Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Sign up for your €1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.ie. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. Two Gardaí drive into the car park of a large pub on the crossroads of the N11 in Wicklow. It's just after half past four in the morning of the 19th of March 1996.
A call has come through to their station in Arklow, County Wicklow, reporting a panic alarm going off at the pub. The car park appears normal as they pull about front. A door is open. It leads into the private living quarters to the side of the main entrance. Guarder Martin McAndrew can see a light on in the hallway. He looks in and sees a woman slumped on the floor.
She is wearing only a nightshirt and underwear. She has material hanging around her neck. Her hands are tied. He came into the bedroom. He had a knife. He had a knife and a hood over his head, she tells the guard. His colleague, Gerda Paul Comiskey, looks closer at the ties around her hands. The first is a soft belt from a dressing gown. It can be easily removed.
But underneath are two headbands wound tight around her hands. The woman is in shock. She winces in pain as they lift her off the ground. They notice jewellery scattered on the stairs and a jewellery box discarded in the room they carry her into. Where's Tom? she asks. They know Tom, her husband, and they know her. The guards look upstairs and find no one else.
They begin searching the rest of the pub. They find Tom in the kitchen. He is lying on his back in a pool of blood. He has a wound to his chest. Tom is cold to the touch. Moore Gardie arrive. Jack White's pub is now a crime scene. Superintendent Pat Flynn arrives and sees the woman sitting on the couch. The woman who has just lost her husband. She is Catherine Nevin.
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Chapter 2: What happened on the night of Tom Nevin's murder?
He looked out for them. Catherine, who was ten years younger than her husband, was a stricter boss. And she had a temper. Once she threw a knife at a staff member because a plate warmer wasn't working properly. She didn't want food served to customers on cold plates. I am a bitch and proud of it, Catherine once proclaimed to Fiona Lawler, one of her part-time waitresses.
Before beginning work that day, Catherine took a B12 injection. She suffered from pernicious anemia, an autoimmune condition that prevents the body from absorbing the vitamin. She wasn't feeling well overall that day. She had her period and she was tired. It had been a very long working weekend.
She took a tablet to prevent swelling of her hands and legs before starting work around half past twelve in the afternoon. She had an hour and a half of work under her belt when Tom began his working day at two o'clock. Tom mingled with his customers throughout the day. He played some darts and even caught a bit of a Tom Cruise movie on the television over the bar in the lounge.
Catherine moved between the two bars, serving customers that included a group of horse trainers and racing fans, a pub owner from nearby Roundwood and a family with a small child who she didn't recognise. Just before eleven o'clock that night, Sergeant Richard Dominic McElligot from Avoca Garda Station popped in for a pint. Dominic was what everyone called him.
It wasn't unusual for Gardaíe stationed in Avoca and other surrounding stations to pop in. When the couple took over the pub in 1986, it was even known as a Garda house, where members of the force stationed in Arklow would gather after they clocked off duty. But over the years, relations had soured when Catherine made a sexual assault allegation against one of the Garda members.
She claimed he had been driving Tom's 15-year-old niece home from the pub one evening when the alleged incident happened. A second Garda had been in the car before the alleged assault occurred. Catherine's complaint didn't go down well. Two members were suspended and the pub found itself in the bad books with Arklow Station as Garda members whipped through their customs.
The ordeal had rattled Catherine. Although she had other Garda friends, she never trusted the Arklow branch again. Some staff thought Catherine looked on edge that bank holiday Monday. Bernie Fleming, who worked in the bar, noticed her boss moving quite a lot from the pub to the Nevins' private living space upstairs.
Catherine mentioned she was moving about to keep an eye on a load of clothing she had in the washing machine. But Catherine never used the machine. Catherine didn't know how to work it. Bernie clocked details that were unusual that evening, like the curtains that were always open were now closed.
When another staff member, Liz Hudson, used the washing machine around half past eleven that night, she found the inside drum of the machine was bone dry. It hadn't been used that evening at all. Cleaning and washing were jobs for Catherine's staff. Almost all of the customers were gone just before midnight. Shortly afterwards, staff left.
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Chapter 3: Who were Tom and Catherine Nevin before the murder?
Catherine Nevin had made complaints that were of a criminal nature. Serious claims that had to be investigated. In one complaint, Catherine detailed how she'd been assaulted by a Garda in her pub. She claimed that she had been working past midnight in August of that year when a Garda came up behind her as she was getting him a whisky.
She claimed he had pinned her to an ice maker, pulled up her skirt and tried to force himself on her. The Garda she had named always denied these charges, and an investigation and a ruling by the DPP saw no criminal proceedings brought against them. When Pat Flynn saw Catherine Nevin that March morning, he sympathised and asked if he could be of any help, but she made no reply.
