was also seen alone, walking to his father's car and driving back out of Ballygar towards his father's home.
32:59
That drive would have him going in the exact same direction as Nancy's home, shortly after her.
33:07
In total, 167 witnesses would help paint the picture of that day.
33:13
Two of those people were from Castlereagh Prison.
33:17
On the night of Nancy's murder, Murray returned at 9pm and they noticed that he had a deep cut on his nose.
33:25
The Gardaíes still had no murder weapon and didn't know the whereabouts of Nancy's glasses.
33:31
But they had an overwhelming number of people from the public come forward on the case.
33:37
And then the Gardaí got the report from Dr Fiona Thornton at the State Forensic Science Laboratory in Dublin.
33:44
Both the black jumper and beige jacket Murray was seen wearing on CCTV that morning and the microscopic polyester fibres found on Nancy's clothing had both been sent to her for testing.
33:57
Thornton's report revealed the fibres on Nancy had come from the clothing Thomas Murray wore and fibres removed from Murray's clothing matched the clothes Nancy was wearing when she was killed.
34:10
Murray's clothing had come into contact with Nancy's clothing.
34:16
At the station, the first man who had been arrested was questioned and released without charge.
34:22
That left Murray, who, finally under arrest, could be formally questioned.
34:27
They had twelve hours to press charges.
34:31
They hoped that, just as he had done after killing Willie Mannion, Murray might cave and confess.
34:38
When asked, he couldn't explain why he had returned to prison that night with a cut on his nose.
34:44
Gardie pressed him as to whether he had scratched himself on some bushes up the bog lane while he was disposing of the murder weapon.
34:51
Murray denied it.
34:53
He denied any knowledge of the murder and said although he knew Nancy Nolan, he had not seen her that day.
35:01
He did, however, tell them that he had seen her two weeks earlier on his day release.
35:05
He said they'd spoken in town.
35:08
The interview seemed to go in circles.
35:10
With no evidence to charge, 12 hours after Murray's arrest, he was released back into the custody of the prison.
35:19
Gardie continued on with their investigation, working on the theory that he may have had a grudge against Nancy and harassed her in the past.
35:27
The Gardaí knew that they had crossed paths that day.
35:32
They just had to prove it.
35:36
Over two months since Nancy's murder had passed, and for Nancy's loved ones, hopes were fading that justice would ever be served.
35:45
On April 24, 2000, at Castlereagh, Murray told a chief prison officer that he wanted to speak to detectives.
35:52
In particular, he wanted to speak with Detective Garda Basil Johnson.
35:57
Murray had a long-time rapport with Johnson, who had been the primary local officer tasked with monitoring Murray throughout his releases over the years.
36:06
Johnson was the most familiar officer to him.
36:10
On getting word, Garda Johnson and Detective Sergeant Tom Fitzmaurice drove out to Castlereagh.
36:17
They knew that in Willie's case, Murray had denied the murder before suddenly coming clean.
36:23
They hoped that this might be the conversation that they had been waiting for.
36:28
On arrival, they cautioned Murray that anything he said might be used in evidence.
36:34
Murray told Johnson he had requested him because he had always treated him fairly.
36:40
Murray's demeanour had altered. He was more talkative and made it clear he had something to tell them.
36:49
Murray walked the detectives through his account of that day.
36:53
After Murray's father picked him up that morning from Castlereagh Prison, they chatted in the car as they headed towards Ballygar, stopping off to buy chops for their dinner.
37:03
They then went home to the farm Murray had grown up in, the place he had cycled from that night he had killed Willie.
37:10
His brother had been living away for a number of years and after his mother had died around the year before, his father lived alone.
37:18
The two of them had a cup of tea and did a few jobs around the farm as they did every Monday.
37:24
Later that morning, Murray asked his father to borrow his car to go to Ballygar.
37:30
As Murray didn't have to be monitored on release, borrowing the car wasn't a big deal.
