Crime World

He's one of the most-notorious serial killers in American history and the inspiration for numerous slasher movies.'Pogo the clown' by day and mass murderer by night, when John Wayne Gacy first killed a man at his Chicago ranch house after sex, he soon realised how easy it would be to hunt, lure and kill his prey. Thirty-three murders later, police finally moved in on the sadistic sexual predator a...

COLIN Howell and Hazel Stewart’s forbidden love drove them to commit the near-perfect crime. To onlookers they were the epitome of respectability – he the successful dentist with a flourishing practice that afforded him a life of luxury, she the glamourous wife of a retired high ranking police officer, regular church goer, pillar of society. To all intents and purposes they were the most unlikely...

COLIN Howell and Hazel Stewart’s forbidden love drove them to commit the near-perfect crime. To onlookers they were the epitome of respectability – he the successful dentist with a flourishing practice that afforded him a life of luxury, she the glamourous wife of a retired high ranking police officer, regular church goer, pillar of society. To all intents and purposes they were the most unlikely...

COLIN Howell and Hazel Stewart’s forbidden love drove them to commit the near-perfect crime. To onlookers they were the epitome of respectability – he the successful dentist with a flourishing practice that afforded him a life of luxury, she the glamourous wife of a retired high ranking police officer, regular church goer, pillar of society. To all intents and purposes they were the most unlikely...

AN Indian woman and her two children strangled with ligatures in their Dublin home. An abusive husband who ended his own life before he could face trial. And a web of lies that attempted to blacken the name of a loving mother. Nicola Tallant chats with with Sunday Independent journalist Ali Bracken about the story of killer Sameer Syed and his tragic wife Seema Banu, who was murdered along with he...

IT'S a mystery that spanned decades, full of fake identities, murders, and kidnappings. In April 1990, when Tonya Hughes was killed after a hit-and-run incident in Oklahoma City, the FBI revealed that her so-called husband, Clarence Hughes, was actually her father. Coming forward to tell authorities what she knew, Tonya’s former best friend, Jennifer Fisher, revealed that her pal's real name was S...

HIS career has seen him head up investigations into terrorism, corruption, human trafficking, drugs and homicide. The one-time head of Organised Crime for the PSNI in Northern Ireland and Deputy Director at the National Crime Agency in the UK, Roy McComb has had a decorated..But still he recalls one case that haunts him today - and one he would do anything to help solve. When a newborn baby girl w...

Disgraced former garda Paul Moody lost his badge and his image as a womanising charmer when he pleaded guilty to coercive control against his ex-partner. The shocking campaign of harassment, physical and mental abuse, as well as threats and vile messages to the cancer victim, painted him as a deeply devious individual who hid behind his job and his celebrity friends. But behind bars, Moody is now...

Convicted child killer Robert Black was caught when a curious postman turned his head to look at the unfamiliar van as it passed on his street and in those seconds saw a child’s feet disappear into the back. The sliding-doors moment meant the end of the road for Black but the start of a massive police investigation which would him to some of the most notorious child murders and abductions of the p...

The murder of Robbie O’Connor behind the walls of Mountjoy Jail has been a shocking and rare killing of an inmate in the Irish Prison System. Lured to a cell by his attackers and fatally injured in a matter of seconds, his brutal death is a reminder of the highly dangerous and volatile atmosphere that exists at all times in our jails. Nicola Tallant talks to Irish Independent Crime Correspondent K...

When journalist Hugh Jordan first exposed a Belfast taxi driver who’d offered his friend a job as a naked clearer he named him ‘Mucky Marty’.And 12 years on, he had no idea how apt the nickname would become when Martin Heaney pleaded guilty to controlling 10 women in prostitution and became the first person subject to a 'Slavery and Trafficking Prevention Order'.Understood to have pimped out vulne...

HE might appear to be just another drug dealer passing through the courts after he was nabbed with a consignment of cocaine. But the story of Patrick Casey tells more about the criminal underworld than most. A rising Dublin football and hurling star, his life was derailed through a drug habit and later when he was jailed for his crimes he met up with some of Ireland's most-feared underworld figure...