He didn't expect the two to hold a conversation because of her previous allegations against his colleagues, but he was expecting a woman whose husband had just been shot to be more emotional. He didn't share the same opinions as his two other colleagues that Catherine was in distress. Flynn felt something off about how Catherine behaved.
He thought it was surreal and she wasn't showing emotion or grief. He didn't think it was shock. Catherine didn't want to give a written statement to Gardaí. She told Detective Joe Collins, who had arrived, to take a statement. I will make no statement or sign anything. She told Collins that she didn't trust his colleague, Superintendent Pat Flynn.
I want a guarantee from a superior officer, and not the superintendent, I don't trust him, that my statement wouldn't end up on a desk in Arklow to be doctored, she added. Superintendent Flynn looked over the rooms in Jack White's, now a crime scene. He walked through the lounge where Catherine sat, the kitchen where Tom's body lay, and the bedroom.
And when he was sure there'd been no interference in any of the rooms, he prepared to leave. As he did, another senior guard arrived, Inspector Tom Kennedy, who was stationed in Wicklow. Terrible affair, Pat, Tom Kennedy said to him. Just heard it on the news. That poor woman. What have they done to her? Such a decent, honourable woman.
As Gardie tried to piece together what had happened, it started to look more like a botched robbery. Tom Nevin was still working on the pub's accounts for the weekend when he was disturbed by the armed men. His books lay open on the kitchen table beside an unfinished glass of Guinness. He was shot and knocked off the high stool he'd been sitting on.
That piece of furniture now lay broken beside him. Tom's glasses were still on his head and a biro was still in his hand. It must have all happened quickly. He was crept up on and shot. Killed where he sat. Gardie discovered that Tom's car, a black Opel Amiga, was missing from the car park.
Catherine Nevin had heard two cars that night, and now Tom's appeared to have been taken during the robbery. As this information was shared on national radio stations, members of the public called Gardaí with sightings of their own. Mary Power of Ballyduff in Ashford, County Wicklow, was twice alerted by her dogs to a black saloon car reversing into her drive that morning.
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Chapter 4: What were the circumstances leading to the police investigation?
Paddy McEntee, Catherine's senior counsel defence lawyer, entered a plea of not guilty on all counts. The trial did not get off to a good start. On the 26th of January, less than two weeks after convening, the jury was discharged. A courtroom usher reported he could hear the jury's deliberations through the fire escape door of the courthouse.
Justice Carroll had no choice but to dismiss the jury and replace it with a new one. A second trial collapsed in February when a pregnant member of the new jury fell ill, while the third and final trial was briefly interrupted when Catherine Nevin was too unwell to attend. John Jones testified on the 28th of February, Gerry Heaps on the 1st of March and William McLean on the 2nd of March.
All three men reiterated and expanded on testimonies and statements previously given to Gardaí over the previous four years. All three claimed Catherine Nevin asked them to murder Tom Nevin between the years 1989 and 1990. All three mentioned money offers of between £20,000 to £25,000. All three testimonies claimed that the murder was to take place as a robbery gone wrong.
And all three had refused Catherine Nevin's requests. Detective Sergeant Fergus O'Brien gave testimony about finding the address book in Jack White's with Gerry Heap's name written down and later scribbled out. The defence argued that Gerry Heaps had simply called Jack White's to rent a room and that, after an argument with Catherine, the name was scribbled out.
Paddy McEntee said there were inconsistencies in Gerry Heaps, William McLean and John Jones' narratives and that each of the three men had a personal motive against Catherine Levin. McEntee claimed that Catherine was a widow who had been targeted by unreliable witnesses, and the defence reiterated a crucial fact that pervaded the entire trial.
There remained no physical evidence linking Catherine to the murder of Tom Nevin. On the 14th of March, Catherine Nevin finally took the stand. She remained in the witness box for six days and twenty hours of testimony. The prosecution called more than 170 witnesses over the course of the trial. Catherine was one of only two witnesses called by the defence.
If she were innocent, she had to prove it herself. On the stand Catherine spoke of her marriage with her voice sometimes dropping to little more than a whisper with tears in her eyes. Contrary to testimony from the three men and staff from Jack White's Catherine said she and Tom had a good marriage but it was sometimes marred by Tom's drinking.
She referred to him as a disciplined alcoholic who mixed spirits into Guinness. Catherine then told the jury a piece of information that shocked the entire courtroom. She said that Tom Nevin was secretly a member of the IRA. When asked why Catherine had never mentioned this before, she said she had made a solemn promise to Tom never to reveal this truth.
She said at the opening of Jack White's, guests included senior IRA figures such as Joe Cahill and Cahill Golding. Catherine denied ever wanting Tom Nevin killed. She said, I never at any stage of our married life wanted Tom out of my life.
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