37:36
When his mother had passed away the previous year, he was allowed to attend the funeral, but he had to be escorted to and from the prison. But by 2000, authorities believed he was safe enough to be let out on release alone.
37:50
His father asked him to go to the vet and pick up some eye ointment for the cows.
37:56
When he arrived in the village around midday, he decided he might get a haircut, but he discovered that the barber was closed.
38:04
He also went to the vet and the cemetery where his mum was buried.
38:08
He then went to the spar, which coincided with the witness seeing him buying tobacco, then leaving town in his father's car, heading back towards his farm, which was also in the direction of Nancy's home.
38:22
Murray then said he had stopped at Nancy's house, taken a lump hammer from the car and beaten her to death.
38:32
Afterwards, he picked up the bloodied hammer and her glasses and shut the door behind him.
38:39
He crossed her garden back to his car and drove off.
38:44
Where had he got the lump hammer? Gardie asked.
38:49
In late 1999, around the time he started going home on temporary release from Castlereagh Prison every Monday, Murray had found the lump hammer on the family farm.
39:00
And just like the knife he had taken from his uncle's kitchen back in 1981, he hid the lump hammer with the plan that he would use it for murder.
39:10
On the day of Nancy's murder, as he was leaving the farm for Baligar, he retrieved the hammer and took it to his father's car.
39:19
An overwhelming sense of déjà vu hung in the air as he spoke.
39:25
Now, just as he had done after the murder of Willie Mannion, Thomas Murray said he was ready to tell Gardaí where he had hidden the weapon.
39:34
After leaving Nancy's place, he headed home along the Galway-Ruscommon road towards the family farm when he decided to turn off on a dirt lane by the Kloon-Lion bog.
39:46
He got out and threw Nancy's glasses into the bushes.
39:50
Just up the lane a little further, he stopped again and threw the lump hammer into the bog water.
39:57
It was mid-afternoon by the time he got back to his father at the farm.
40:02
There they did some more jobs and had their chops for dinner.
40:07
When his father drove him back to Castlery Prison to meet curfew that night, he had no idea what his son had done.
40:15
Why had he done it? He didn't know.
40:19
Why had he taken her glasses?
40:21
He didn't know that either.
40:24
It's an awful thing I did to kill a woman like Mrs. Nolan, he said.
40:38
Nancy's home is sandwiched between Balalee and Kloon Line.
40:43
The terrain there is vast and low, sprawling unevenly for miles.
40:48
Scattered pools of water, known as bog holes, look almost pitch black from the dark peat silt that settles at their bottom.
40:58
Chief Superintendent Bill Fennell's team pulled off the road by the area of the boglands Murray had described, where he claimed to have thrown his weapon, less than a mile from Nancy's house.
41:10
Slushy, thick, boggy ground swallowed the Gardaí's boots.
41:14
They glided the metal detector over the waterlogged peat.
41:19
Just before 2pm, Garda, Ciarán Doyle and David Finn honed in on a specific bog hole.
41:27
As the metal detector crossed the black water, they got a reading.
41:32
When Garda Finn reached into the hole, he found it was almost a metre deep.
41:38
Plunging his hand to the bottom, he felt a hard object, a metal lump hammer, exactly as Murray had described.
41:48
200 metres or so away, among the dense grass and undergrowth, they found Nancy's glasses.
41:56
Both items were sent for forensic testing.
42:03
Chief Superintendent Fennell spoke to the press and reassured the public.
42:08
He couldn't say if it was the murder weapon, but he did say that he was quite optimistic of a successful outcome.
42:16
Following his confession, Thomas Murray's mental health deteriorated significantly.
42:22
Legal procedures required his mental capacity to be assessed before he could be formally charged.
42:28
They needed to be sure he understood the charges before making his plea and standing trial.
42:35
Murray was sent back to Castlereagh pending a psychological evaluation.
