Crime World

It was still bright on the evening of September 2, 2016 when a man walking his dogs made a gruesome discovery in Rahin Woods, close to Carbury in County Kildare. Using a stick, he had poked at the ground and the brambles where his dog 'Bobby' had circled, only to see a foot protruding from the undergrowth. Later, forensic experts would surmise that 24-year-old Philip Finnegan had died where he lay...

He was a loner and a misfit who lived with his parents until his early 30s but went on to become a serial killer who stalked his victims on dating apps and gay hook-up sites. But, Stephen Port was no cunning killer, and when he was tried for four murders in the Old Bailey the failings of police in their investigations into mysterious deaths in the Barking area of London was as stark as his horrifi...

It’s known as the city of dreams - where models, actors and artists seek fame and fortune in the shadow of the Hollywood Hills. But alongside the glitter and glamour of the California Dream is a very different Los Angeles, one with a sprawling homeless population which has fast become the biggest social issue in America’s richest State. Nicola Tallant talks with with LA local Glenna Gordon, a phot...

An 'ISIS bride' lured to the Caliphate in fear of the fires of hell, a glamorous former radical who escaped Syria and unshackled herself from her extremist past and counter terrorism FBI agents called in after the fall of Raqqa. It sounds like the plot from a series of 'Homeland' - but it is playing out in Ireland’s Special Criminal Court where Dundalk woman Lisa Smith has pleaded not guilty to fu...

Innocent women flee their homes in fear of grenade attacks, a business shuts its doors terrorised by teenage thugs, while a community lives in fear of warring drug gangs brazenly attacking each other in broad daylight with hammers and wheel braces and displaying their gunfire on social media. The scenes playing out in a Dublin suburb seem more at home in Mexico, yet for the hard-working people of...

A shocking mass murder at a bookies office in Belfast, 30 years of unanswered questions for those left behind and now an Ombudsman's report that cites collusive behaviour and failings by police. At the heart of the Sean Graham bookmakers atrocity and seven other loyalist attacks carried out by the UDA which claimed the lives of 11 people, lie the use of RUC informants who were also killers. In the...

The brutal attack on bachelor farmer Thomas ‘Tom’ Niland in rural Sligo has struck fear into the elderly community across Ireland. In a worrying spate of attacks on our most vulnerable citizens, many pensioners living in rural areas no longer feel safe in their own homes. So, who are the criminals who are targeting older members of the community and are they organised mobs or more chaotic and oppo...

Jim Mansfield Jnr was dealt his fate this week when Judges at the Special Criminal Court handed him down a two-year sentence, suspending the final six months, in a crushing blow for the former millionaire heir of Ireland’s once-wealthiest family. Despite submissions for leniency from his legal team who insisted he was in the lower range of intellectual ability, is a carer to his elderly mother and...

He was the New IRA 'fixer' with an unclear past, but despite some red flags, Dennis McFadden managed to infiltrate the terror group and win their trust, all the while reporting back to MI5. For two decades the Scottish spy worked and lived in Belfast and moonlighted as an ordinary married man who moved in dissident republican circles. But when he disappeared last August panic ensued - and now 10 s...

Garfield Beattie is a triple murderer who was part of the infamous Glennane Gang, a brutal mob made up of Ulster Loyalists, RUC police officers and British Soldiers who went on a killing spree of Catholics in Co. Armagh and Co. Tyrone at the beginning of the Troubles. According to reports and investigations, the group killed between 75 and 120 people, most of whom were ordinary civilians with no l...

He was the Irish king of the Costa until the Kinahan mob turned on him and forced the one-time drug lord into hiding for more than 10 years. But Peter ‘Fatso’ Mitchell is back behind bars after he showed up in the UK, working as a driver for a cocaine gang. A murky gangland story involving double crosses, greed and paranoia lie at the heart of Mitchell’s journey to a prison cell in Wales, where he...

He was the first godfather of Irish crime, the man who unleashed heroin on Dublin’s impoverished housing estates and flat complexes. Larry Dunne found fame as the drug lord responsible for the destruction of entire communities, whose greed took parents from their children and turned countless young people into thieves and prostitutes. But when he lay down to die between two wheelie bins in the fro...

