Stolen Sister episode 1, recapped
The author Alice Walker once said: "Is solace anywhere more comforting than that in the arms of a sister?"
This philosophy seems fitting when speaking about the sisters of Elizabeth Plunkett.
Many people will be familiar with Elizabeth's name in 1976, she was brutally murdered in Brittas Bay Co Wicklow by Ireland's first serial killers, John Shaw and Geoffrey Evans.
For many, justice was served nearly 50 years ago when the pair were both sentenced to life in prison.
However, a parole hearing for Shaw nearly two years ago would turn the lives of this family, in particular the Plunkett sisters - Kathleen, Bernie and Joan, upside down.
The women contacted the DPP, the Garda Commissioner and the State Solicitor's Office for assistance, but their pleas fell on deaf ears.
So, in July 2024, they took a leap of faith and emailed their final port of call - the team at RTÉ Documentary On One.
After months of work, that email has given rise to Stolen Sister, a six-part podcast series hosted by Roz Purcell that unpacks how a routine parole application rewrote the history of this case and forced the Plunkett family to take their story public for the first time in nearly 50 years.
Because a lot of things you've read about the murder of Elizabeth Plunkett in books, the media or online, it's well, wrong.
If you struggle to believe that, I strongly suggest you keep reading or, better yet, start streaming episode one of Stolen Sister right now.
Ringsend
In the first episode, the Plunkett siblings take the listener back in time to their childhood home in Ringsend. It set the scene and creates a feeling of intimacy between the listener and the family before the harrowing details of the case emerge.
In the 70s Ringsend was a tight-knit community full of working-class families, and as the middle child of eight, Elizabeth ruled the roost.
There were four boys - Eddie, Thomas, Liam and Sean and four girls - Joan, Elizabeth, Kathleen and Bernie in the Plunkett family.
The podcast touches on the changes taking place as Ireland moved from the 60s into the 70s and women slowly gained more independence.
Elizabeth's sister Bernie described the impact this changing time had on her beloved sister and how it shaped her outlook.
"There was more independence. There was more work, and there was more money. So they were saying, don't stick back in the old-fashioned way like their parents, you got married, you had children, you stayed at home. This wasn't going to be a life that Elizabeth wanted."
Eddie, the eldest boy, also contributed to the series; he described how Elizabeth would take over the family home on a Saturday morning and clean it from top to bottom.
Throughout the series, the family speaks of the split in their lives - the world before and after Elizabeth was killed.
The family home is situated on the banks of the Liffey in Dublin City, where the river meets the Irish Sea.
"We were a very united, large Dublin working class family. The bond then was unique… Little did we know that all of this would come crashing down, it destroyed the peace." - Eddie Plunkett, Elizabeth's brother
On a clear day, Purcell tells the listener, you can make out the Northwest of England, the homeplace of the men who would take Elizabeth's life.
JS and GE
At the time they murdered Elizabeth, and later Mayo woman Mary Duffy John Shaw, and Geoffrey Evans were in Ireland evading sexual assault and rape charges in the UK under new identities.
Both men had been married and had children. They met in prison while serving time for robbery and assault.
Before they began their reign of terror, the men were arrested for burglary and had a year-long stay in Irish prisons in Limerick and Mountjoy.
They were due to be extradited back to the UK to answer the charges, so they decided to abduct, rape and murder a woman a week until they were caught.
The reason why the pair weren't extradited immediately was because Shaw claimed he wasn't the same person named on the extradition warrant, so the judge released him on bail, and the gardaí had to build a case to prove his identity.
Even more shockingly, this same legal loophole worked for Evans three weeks later.
In 1974, as Elizabeth turned 21, Shaw and Evans were released from prison in England and within a short time, they'd brutally kidnapped and raped three victims in the Greater Manchester area - Roz Purcell, host
The Plunkett sisters do not say the name of their sister's murderers during the podcast; instead, they simply refer to them as JS and GE.
Damien
The podcast makers managed to secure an interview with Elizabeth's close friend Mella Nesbitt, a key figure in this story.
The women met while working in the De La Rue factory.
A few months before Elizabeth died, Mella introduced her to her brother Damien. Damian and Elizabeth began dating, and according to Mella, they were inseparable.
"I was the little gooseberry. I was always stuck between the two of them. Now I would be maybe a couple of yards behind them or I might be sitting somewhere and I could just hear the two of them shouting at one another that they loved one another."
He worked as a mechanic in his family's garage in Inchicore, Co Dublin.
According to the Plunkett sisters, Damien would pull up in his Capri car to collect Elizabeth blaring ABBA out the windows.
In July 1976, Elizabeth, Mella and Damien took a trip to St Tropez, where Elizabeth would purchase the infamous jumper she wore the night she was killed.