42:40
The formal charge was withheld until the investigation, including the forensic testing, was complete and the book of evidence prepared.
42:49
Just over a month later, Detective Sergeant Tom Fitzmaurice and his team were finally given the go-ahead to arrest Murray.
42:59
At 10.30am on June 1st, Murray was brought before the district court and charged with the murder.
43:07
Thomas Murray made no reply to the charge.
43:11
His defence solicitor, Mr. Garrett Sheehan, told Judge Michael Connellan that an evaluation had determined that Murray was in need of full-time psychiatric care.
43:21
The judge then said that because he was not in a position to make an order regarding his mental state, he remanded Murray in custody and ordered that he appear before Ballinas Law District Court the following week.
43:35
There, it was decided that Murray would face the charges in full.
43:39
He would be charged, and Nancy's case would proceed.
43:47
On December 5th, 2000, in Court No. 2 of the Central Criminal Court, Thomas Murray, by this time 37, pleaded guilty to Nancy Nolan's murder.
43:59
There would be no full-length contested trial.
44:02
There would be no denial.
44:05
For the second time in his life, he had taken the life of an elderly member of his community, for no apparent reason.
44:14
Again, he had violently attacked someone defenseless against his strength, and again it was someone who had shown him a degree of kindness that many others had not.
44:27
That day, Murray stood before the judge in the same building he had stood almost two decades earlier as a teenager.
44:35
The courtroom was packed.
44:37
Nancy's six children, her five daughters and son, and all her family sat at the back of the court, still trying to make sense of the killing.
44:46
A brief outline of the prosecution evidence was presented by Mr. Eamon Leahy, SC.
44:53
He spoke of Murray's initial interview and how he eventually confessed to the killing.
44:58
He also told the court that there was neither reason nor motive for the murder.
45:04
The court then learned that the day of Nancy's murder, Murray was on temporary release from prison and had been granted 19 previous releases, unaccompanied and unsupervised.
45:17
Murray's defence, Mr. Patrick Gage B.S.C., told the court Thomas Murray wished to apologise to the family and to express his deep remorse.
45:28
Nevertheless, as her family and friends and members of the community watched on, Mr. Justice Paul Kearney told them there was only one sentence that could be imposed in Irish law for the crime of murder.
45:40
Mandatory imprisonment for life.
45:44
Murray sat back down alongside the prison officers He didn't look up He didn't see Nancy's family hugging and crying Nancy's family didn't speak to the public and the press respected their privacy There would be no formal statements made outside the courthouse that day The case raised lots of questions.
46:10
If Murray had been supervised while out on release, this murder might not have occurred.
46:16
Following the sentencing, back in Nancy's home of Ballygar, local politicians and community members expressed intense anger, fear and dissatisfaction with the Irish Prison Service and the government.
46:30
They deserved to live without fear that this would happen again.
46:35
Eileen Glynn, Nancy's sister, spoke out.
46:39
She talked about the local Gardaí and their efforts to keep Murray behind bars.
46:44
They knew what he was capable of, yet he was let out and he murdered my sister, she said.
46:52
Galway East TD, Mr. Paul Connachton, told the community that he believed that the Department of Justice had an urgent obligation to review temporary releases.
47:03
He noted that 80 other prisoners serving life sentences were currently out on temporary release.
47:10
Connachton demanded that the Justice Minister explain why Thomas Murray was granted temporary release, especially after Gardie had expressed their concerns for the safety of the public, if he was let out.
47:23
The people of Galway and Ruscommon refused to go unheard any longer.
47:28
Their voices came together across the soggy peatlands and bogs and farms, inside the schools and churches, and the people of Ballygar were finally heard.
47:39
The Department of Justice announced a review of the case of Thomas Murray's temporary release, saying they would ensure any lessons can and will be learned in the future.
47:51
In July of 2001, that report by Mr. John Olden was released.
