When something false is repeated often enough, it has a tendency to become accepted fact. At some point a seed of incorrect information takes root in the public discourse before spreading through newspaper articles, books and political statements. Eventually, the actual truth becomes almost impossible to discern. It is a phenomenon known to researchers as the illusory truth effect.
The family of Elizabeth Plunkett came face to face with this effect in 2023 after getting a call from the Parole Board.
Elizabeth was a 23-year-old woman from Ringsend in Dublin who, in 1976, was kidnapped and murdered by two English men. The killers, John Shaw and Geoffrey Evans, had come to Ireland with the aim of murdering one woman every week.
A month after Elizabeth’s death, they murdered another young woman, Mary Duffy, from Co Galway, before being caught by gardaí and confessing to their crimes.
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Shaw and Evans became known as Ireland’s first serial killers.
Both received life sentences and Evans died in custody in 2012 at the age of 72. Shaw (78) remains in Arbour Hill Prison. He is Ireland’s longest-serving prisoner.
He sought to change that in 2023 by applying for parole, having already been granted release for two days a year. Under a new parole act passed in 2019, the Plunkett family had an automatic right to express their views on Shaw’s parole bid.
When the family were contacted by the Parole Board, it was decided two of Elizabeth’s sisters, Bernadette Barry and Kathleen Nolan, would speak for all of the siblings. They spent hours drafting their submissions, explaining the ongoing trauma of Elizabeth’s murder and the effect it had on their parents who both died a few years afterwards. Shaw should not be released under any circumstances, they said.
“I poured my heart and soul into that,” said Kathleen this week. “It was like slicing me open, with the trauma of remembering.”
They repeated the process later in person during a meeting with two members of the Parole Board who would decide Shaw’s future.
“We got emotional, we got angry – it was gruelling,” recalled Bernadette.
Afterwards, the family put the matter to the back of their minds and prepared for the wedding of Kathleen’s daughter that summer.
That August, the sisters got a call from the solicitors representing them in the parole process and were asked to come into the office on a Saturday morning. Their solicitor, James McGuill, informed them that the Parole Board had made a serious mistake. It had been discovered the Plunkett family were not “relevant victims” and therefore had no right to take part in Shaw’s parole process.
This was because Shaw had in fact never been convicted of Elizabeth’s murder.
Bernadette and Kathleen could not believe what they were hearing. For decades, newspaper articles and books had repeated the same “fact”: that John Shaw and Geoffrey Evans – “Ireland’s first serial killers” – were serving life for the murders of Elizabeth Plunkett and Mary Duffy.
More than that, various State agencies were under the same impression. Over the years, every time Shaw or Evans was moved out of the prison, for example for hospital appointments, the Irish Prison Service (IPS) contacted the Plunkett family “as relevant victims” to let them know.
Similarly, the Parole Board had contacted the family in the belief that Shaw had been convicted of Elizabeth’s murder, only to realise belatedly its mistake.
“There’s retired judges on the Parole Board,” said Kathleen. “The highest echelons of Irish society get these jobs on these boards. They’re highly educated people, and yet no one checked this out.”
How did this illusory truth take hold?
A look through the archives provides a few clues. Shaw and Evans confessed to raping and murdering both women shortly after their capture. However, the prosecution was a convoluted affair.
First, a judge granted a defence application that the men be tried separately, as each one was blaming the other for the murders. For reasons that remain unclear, the judge also ordered the men be given separate trials for each of the murdered women, meaning a total of four trials.
The hearing began in July 1977, when Shaw went on trial for Mary Duffy’s rape and murder. To the surprise of many onlookers the jury became deadlocked on a verdict. He was retried and subsequently convicted.
[ The late summer murders: Two men on a mission to kill Irish womenOpens in new window ]
The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) then successfully appealed the original judgment mandating separate trials, meaning they could try Evans for both of the murders at the same time. Following the trial, he was convicted of Mary Duffy’s murder but, for reasons that are also unclear at this remove, the judge ordered the jury to find him not guilty of Elizabeth Plunkett’s killing.
Both men were sentenced to life for Mary Duffy’s murder. Then, in 1979, the DPP dropped the charges against Shaw relating to Elizabeth’s rape and murder.
To date, nothing has emerged to explain this decision. It is possible the DPP believed Shaw would never be released so there was no point in going through the expense of another trial.
Like the rest of Irish society, Bernadette and Elizabeth, who were teenagers at the time, went through their life believing Shaw was in prison for their sister’s murder. They explained that during the trials, their father went to great lengths to shield the family from the trauma of the process.
“The way it was in the house, it wasn’t discussed. My father would just shut down any conversation about it because it set my Mammy off. It was all about trying to keep us together because we were all ready to just lose the plot,” said Bernadette.
“When you see somebody going to jail and there was a court case, you just automatically live your life thinking, yeah, they were found guilty,” said Kathleen.
After being informed about the Parole Board’s mistake in August 2023, the sisters decided they would refuse to accept the label of “not relevant victims”.
Their solicitor hired two barristers to examine the case. After searching through the records, the lawyers found that not only had there been no conviction for Elizabeth’s murder, no inquest had been held either.
It would later emerge that a death certificate had not even been issued for the young woman.
It felt like Elizabeth had been erased, the sisters said, and they were determined to address that.
The sisters wrote to the Garda, the DPP and the Government but got nowhere. At that point they decided to go public and made contact with the RTÉ Documentary on One team, having been impressed by their investigation into abuse in Blackrock College.
“I said to Kathleen: they’re meticulous. They have to be. Because they can’t afford to be sued after all the Ryan Tubridy thing,” joked Bernadette.
The sisters have nothing but praise for the documentary team, and in particular its producer Liam O’Brien. Last month RTÉ started publishing a six-part podcast on the case called Stolen Sister.
Earlier this year, thanks to the sisters’ campaign, an inquest was finally held into Elizabeth’s death which recorded a verdict of unlawful killing.
However, officially, no one has been convicted of her death and the Plunkett family still have no say in Shaw’s parole.
His last parole bid was rejected. He is expected to apply again early next year.
James McGuill, their solicitor, has called on the Garda to reopen the murder investigation with a view to securing a murder conviction against Shaw. The Garda has said its investigation concluded in 1976 and the matter is one for the DPP.
The family have received legal advice that, in rare cases, it is possible to reopen a case after charges are dropped. One path being pursued by McGuill and the two sisters is gathering enough new evidence to allow prosecutors to reopen the case.
They have had some success to date. After the inquest, and particularly after the start of the RTÉ series, multiple women have come forward to say they believe they were also targeted by Shaw and Evans during the men’s 1976 crime spree.
This includes a woman who was knocked down by a car very close to where Elizabeth was abducted in Co Wicklow. These testimonies will be passed on to the Garda and DPP, McGuill said.
Looking back, Kathleen says she can understand her father’s desire to protect them from the trial and why he “hid the newspapers behind the sideboard”.
“When anyone would it bring up, he’d say: ‘Let Elizabeth Rest in peace’, because he couldn’t cope,” she said.
Nevertheless, they are determined to keep up their campaign for Elizabeth’s case to be reopened by authorities.
“They thought these two auld ones would just go away, said Bernadette. “But no, sorry, not when you’re fighting for your family.”
