Crime World

John, Keith, Alan, Eric and Luke Wilson were once Ireland’s most feared gangland family who terrorised the underworld and threatened the pillars of the State. Bonded by blood, the five Wilsons operated as guns for hire as they honed their skills as killing machines in the brutal world of feuding drug gangs. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s a missing person’s case that has cast a dark shadow over a small town in County Mayo where the haunting face of Sandra Collins stares out from posters more than 20 years since she was last seen. However, Sandra has not been forgotten despite the passage of time. Her brother and sister still hope that they can one day lay her to rest and find their own peace from the nightmare of her mystery d...

The jury in the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell has adjourned for the Christmas holidays with the fate of the infamous New York socialite hanging in the balance. Ms. Maxwell, who turns 60 on Christmas Day, has pleaded not guilty to her role in the recruiting and grooming of girls for sexual abuse by her long-term lover and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Defence attorneys, however, maintain she is...

Forty years ago this month, 21-year-old Jake Mac Siacais cried in his H-Block cell as his friend Bobby Sands died on hunger strike. Jake had been in the next cell to the republican icon, and when Sands left the wing to go to the prison hospital, it was Jake who gave the final address on behalf of the IRA prisoners. Now 61, Nicola Tallant travels with him to Bobby Sands' grave at the republican plo...

Drug war in Mexico – how the narcos and their violent sicarios are being armed by legally-sold weapons in the US. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's been a year of takedowns and the end of the line for many. And while 2021 closes on a high note for gardai fighting organised crime, it has left many criminals counting their last days of freedom. Nicola Tallant is joined by Sunday World journalists Niall Donald and Eamon Dillon to look back at the stories that made the headlines. From John Gilligan to the Rathkeale Rovers, Gerry 'the Monk' H...

It was the phone hack that rocked the underworld and led to thousands of arrests and record breaking seizures of drugs, guns and dirty money. Yet, Ireland has little to show from the massive Encrochat investigation despite being one of the country’s to receive the shared intelligence from Europol. In this Crime World investigates podcast we look at how the hack happened despite promises that the p...

So we did it – we got through our first year on Crime World and managed to bag the 'Podcast of the Year' award along the way. It’s been a whirlwind 12 months, covering the tales about criminals, drugs and the sins of the underworld. So, now, Nicola Tallant takes a look back at some of the stories that made the headlines - both nationally and internationally - and the guests who have helped make us...

It was the trial that lifted a lid on sex and lust in rural Ireland and revealed the secrets of a small Tipperary village. When farmer Patrick Quirke received a life sentence for the murder of Bobby Ryan, a popular DJ known as Mr Moonlight, he was quick to appeal his conviction saying the prosecution never proved its case of murder. But despite laying out 50 grounds at the Appeals Court, Quirke ha...

She was a fraudster who almost bankrupted the tight-knit company she worked for, and with the £1.9million she stole from Northern Mouldings Limited she lived a lifestyle akin to a Hollywood superstar. When Julie McBrien, also known as Julie Hogg, was eventually caught she spent years convincing a court that she shouldn’t be named in the media despite her litany of crimes and the eye-watering money...

The trial of Ghislaine Maxwell in New York is finally underway after years of allegations about her relationship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and claims that she helped him procure young girls for sex. It has been a sensational fall from grace for the daughter of disgraced newspaper guru Robert Maxwell, who led a life of privilege that few could imagine. In the dock at a US District Court in Ma...

They spent years in the prison system for a string of offences linked to their chronic addiction problems, but today James Leonard and Timmy Long are podcast sensations and their show 'The Two Norries' has been hailed for tackling issues of mental health, addiction and social issues surrounding crime. In recent months James and Timmy have been recording a ground-breaking series of interviews with...

New legislation which introduces the tagging of sex offenders will now deal with the complex issues of releasing rapists and child abusers back into the communities. But does the newly-passed Sex Offenders Amendment Bill go far enough when it comes to protecting the public from dangerous predators. Nicola Tallant talks to journalist Eamon Dillon about the new laws and what they will mean for those...

