The BelTel

Thirty years ago, Wicklow publican Tom Nevin was shot dead as he counted the takings following a busy day at Jack White’s Inn. Initially, the incident appeared to be a robbery gone wrong, but grieving wife Catherine Nevin would eventually emerge as the prime suspect and later come to be known as ‘The Black Widow’.

On the first of a two-part special, we look back at how one of Ireland’s most famous criminals came into the spotlight.

Host: Fionnán Sheahan
Guest: Mary Wilson
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Roger Casement was hanged in August 1916 for treason against the Crown. Formerly Sir Roger, his assistance to Germany during the First World Ward was undeniable and from a British point of view he was a traitor.
From from an Irish nationalist point of view, he was a rebel and a hero who now took his place in history among the martyrs of republicanism and the leader of the 1916 Rising.

No knight of the realm had faced treason charges for centuries, let alone be executed. His story was without precedent.
A Protestant Anglo-Irish man who had been a loyal servant of the British empire, he had exposed horrific abuses of indigenous people in Africa and South America. But he then came to believe Ireland urgently needed to free itself of Britain.

Who was this complex individual and how did he end up being killed by the state he had served?

Casement is a subject of a new book – A Rebel And A Traitor – by Rory Carroll, the Guardian's Ireland correspondent.

He joined Sam McBride on the BelTel.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Belfast poet, Sinéad Morrisey, was brought up in a Communist family. Hers was a childhood lived in the little world created by the party, a world apart from others and from the Troubles.

It involved smoke-filled rooms, endless meetings, and dreams of a future utopia – coupled with a belief that east of the Iron Curtain, there were people already living in it.

The fall of Communism in the eastern block was more than an historical event for her family – it was the end of a dream and of a way of life.

Sinéad Morrisey’s new memoir is called ‘Among Communists’. She joined Ciarán Dunbar to explain the book and her story.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Members of the jury in the Noah Donohoe inquest have been asked to indicate their availability for the month of May.

The inquest officially began on the 19th of January and was expected to finish up in mid-March.

Fourteen-year-old Noah’s body was discovered in north Belfast on the 27 of June 2020 - six days after he had gone missing.

This week an anonymous witness at the inquest denied being the caller who informed police that Daryl Paul had been trying to sell Noah Donohoe’s laptop.

Liam Tunney has been covering the inquest for the Belfast Telegraph.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It was supposed to be an oral record of the Troubles, made by the paramilitaries, and initially the ‘Boston Tapes’ project seemed like a really good idea, albeit one which would include descriptions of violence and terror.
The concept was simple – former paramilitaries would be interviewed, the tapes would then be kept in storage, and their stories only revealed after the interviewee’s deaths.
But it became clear that the scheme was flawed and that the recordings were not as secret as participants assumed.
Now the Belfast Telegraph can reveal that the Boston College tapes archive has been formally closed - and will remain so for 75 years from when it was first created
What was the Boston Tapes project?
What went wrong?
And why have the records been sealed?
Ciarán Dunbar is joined by Belfast Telegraph reporter, Andrew Madden.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.