Across the world, cannabis is being de-criminalised and in some countries legalised but with a higher potency and soaring prices, consumption of weed has become the main drug of concern amongst teenagers. Here, Nicola Tallant talks with consultant psychiatrist Dr Bobby Smyth, who works with young addicts and who fears a tsunami of problems as attitudes to the drug become increasingly lenient. He r...

The murder of another witness in the Marengo Trial, the shocking revelations that suspect Ridouan Taghi was plotting a navy-seal-type jailbreak and a dramatic security breach around an under-threat journalist - what will happen next in The Netherlands? In a country under siege from organised crime, the very foundations of law and order are being challenged as a street dealer turned cocaine billion...

Nicola Tallant tells the story of 'Fat' Freddie Thompson, one of Ireland's most-feared mobsters. From his rise as a street fighter in Dublin to becoming the head of a gangland murder machine, we retrace the violent steps he took on his rise to power and how gardai finally ended his bloody reign of terror. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nicola Tallant tells the story of 'Fat' Freddie Thompson, one of Ireland's most-feared mobsters. From his rise as a street fighter in Dublin to becoming the head of a gangland murder machine, we retrace the violent steps he took on his rise to power and how gardai finally ended his bloody reign of terror. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Former businessman Jimmy Mansfield Jnr went to jail this week, convicted of attempting to pervert the course of justice by directing that CCTV footage be destroyed. The conviction centres around the kidnap of one of his late father’s employees, Martin Byrne. And while Mansfield Jnr was acquitted of involvement in the abduction, six men, led by terrorists Dessie O’Hare and Declan ‘Whacker' Duffy, h...

He was the playboy prince of the Celtic Tiger era and lived it up in a luxury mansion frequented by top models and socialites. But businessman Jim Mansfield Jnr is now doing porridge with common criminals after he was found guilty of perverting the course of justice. Over the course of a year, a sensational trial heard evidence about a who's who of paramilitaries and organised crime groups brought...

He’s the hitman for hire who claims to have turned his life around - and nowadays Alan Wilson says he is writing poetry and staying away from his former gang, the Kinahans, while behind bars. Just weeks ago, the sinister criminal begged a judge to be lenient and claimed he would live an honest life when allowed to go free. But at the Special Criminal Court, Justice Tara Burns said Wilson, who has...

It was a brutal gangland murder that made headlines across the world. Now, two years on from the murder of 17-year-old Keane Mulready Woods, it seems an uneasy peace has descended on Drogheda. With two men facing trial this year for the teenager's murder, a third man due to be sentenced in relation to the disposal of his body and a number of key players in the feuding gangs behind bars or on the r...

He is a well known Criminal Assets Bureau target who was once put on trial for a tiger kidnapping, but Dubliner Jonathan Gill has now launched a new venture as a conflict negotiator and says he can solve disputes in broken marriages, business upheavals and even in neighbourhood rows. With no major convictions, Gill says he is innocent of any involvement in crime but the courts have heard different...

In Northern Ireland’s troubled past there have been hundreds of atrocities and thousands of lives lost - but one 24-hour period stands out as the most brutal of all. Forty five years ago this week, unprecedented slaughter visited a small corner of south Armagh and left its mark forever on both the landscape and the lives of those left behind. First, was the brutal murder of the Catholic Reavey bro...

Mary Turner Thomson’s world shattered when she discovered her husband Will was a bigamist, con man and convicted sex offender. Unbeknownst to her, this would be the start of a bold new chapter in her life, fighting to protect other women from his heartless gaslighting campaigns — and putting a stop to his endless deception. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s been an unhappy New Year for former socialite Ghislaine Maxwell as she faces up to 65 years behind bars But, as the dust settles on her sensational conviction for sex trafficking in a New York Court, the focus has moved to what will happen next. Nicola Tallant talks to Toronto Sun crime journalist and author Brad Hunter about the possibility of Maxwell trying to cut a last minute deal for a r...

Detective Anthony Amore tracks down stolen art and follows clues all over the world hunting priceless masterpieces which have been snatched by thieves. Today, Amore talks to Nicola Tallant about one time heiress, Rose Dugdale, who gave up a charmed life to become an IRA activist and a thief who picked out the jewels of Russborough House in Wicklow and later inspired the legendary criminal Martin '...