Veteran criminal Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch has been given permission to take a High Court challenge against the jurisdiction of the Special Criminal Court to hear his trial for the murder of David Byrne at the Regency Hotel in Dublin five years ago. He claims that the decision to try him before the non-jury court is a ‘significant curtailment of his rights’. A similar challenge is also being taken by...

When killer Joe O’Reilly bludgeoned his wife Rachel to death at their home in the Naul, Co Dublin, in October 2004 he thought he’d get away with murder. But years after he was convicted to a life sentence for his horrific crime, nobody could have expected that the former advertising executive - who is yet again to be the subject of a new documentary to be screened on RTE - would continue to fascin...

It was planned as the Kinahan Mafia’s trophy kill, with only Daniel Kinahan and Thomas ‘Bomber’ Kavanagh's most trusted circle of lieutenants privy to the plans. But, in an incredible turn of events, the 2017 plot to assassinate Hutch target James ‘Mago’ Gately at his Newry apartment became the undoing of the most powerful crime gang in Ireland. Last week, criminal Douglas Glynn became the fifth m...

Ireland’s mobile phone data retention systems are under the spotlight and European legal experts have warned they may have breached the law. Now, killer Graham Dwyer is eying up a favourable appeal to his conviction for the murder of Elaine O’Hara. But will the jailed architect who groomed his vulnerable victim through BDSM actually walk free. Nicola Tallant talks to barrister Ronan Lupton about t...

He was the one-time billionaire and the pride of his native Cavan, where a generation of workers shared the spoils of his success. Businessman Sean Quinn was said to have built an empire on a mountain but always remembered his humble beginnings and was at his happiest sharing lunch with factory workers and playing cards with old pals. So, what has it been like to watch the fall of the Mighty Quinn...

A vision for a new police force in Northern Ireland 20 years after Chris Patten’s ground-breaking report identified a need for a 50-50 recruitment policy for Catholics and Protestants has failed to live up to expectations. Last year, of the 193 new recruits just 24 per cent were Catholic, blamed in no small part to dissident republicans deliberately targeting officers and their families from worki...

He was a towering Ulster rugby star who won four caps for Ireland in the mid 1990s and went on to forge a political career as an ultra-conservative unionist. After his death on October 28 in a motorcycle crash in County Antrim, political pals and friends from the Orange Order were amongst those to pay tribute to Davy Tweed, describing him as a giant of a man and a ‘larger than life character’. But...

When Irish heiress Marianne ‘Mair’ Smyth walked in the door of Jonathan Walton’s LA apartment neither of them could have guessed what lay ahead. For reality TV maker Jonathan, Mair came across charming, successful and well connected and he was quickly drawn into her world where she was forever on the brink of inheriting a vast fortune from Ireland. But Mair was no lady and instead she tricked him...

He was the violent enforcer of Slieve Rusheen who operated with impunity for more than eight years terrorising ‘traitors’ who turned on the mighty Sean Quinn. His death from a massive heart attack as UK cops raided his Derbyshire hideaway two years ago played out like the final dramatic scenes of a John B Keane play. But the end for 'Dublin Jimmy', aka Cyril McGuinness, only marked the beginning o...

A Kinahan mob prison party to celebrate the birthday of a dangerous criminal is held behind bars in an Irish jail. An inmate uses his smart phone to upload a video where suspected hitman Trevor Byrne jokes with a Limerick criminal about high powered weapons and Later he poses with pals giving the thumbs up to the camera and in his cell where he shows off his muscle. But are the jailhouse antics se...

It was the greatest social housing disaster in Ireland’s history - one which promised new beginnings for countless tenement families but instead became ground zero for the heroin epidemic. When the State ordered the demolition of Ballymun’s seven towers to make way for new housing it hoped to wipe away the mistakes of the past, but one of the country’s most promising film-makers was there to docum...

He was the gangland fixer known as 'The Coach' and for decades he tried to play the criminal underworld, police and the media. Criminal John Traynor dreamed of wealth and women when he joined the ranks of Martin ‘The General’ Cahill's armed robbery gang, but he would later turn on his old boss in favour of the new order under John Gilligan. Traynor believed himself to be a master manipulator, but...