Damien was a really nice guy, I have to say. She was madly in love with him and I think he felt the same about her - Bernie Plunkett, Elizabeth's sister
That fateful night when Elizabeth was murdered Damien got into an argument with a friend about a car, while that detail might seem irrelevant, it would ultimately alter the course of Elizabeth's life…
Brittas Bay
The summer of 1976 was one of the hottest on record in Ireland. A last trip to Brittas Bay was supposed to close out the summer season for Elizabeth Plunkett and her friends. It was supposed to be the kind of weekend you dream about during your 9-5, instead it became a nightmare for the entire nation.
Statements given to gardaí by Elizabeth's killers, as well as her friends, are read throughout the podcast to create an accurate timeline of her last movements.
It is worth adding that the statements given by Shaw and Evans are eerily detailed and not for the faint of heart.
Elizabeth left McDaniel's pub at around 10.30 pm. She had grown frustrated when Damien and his friend Joe McCoy started a fight over a car.
The men had bought a car together, which Damien had then sold without consulting Joe.
As you can expect, within a few minutes, the men had resolved their dispute, and Damien went in search of Elizabeth. He should have found her, made up and joined their friends for a wonderful weekend in a caravan by the sea.
But he never did find her, nor did he ever see her again.
I put my finger on her left cheek and said, "Go away, don't be annoying me. She said, "If you do that again I'll go home". I said to her "go home then" - Damien Bushe, Elizabeth's former boyfriend
Right, before Shaw and Evans preyed upon Elizabeth, they approached another woman who managed to get away - gardaí never have managed to locate this woman.
I mention this as like all Doc on One series, this is an active investigation, so if you were in Brittas Bay on 28th August 1976 and have any further information on Elizabeth Plunkett, please contact us in confidence at documentaries@rte.ie
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
2 hours ago
- Irish Times
Shout out to the woman who trapped me in my car in Tesco car park
It finally happened. I saw a driver getting caught breaking a red light. Just when I had almost given up on any kind of policing of the decline in motorist behaviour, the flashes of an unmarked Garda car brought back a smidgen of hope. Driving behaviour since Covid has been steadily declining. Speeding, impatience, phone use, complete abandonment of the rules of the road and abject rage at anyone obeying them is now commonplace. In January it was promised that red light cameras would address some of the problems, but I drive through and across various parts of the city several times a week and things are still deteriorating. So much so that I've started keeping a mental running tally of the very worst of drivers currently terrorising the roads. The white van man who overtook me as I dared to stop at a red light. The junction in question is a busy crossroads near where I live in Dublin 8, with four sets of traffic lights and two pedestrian crossings. The car in front of me went through on orange and I stopped on red. Enraged, the man behind me leant on his horn and then sped up to overtake my stationary car on a fully red light, careening through a – thankfully empty – pedestrian crossing with a green man. I can only assume this man was a paediatric cardiac surgeon on his way to a life-saving emergency. Nothing else could explain his behaviour. The woman in the Mercedes who beeped at me for not moving into a yellow box . She had looked up from her phone long enough to see that I hadn't closed the gap between my car and the one in front to her required two millimetres and was immediately incensed. She didn't care that I was respecting the very obvious and bright yellow box as required by the rules of the road. She cares not for yellow boxes, only rage and terrible driving. And her phone. READ MORE Ninety-eight per cent of people using roundabouts. What happened to indicating? What happened to being in the correct lane? What happened to humanity? The man watching TikToks on the M50, while driving at 100km an hour. I know he was doing this because I was driving behind him, aghast, as he flipped through cat videos and Gen Z vintage clothing hauls. Well, actually, I couldn't see what the content was. It's just that my TikTok feed (which I watch mostly while sitting on my bed in a towel with wet hair) is cat videos and Gen Z vintage clothing hauls. His is probably '13 of the worst traffic pile-ups ever' or similar. The woman who trapped me in my vehicle in the car park of a Big Tesco. To give her an iota of grace, I will acknowledge that the car park in question has ludicrously small spaces and is in a salubrious part of Dublin where the cars are all wider and taller than any city vehicle needs to be. I had tucked my Nissan Juke into a space with the passenger side mere inches from a wall. She then promptly reversed her combine harvester in beside me as I was gathering my bags for life and trolley tokens, and left about 11cm of space between her door and mine. I tried to gain her attention as she abseiled down from her vehicle but to no avail. I simply had to wait the 15 minutes for her to return. [ Changing your playlist can make you a safer driver, claims Allianz research Opens in new window ] Anyone who 'swan necks' around corners. I had an amazing driving instructor in my early 20s who told me that the very worst motorists will take a big swing out to get around a corner, usually oblivious to other cars in the lane to their right. Unless you're in a bus or a truck you don't need two metres of clearance. I'm this close to advocating for new driving tests every five years. The man in the obnoxious pickup truck who blocked the yellow box at the gate where I live. He failed to move forward even when traffic allowed because he was on his phone, made an obscene gesture when I gave the politest of bips to alert him to the obstruction he was causing, and then, to add insult to injury, had a 'climate denier' sticker on his tailgate. Maybe the roll bars on his preposterous giant tractor will save him when the apocalypse comes.
