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Chapter 1: What events led to Gerry McGinley's arrest in June 2000?
It's six o'clock in the evening on the 6th of June, 2000. A man is driving through Black Lion County Haven, just 20 minutes from his home in Enniskillen in Northern Ireland, when he spots over a dozen uniformed Gardaí lining the path. They flag him down and he pulls the blue BMW into the side of the road.
The guards had received a tip-off that over £10,000 worth of heroin, cannabis and ecstasy was being smuggled across the border in a blue BMW. Now the guards wanted to search the car. The driver, Gerry McGinley, becomes agitated as Garda explained that he's going to be detained and the car, which belongs to his wife, will be searched. He starts to shout that he is being hassled or set up.
He's handcuffed and placed in the back of a squad car where he threatens to have a Garda shot and aggressively sings Republican songs as they make the 20-minute journey to the Garda station in Manor Hamilton in County Leitrim. When they arrive, Gardaí searches Person for drugs but find nothing.
With his patience wearing thin, an irate Gerry McGinley hops up from his chair and runs at the wall, headbutting it and injuring himself.
Chapter 2: What threats did Gerry McGinley receive before his disappearance?
The guards arrest him in connection with a package discovered underneath the passenger seat of his car. However, it is not the £10,000 worth of heroin that they had been promised, but a minor amount of cannabis resin and ecstasy, with a street value of less than £800, as well as cooking spices made to look like heroin.
Jerry gives a statement maintaining his innocence, claiming that the drugs were planted. He is released on bail and returns to his home in Enniskillen to wait for a court date. During this time, he makes repeated phone calls to the Gardaí, insisting that he has been set up and demanding to know the informant's name.
In one call, he asks the officer to get a pen before giving her a list of names, stating, If anything happens to me, hand these names into the authorities. Two months later, Jerry McGinley is a missing person.
Thank you.
When a person is killed in Ireland, the Gardaí turn to the forensic examiners of the Technical Bureau. For 25 years, I was one of them.
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Chapter 3: How did Gerry's personal life impact the investigation into his disappearance?
I'm John Sweetman. At crime scenes, I learned to listen to what the evidence was saying and what the killer was trying to silence. A smudged print, a misplaced everyday object, the smallest detail that revealed the truth. Now, in this Go Loud original podcast, I return to some of Ireland's most compelling cases.
This is Lines of Inquiry, a podcast that follows the evidence and reveals the story behind each case. In this episode, the murder of Gerry McGinley and the scandalous trial of blackmail, illicit love affairs, sex tapes and the IRA. Julie and Gerry McGinley were a young married couple. She was 29 and he was 34.
They lived with their two young daughters in the sparsely populated Derry Rattan, five miles outside Enniskillen Town in County Fermanagh. Their bungalow was down a small country lane just wide enough for one car, with sloping farmland on one side and dense hedgerows along the other.
Chapter 4: What evidence was found during the police investigation?
In Fermanagh, as in the rest of the North, the decades past had been lived with the troubles as a daily part of life. But the Good Friday Agreement had started change. By 1999 paramilitary activity had begun to wane, but the legacy of violence lived on across the towns and villages and in the memories of the people.
Gerry and Julie had both grown up during the Troubles, a period of civil unrest and sectarian conflict in the North, a time when the influence of the Provisional IRA was widespread, and with that came gun-running, smuggling and violence. As a young girl, Julie was a victim of the 1987 Poppy Day bomb.
Twelve people were killed and 63 injured when a bomb planted by the IRA exploded in Enniskillen during a Remembrance Sunday ceremony. Julie was 16 at the time and she was separated from her younger brother when the bomb exploded. She searched for him by turning over bodies in the street. He was eventually found receiving treatment in the hospital, and Julie was also treated for minor cuts.
In December of 1999, as the rest of the world prepared for the millennium, there was a crisis in the McGinley household.
Chapter 5: What were the circumstances surrounding Gerry McGinley's death?
After five years and two young daughters together, Gerry had discovered that his wife had been unfaithful and he kicked her out. Julie and the children went to live with her father, while Gerry returned to his family home twelve kilometres away across the border in Manor Hamilton, County Leitrim.
Nestled among the glens of northern Leitrim, Manor Hamilton is a pretty setting with a backdrop of mountains and lakes that makes it popular among hill walkers and outdoor types. Jerry's parents, Betty and Jerry Sr., were well-liked in the town and known for working hard on their chicken and road haulage businesses. After returning home, Jerry took off his wedding ring.
