Woman who died in Galway house fire named as former death row inmate Sunny Jacobs
Sonia 'Sunny' Jacobs, aged in her late 70s, spent 17 years on death row in the US after being wrongfully convicted for murder
A woman who died tragically in house fire in Connemara has been named as Sunny Jacobs, a US citizen who spent years on death row in America after being wrongfully convicted for murder.
Sonia 'Sunny' Jacobs, aged in her late 70s, spent 17 years on death row over the murder of two police officers.
A man in his 30s, understood to be a carer for Ms Jacobs, also lost his life in the fire in Co Galway in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
Sonia 'Sunny' Jacobs
News in 90 Seconds - 3rd June 2025
Emergency services were alerted to the fire at a property near Glenicmurrin, Casla, Co Galway, shortly after 6am.
It is understood the deceased were the only occupants of the house at the time the blaze broke out.
"At approximately 6:20am, Gardaí and Fire Services were alerted to a house fire at Gleann Mhic Mhuireann. The fire was brought under control by Fire Services and the bodies of a woman aged in her 70s and a man in his 30s were recovered from inside the house,' a garda spokesperson said.
Three units of the County Galway Fire Service were dispatched to the scene, with personnel from Galway city and An Cheathrú Rua involved in bringing the blaze under control.
Ms Jacobs moved to Ireland in the 1990s and settled in the Connemara area.
In 1976, she and her husband, Jesse Tafero, were both convicted of the murder of two police officers when they were implicated by an acquaintance, Walter Rhodes, with whom they were travelling.
Rhodes was in fact the person who shot the two officers at a rest stop.
Sunny and Jess Tafero and their two children were driving from Florida to North Carolina when their car broke down. Walter Rhodes met them on the roadside and agreed to drive them.
Sunny fell asleep with the children in the back seat, but was awoken by a policeman knocking on the window. In the moments that followed, Rhodes opened fire, killing the two police officers.
Peter Pringle and Sonia (Sunny) Jacobs (Image: Collins Courts)
All three were arrested and the children were taken away.
Rhodes negotiated a plea bargain claiming Jesse and Sunny had shot the officer, in exchange for a life sentence. Both Sunny and Jesse were sentenced to death.
Sunny was put in solitary confinement for five years, awaiting execution – an experience she likened to torture.
Her sentence was eventually reduced to life, but Jesse was executed in obscene circumstances wherein the electric chair malfunctioned and it took him 13 and a half minutes to die.
After Jesse's execution, Rhodes finally confessed that he had fired the fatal shots.
Following her release, she began advocating for those wrongfully convicted and ultimately came to Ireland where she met Peter Pringle – who was sentenced to death for the murder of two gardaí, Garda Henry Byrne and John Morley.
Pringle served 15 years before he was released in May 1995, after his conviction was deemed unsafe and quashed.
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