Irish Daily Mirror
3 hours ago
- Irish Daily Mirror
Man caught with haul of child abuse and anime images narrowly avoids jail
A Co Donegal man caught with a haul of child sex abuse and anime images on a computer hard-drive at his home has avoided going to jail. John Sweeney, 60, appeared at Letterkenny Circuit Court where he pleaded guilty to possession of the images when his house at Dore, Bunbeg was raided by Gardai on July 24, 2019. Detective Garda Enda Jennings and Michelle Kelly were acting on information forwarded by the Garda National Protective Services Bureau. It followed information they received that a user had uploaded child pornography from an Eircom internet account. The account was traced to John Sweeney whose Eircom account had been activated on April 11, 2014. Gardai visited the house and seized three mobile phones as well as a hard-drive. All the images including a total of 139 child abuse images and 94 anime images were found on the computer hard-drive. Sweeney was arrested, taken to Milford Garda Station and made full admissions. Detective Garda Enda Jennings told the court that the accused man had cooperated and told Gardai he had been going through a difficult time and was drinking heavily at the time. The court was further told that Sweeney lived alone at the address and had no previous convictions. Barrister for the accused, Ms Patricia McLaughlin, SC, said her client had given all his PIN numbers to Gardai and had cooperated fully and made admissions at the scene. However, because of a backlog in investigating such cases around the country at the time, it wasn't until November 2023 that a plea could be made. A number of the One in Four counselling service was given to Sweeney and he went about getting counselling during that time. Ms McLaughlin said it was not the case that her client shared any of the images and had no great sophisticated knowledge of computers but was accessing adult pornography over a period of time. Child pornography then began to pop up and the accused man then developed some curiosity on this, Ms McLaughlin added. Sweeney had been in a relationship for several years but this ended and he began to drink and this led to a deterioration in his mental health. He had been diagnosed with cancer in 2015 but had recovered from this and he had a good work history up until this and had no previous convictions. A probation report dated May 29, 2025, said Sweeney was of a low risk of reoffending but there were some concerns for him because of his isolation and that he has limited support within the community. The report said Sweeney had been spending hours online going down a rabbit hole of adult pornography and then further material at a time when he was leading a chaotic lifestyle, suffering from emotional distress and abusing alcohol. However, the probation service also noted that he has expressed remorse and is aware that the images are wrong and was happy to go under the supervision of the probation services. Community service was not recommended for Sweeney because of his medical issues but he continues to go down the path of counselling, the probation report added. Ms McLaughlin added that Sweeney is a man of previous good character who has had the offence hanging over him for the past five years, that he lives in a small, local community and that he has taken steps towards rehabilitation. She asked Judge John Aylmer to consider dealing with the offence by way of a non-custodial sentence considering the overall amount of images, the amount of time the accused man had the images in his possession which was estimated to be two months and how he came upon the images. She said her client had had an "unsophisticated fall into child porn." Judge Aylmer said that on the very early plea and the number of images involved, he placed the offence at the lower end of the scale and one which merited a sentence of two years before mitigation. In mitigation, the Judge said Sweeney had no previous convictions, had cooperated fully with Gardai and had entered an early plea. He also noted that five years had elapsed since his arrest and appearing in court, that the case had been hanging over Sweeney, that he had availed of rehab and that he was assessed as being of a low risk of reoffending. For all of these factors as well as his remorse and shame, Judge Aylmer reduced the sentence to one of 18 months in prison. He added that the question then arises that if the court might suspend all or part of that sentence and that he accepted the advance by Sweeney's barrister, Ms McLaughlin, that there were similarities to another case, the McGinty case. Ms McLaughlin said that it was similar in many ways to the McGinty case because of the cooperation, the lack of previous convictions, the low risk of reoffending, the engagement in rehab as well as the fact that the case has hung over the accused for so long. Judge Aylmer agreed that this was one of those unusual cases where the court can suspend the entirety of the 18 months sentence and ordered Sweeney to go under the supervision of the probation services.
Irish Times
11 hours ago
- Irish Times
Cyclist (60s) killed in collision with van in Co Cork
A man in his 60s has died following a collision in Co Cork on Wednesday. The collision, which involved a van and a cyclist, occurred on the N25 at Carrigtwohill at about 5pm. Emergency services attended the incident but the cyclist was pronounced dead at the scene. His body was removed to the mortuary at University Cork Hospital where a post-mortem examination will take place in due course. The male driver of the van, who is aged in his 60s, received treatment at the scene. READ MORE Gardaí are investigating the incident. The road will remain closed overnight for a technical examination by Garda forensic collision investigators on Thursday morning. Gardaí have appealed for witnesses to the incident to come forward. Any road users who may have camera or dash cam footage and were travelling in the area between 4.30pm and 5pm on Wednesday are asked to make this footage available to investigating gardaí.