Both Julie and Jerry saw other people during their split. Jerry would say, I can do what she can do, and so he began seeing Mary Maguire, who was also from Enniskillen. Despite the couple's separation and new partners, Jerry called Julie countless times day and night. In some of these calls, he threatened to take his own life. Jerry had a history of mental health struggles.
Chapter 6: How did the police gather evidence against Julie and Michael?
A few years prior, in October 1997, Julie had woken up to a shout. The bedroom was lit up by the headlights of their car shining through the window. Outside in their garden by his daughter's swing set, Julie saw her husband as he attempted to take his own life. She ran outside and quickly intervened. Jerry made a slow recovery and was nursed back to health by Julie.
A report from the community mental health team at the time said, I am not reassured that there will not be future crisis. In other phone calls, Jerry threatened to burn the house down. He told Julie that he had plenty of people to do his dirty work for him, and he claimed to be in the IRA. After a few weeks apart, Jerry and Julie decided to get back together.
They would call their brief separation their month of madness.
Chapter 7: What were the outcomes of the trial for Gerry McGinley's murder?
Jerry remained intensely jealous of the men Julie saw during their separation. He was determined to get even, as he put it. He poured yellow paint on the windows of one man's property, and he headbutted the man's car. Jerry once stood outside the kitchen window of his own home, holding a gun. He told Julie he was going to shoot one of the men she had been with.
He left, but came back a few minutes later, asking her to wash the car. The woman Jerry had been seeing during their separation, Mary Maguire, also had trouble adapting to life after Jerry and Julie's reconciliation. She did not accept that Jerry had ended things with her. She called him so often he had to get a new phone number. On St.
Chapter 8: What impact did the case have on the families involved?
Patrick's Day in the year 2000, Gerry and Julie went out to the Fort Lodge Hotel in Enniskillen. Across the busy bar, they spotted Mary Maguire. She stuck two fingers up to Julie in the V sign. Then she ran her finger under her neck in a throat-slitting gesture.
When Julie went up to the bar to get another drink, Jerry overheard someone call his wife a stupid bitch and say to her that he would cut her throat. When he went to intervene, Mary Maguire caught hold of his jumper and held on until Julie pulled her by the hair. The fight ended with Mary and her male associates being escorted out by the bouncer. The next day, Jerry got a threatening phone call.
The caller didn't identify themselves. The man on the line told Jerry that he had been late coming home from the lodge on the previous night. The man told Jerry that he had been sitting waiting for him. In another call, the same anonymous man told Jerry that he had a fine house and that it would be a pity to burn him out of it. Jerry was not feeling particularly threatened by these calls.
He responded simply, telling the caller to fuck off and saying they would see who will burn who out of it. Jerry didn't know the voice on the other end of the line, but later discovered that the calls had come from an ex-boyfriend of Julie's who had taken up with Mary Maguire.
A few weeks later, the same man called Gerry again to tell him that he had now left Mary Maguire and to ask if they could put it all behind them. However, this would not be the end of the threats made against Gerry. On the 7th of April, the parish priest in Enniskillen, Monsignor Sean Cattle, received a phone call to the parochial house around 5pm.
A male voice on the other end gave him a warning for Gerry McGinley. He said Gerry was to leave the area by midnight. They told the priest it was because of what they referred to as Gerry's anti-social behaviour. The priest didn't know who Gerry McGinley was, so he rang the police. The parochial house phone soon rang again. This time it was another local priest, Father McGorty in Irvingstown.
He said he had also received a call threatening McGinley. Sergeant Angela Linton travelled to the McGinley's home at around 6.30pm that evening to make Gerry aware of the threats made against him. Jerry seemed surprised to hear the news. Julie had been standing at the back door of the house during the conversation. She came over and asked Sergeant Linton about the purpose of her visit.
The sergeant told her she had given Jerry some news and it was up to him if he wanted to tell Julie. Jerry told his wife about the threats made against them. Sergeant Linton noticed Julie was agitated by them. Linton knew that Jerry was angry, but he did not direct his anger towards her. Instead, he got into his lorry and left, driving from the yard quickly.
Later that evening, Gerry called to the police station. He was looking for more information about who had sent the threats. A code word Sean had been used during the phone call, which indicated a link to the real IRA. But when Gerry asked, the constable on duty that night would not confirm which paramilitary organisation the threat had come from.
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