47:57
The investigation found that formal objections from Ungarda Siakana, who classified Thomas Murray as a severe risk, were consistently ignored.
48:06
It also revealed that Thomas Murray's repeated temporary releases were approved, despite the prison governor remarking at a 1998 meeting that Murray would kill again if released.
48:20
However, the report also noted that the governor later provided a verbal assurance that he didn't oppose a temporary release, directly contradicting his previous warning.
48:32
Before a prisoner is granted temporary release, a widespread consultation among prison staff was supposed to be standard practice.
48:41
The report highlighted a comprehensive system failure, where critical behavioural infractions were ignored.
48:48
It also described how a box-checking mentality allowed for the unsupervised release of a violent offender.
48:57
The Olden Report exposed fatal flaws and structural breakdowns in the Irish prison system.
49:03
It led to severe political backlash, prompting a long-overdue overhaul of temporary release protocols and parole board structures.
49:16
In March 2006, while serving a sentence at Arbour Hill Prison, Murray worked in the prison's fabric shop, which made bedding for other prisons in Ireland.
49:27
During his shift, he removed an iron bar he'd hidden earlier.
49:32
He raised the bar to attack an assistant governor and a chief officer with it.
49:37
But as he did so, the bar got caught and he missed.
49:41
An investigation into the incident found that Murray had removed the metal bar from a piece of furniture and hidden it.
49:48
He had also told a fellow inmate that he wanted to get a hammer and attack a member of the prison staff.
49:55
Murray was moved to the Midlands Prison in Portlaoise and classified as a high-security prisoner who needed to be monitored and kept isolated if needed.
50:06
One night in September later that year, two men and a woman broke into Thomas Murray's 75-year-old father's rural home.
50:15
They tied his hands and legs and beat him before ransacking the house.
50:21
They then disappeared with a large amount of cash, leaving him on the floor.
50:27
But the Gardaí didn't believe that the attack was linked to the crimes of his son.
50:34
Gardie reviewed the cold case of Galway taxi driver Eileen Costello O'Shaughnessy, who was beaten to death outside Galway on December 1st, 1997.
50:44
For a brief time, Thomas Murray had been a suspect.
50:47
Not only did he work on a building site nearby, a witness reported seeing him in the vicinity, and he was found to be out on release at the time.
50:57
He was quickly dismissed after someone supported his alibi that he was at his lodgings.
51:02
Gardie at the time also believed he was unable to drive and so he couldn't have been the man seen driving Eileen's car away from the scene that night.
51:12
But on re-examining the case Gardie interviewed the couple Murray had been lodging with and discovered that he had not actually been home when Eileen was murdered.
51:22
There was no account for Murray's movements during that time.
51:27
Gardie also discovered that Murray had been taught to drive prior to her murder, whilst in prison.
51:35
Despite detectives visiting Murray in prison to question him about Eileen, Eileen's cold case is still unsolved.
52:11
Thank you for listening to this episode of Lines of Inquiry Lines of Inquiry Live will be going on stage for the first time ever on December 2nd in the O'Reilly Theatre in Dublin. Tickets go on sale September 3rd.
52:24
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52:31
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52:35
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52:52
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52:58
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53:08
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53:19
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53:26
Lines of Inquiry is presented by me, John Sweetman. The podcast is created by Darren Cleary. Our executive producer is Owen Brennan. Producer is Siobhan Walsh.
53:38
This episode was written by Anna Priestland and edited by Siobhan Walsh.
53:43
Sound design and editing by Neil Kavanagh, with legal, marketing and social media support from the team at Golout.
53:50
Sources for this episode include The Irish Times, RTE, Roscommon Herald, Irish Independent, Evening Herald, The Journal and Lifers, Ireland's Evil Killers and How They Were Caught by Barry Cummins.
54:06
Join me next time as we open another case and follow the evidence wherever it leads.
54:12
Because, in the end, everything done in the dark comes to light.
