Anne & Annie Gillespie: Dark Obsession | Part I
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What warnings are given about coercive control and domestic violence at the start of the episode?
This episode contains mentions of coercive control and domestic violence. If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this podcast, help is available. Contact Women's Aid on 1-800-341-900. This episode also contains references to suicide and suicidal ideation. If you need help, please reach out to the Samaritans on 116123. The switchboard at Sligo Garda Station's communication room lights up. It's just after 9.30pm on Sunday, September 18, 1988, and the person on the phone is frantic. Gunfire has been heard in the car park of the local hospital, Sligo General. Another call comes through. In the background, there is shouting, crying, confusion. Two people have been shot. Inspector Jim Sheridan closes his eyes.
He's fled in a white Ford Fiesta, the caller says, possibly heading for Donegal along the N15. How had it come to this?
Thank you.
When someone is killed in Ireland, the Gardaí call in a specialist unit of forensic crime scene examiners from the Technical Bureau. This is Ireland's real-life version of CSI, but it's nothing like the movies or TV shows. For 25 years, I was one of the detectives on that team. My name is John Sweetman. My job as a guarded detective in the Technical Bureau was to read the evidence that could not speak for itself. I learned to see what others might miss. Fingerprints smudged on the handle of a door. Weapons disguised in everyday objects. Handwritten notes that revealed more than the writer ever intended. The smallest traces often unraveled the big story. And now, I'm here to tell you those stories. In this podcast from Go Loud, I take you inside some of Ireland's most haunting investigations.
This is Lines of Inquiry, a Go Loud original podcast that follows the evidence step by step and tries to uncover the real story behind the headlines. In this episode, a mother and daughter terrorised in their own home and two terrible attacks at a Sligo hospital within only months of each other.
Each school day morning in 1988, 18-year-old Anne Gillespie walked across the five-arch stone bridge spanning the River Finn between the county Donegal towns of Ballybuffet and Stranorlar. Ahead of her she would see St. Columbus College. As Anne approached, her school would already be coming to life, with students spilling through its gates and gathering in noisy clusters before the first bell. St. Columba's was a large mixed school with more than a thousand pupils, but everyone seemed to know Anne, if not by name, then as the girl with the bright red hair. Though naturally shy, she was well liked and had a close-knit circle of friends she had known for years. Her teachers often joked that Anne and her friends would be the last to settle down in class, and once they did, would spend most of the lesson whispering and laughing.
Most lunchtimes they spent in a local café, Pat's Pantry, eating plates of chips or tea and scones and chatting to anyone and everyone who passed through the door. In the twin towns of Ballybuffet and Stranallar, everyone tended to know everyone, whose child was whose, who'd married in, who'd moved away for work and come home again. It was the kind of place where a favour was always repaid and where trouble, when it came, was borne by the whole community. There had been plenty of that recently. That spring, the shockwaves from a tragedy in neighbouring Sligo travelled quickly across the north-west. There had been a murder, a shooting, and it had left a deep mark on the area. On the 1st of May 1988, 20-year-old student nurse Sarah Tarpey from Kiltimach, County Mayo, was on duty at Sligo General Hospital.
She and Cahill McManus, a 20-year-old apprentice fitter employed at the hospital, had met through work and had been in a relationship for some time. But six weeks earlier, after returning from a holiday in the Canary Islands, Sarah had ended the relationship. In the early hours of that Sunday morning, following a dance in Sligo, McManus called to the house Sarah shared with three other student nurses on Circular Road. It was after 3am when he knocked on the door demanding to speak with her.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What warnings are given about coercive control and domestic violence at the start of the episode?
0:00–5:33
2
How does former Garda Technical Bureau detective John Sweetman describe the forensic investigation process?
5:33–16:34
3
What was Anne Gillespie’s life like in Ballybofey before her relationship with John Gallagher turned dangerous?
16:34–23:36
4
How did Anne’s growing independence create tension and jealousy in her relationship with John?
23:36–31:32
5
What triggered the violent confrontation at the wedding on September 10 1988?
31:32–39:47
6
Why did John Gallagher threaten to jump from the Lifford Bridge and what did the Gardaí negotiate with him?
39:47–48:10
7
What happened after John was released from St Conall’s Psychiatric Hospital and how did he continue to harass Anne?
48:10–54:07