Mens Rea: A true crime podcast

Living in an isolated area is never easy. Its even more frightening when you're and elderly farmer living on his own, certain that there are people scoping out your home for break-ins. Add that to high - profile incidents of violent robberies across the Irish countryside, and it most certainly becomes a tense situation. But does defending your land and property mean you can take a life? In 2004 Pa...

In the second and final episode of the story of Harold Shipman, we find out how the police went about investigating his murders. A suspicious will led to questions regarding prominent citizen, Kathleen Grundy's death and the exhumation of her body. A local doctor had become suspicious of the sheer amount of cremations being performed at Shipman's Surgery, and so, these taken together, an investiga...

Harold Frederick Shipman was born near Nottingham in 1946. While attending the prestigious grammar school, High Pavement,  he took care of his ailing mother and was there when she passed away quietly from incurable cancer. His was deeply affected by her death, and by the morphine that had eased her way. He went on to become a doctor, and met and married Primrose Oxtoby name, having 3 children. Tod...

Dublin: 1997. Three women occupy number 1 Orchard View, an assisted living facility for former patients of the nearby St Brendan's Psychiatric Hospital. On the night of March 6th of that year, two of the women, Sylvia Sheils and Mary Callanan, were brutally murdered in their rooms. They were discovered the next morning by their housemate Ann Murnagh, and a hunt for the killer began. The Gardai soo...

Shan Mohangi arrived in Dublin in 1962 from South Africa. He was 21 years old and had left his home country due to the limited opportunities afforded by the apartheid regime to people of colour in his country at the time. Like many who travelled to Ireland from the African continent, he enrolled in medical school. He took up residence in 95 Harcourt Street and also worked in the restaurant housed...

As spring changed to summer in London 1993, a man stalked his prey at the Coleherne Pub in Earls Court. He targeted gay men, particularly those interested in BDSM, as he knew that they were a vulnerable group with poor relations with the policing authorities. Colin Ireland tricked 5 men into taking him back to their homes, where he brutally attacked them. He then waited to hear about his crimes in...

Tia Sharp was 12 years old in the summer of 2012, and the Olympics had come to her city, London. She was a carefree and bubbly young girl and was close with her family. Which is why it was so surprising when she went missing from her grandmothers house in New Addington, South London. They knew she wasn’t a runaway. A huge search began for the missing girl, and eventually she was found – in the hom...

In the second and final instalment of the Black Widow story, the Gardai ramp up their investigation into her, and she is finally charged with the murder of her husband, and conspiracy to commit murder. The trial took place in 2000, and lasted a whopping 62 days. After three attempts to start, it finally got under way and Willie McClean, Gerry Heapes and John Jones recounted their tales to the jury...

The weekend of St Patrick's Day, 1996, Tom Nevin was found lying dead from a gunshot wound to the chest in the kitchen of his pub, Jack White's in the popular seaside town of Brittas Bay, Co Wicklow.  His wife, Catherine, had sounded the alarm and when the Gardai arrived they found her bound by the wrists. She said that intruders had entered the pub, looking for jewellery.  But something wasn't qu...

Farah Swaleh Noor was an apparent Somalian refugee to Ireland and disappeared on the 20th March 2005. Later that month, and unidentified male body was pulled from the Royal Canal on Dublin city’s north side in pieces which had been dumped in black plastic rubbish bags. The body – missing its head-  was identified as Farah Noor, and it soon became apparent that his girlfriend Kathleen Mulhall and h...

Brendan O'Donnell was a troubled and clingy child. After the death of his mother, he displayed violent tendencies. Rather than making his way into the mental health services and getting treatment, he found himself in detention centres for delinquent children. He spiralled out of control and eventually rampaged across the peaceful countryside near Lough Derg, killing three people and holding anothe...

In the final episode of the Beast of Birkenshaw series, Peter Manuel takes over his own defence. He finds many people to place the blame on for his many crimes, and explains how evidence managed to disappear from the crime scenes. He takes the stand to give evidence in his defence. But to no avail – he is found guilty and is sentenced to hang. But in a final twist before he’s put to death, Manuel...

In the second part of our series covering Peter Manuel, the Beast of Birkenshaw, his trial begins. This time, we tell the story of the witnesses, who all weave together their stories, most implicating Manuel, others attempting to help salvage the dire situation he finds himself in. 280 people give evidence of the crimes he is charged with, ranging from burglary to capital murder. Manuel's life is...

"Mary had a little cat She used to call him Daniel, Then she found it killed six mice And now she calls him Manuel"  Peter Manuel was born in New York in 1927, to Scottish Parents Samuel and Brigit. The family returned to Lanarkshire, Scotland in 1932 where Peter's childhood and adolescence were marred with sprees of theft and violence. He ended up in first an approved school before moving on to B...

In October of 2004, Rachel O’Reilly was brutally attacked in her North County Dublin home. Initially, the Gardai treated the crime as a burglary gone wrong, but soon it became clear that this was no random attack. Her husband, Joe O’Reilly, appeared in the media appealing for information about his wife’s death, and given his strange demeanour, the public began to question, who really was responsib...

In the years immediately following the war in a still bomb-ravaged London, people were going missing. A few letters sent to their families reassured that all was well. But when 69 year old Olive Durand-Deacon went missing from her residential hotel, a suspicious policewoman looked further into the shady character of John George Haigh. He quickly confessed to killing 5 people and dissolving their b...

Sophie Toscan du Plantier was a french writer and documentarian, who owned a secluded holiday home in the picturesque west Cork town of Schull, Ireland. Days before Christmas 1996, she was found savagely murdered in the lane way leading to her house. The case remains unsolved, but that doesn’t mean the matter hasn’t been heard before the courts. The prime suspect, Ian Bailey, took a defamation act...

In January of 1993, James Bulger was a month away from his third birthday when he disappeared from his mothers sight in a shopping mall. This was no regular, tragic child abduction however, as the perpetrators were children themselves. Find us on Facebook or Twitter! With thanks to our supporters on Patreon! If you would like to support the podcast, head on over to Patreon.com. Theme Music: Quinn’...

Elaine O’Hara was a troubled woman who disappeared from her Dublin home in 2012 and was presumed to have committed suicide. A year later, due to a series of coincidences, her body was found and a man with an appetite for the twisted, but the appearance of a nice middle class family man was charged with her murder. A true crime that was truly beyond belief, and shocked Ireland. Find us on Facebook...