From a notorious robber who splurged his loot on properties and a six-week Florida holiday, to a gangland criminal whose mammy tried to help get back his cash in the attic, the targets of the Criminal Assets Bureau are wide and varied. Nicola Tallant talks with journalist Eamon Dillon as they dip in to the latest CAB listings before the High Court and give listeners a snapshot of the Bureau's work...

THROUGHOUT his life he was known as the greatest gangland player of all – a criminal who worked the system and always appeared to win. But now, Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch is behind bars and his latest bid to stop his trial for the murder of David Byrne at the Regency Hotel has failed. Like a chess player, he is now facing the greatest game of his life and one which will set out the course of his futur...

THEY remain Ireland’s most notorious loyalist terrorists, but 'Mad Dog' Johnny Adair and his right-hand man Sam ‘Skelly’ McCrory had been enjoying a retirement of sorts in Scotland. Friends since childhood, they had embraced anarchy, fascism and later formed the murderous UDA 'C Company' which terrorised Northern Ireland for years. But this week, the tight-knit duo were finally separated for good...

A survivor of the Cold War and of the notorious Russian Gulags, Imre Arakas was an international hitman who washed up on our shores like a character dreamed up in a work of fiction. His paymaster for this trip was Daniel Kinahan, the son of Christy Kinahan Snr and director general of the Irish mafia on the Costa Del Sol where Arakas lived. He’d worked for them before and he’d always been paid swif...

Some mothers would do anything for their sons - and Sophie Kokkinos proved her loyalty when she took part in the killing of a man found burning in a London Park. Drug dealer Loike Guei’s body was discovered by a cyclist at Mitcham Common in September 2020, which led police to the home of Raphael Kokkinos, a 34-year-old who was believed to owe him money. But their investigation didn’t stop at the a...

It was an explosion of violence that claimed five lives in a few months yet it is indicative of the new gangland where bullets do the talking. From the murder of 23-year-old Zach Parker outside a gym to the assassination of a 41 year old Iranian blasted to death as he came to pay respects to his slain mob boss, the heady months of 2019 in Coolock left a devastating legacy. So why did violence spir...

THE US Sanctions on the Kinahan organised crime group and the $5million rewards for the capture of the 'Dapper Don', Christy Kinahan Snr and his criminal sons, Daniel and Christopher Jnr, has been the peak point in the fight by law enforcement against their global cartel. But how do police try to take down a mafia and what does the involvement of the powerful United States mean? How will a piece o...

He has been described as one of New Zealand’s most wanted fugitives, accused of masterminding one of the country’s largest shipments of methamphetamine in history. Now, the Irishman at the centre of the 500kg seizure has been arrested while skiing in Spain’s Sierra Nevada region and New Zealand authorities are hoping that he will be extradited within months. Nicola Tallant is joined by Jared Savag...

Ghislaine Maxwell was the queen of the London social scene and would later mix with New York’s elite, courting billionaires, presidents and celebrities. Her epic fall from grace has portrayed her as a victim of her paedophile lover Jeffrey Epstein - but is their case really all about the abuse of young girls and the fulfilment of his insatiable sexual appetite, or is it far more about money and po...

It was a backpacking adventure that would become an unsolved cold case murder that has haunted Shenadoah National Park in Virginia since 1996, when hikers Lollie Winans and Julie Williams turned up dead in their tent. But now, writer and outdoor expert Kathryn Miles has made an attempt to solve the case and is convinced that the students who were found bound and assaulted were the victims of a ser...

The Encrochat phonehack was described as a game changer for law enforcement in its fight against organised crime - and two years on the criminal cases are still flooding into the courts in the UK and Europe. This week, arrests were made on those described as the creators and facilitators of the network in Spain, Dubai and the Dominican Republic. But what have been the effects of the hack and what...

A third assassination attempt on the life of convicted drug dealer Gary ‘The Canary’ Carey along with rising tensions in a volatile Dublin feud are stretching the resources of An Garda Siochana. With 24-hour armed support around the young gangs in the Finglas area and investigations suggesting the involvement of three dangerous mobs from the southside of the city in the Carey hit, gangland tension...

THE water level at Lake Mead outside Las Vegas has been concerning environmentalists for years as the effects of global warming threatens water supply to several States, including Nevada and neighbouring New Mexico and Arizona. But, as the water levels drop, authorities have been faced with a murder mystery that could be traced right back to the building of the casino town and its link to the mob....