00:00:03
[music playing] NARRATOR: September
22, 1976, Ireland. 23-year-old Mary Duffy
finished working the late shift
00:00:15
at the Wimpy Bar Restaurant
in the town of Castlebar in County Mayo. Mary lives six
miles away, and she
00:00:22
would normally get a lift home. But tonight, her ride was late,
so Mary left a message, saying,
00:00:28
she'd start walking. She had no idea that two English
killers were watching her as she headed home.
00:00:38
They were literally
poachers prowling for prey. NARRATOR: Three weeks
earlier, another young woman,
00:00:47
Elizabeth Plunkett,
her body now lying at the bottom of the Irish Sea. They spoke openly
about killing her
00:00:55
in front of the poor,
unfortunate victim. NARRATOR: Geofrrey
Evans and John Shaw
00:01:00
knew what happened if they
let their captives live. Remember what
happens in England.
00:01:05
We have to make sure that we
don't leave any witnesses. We have to kill the victims.
00:01:11
NARRATOR: When the law
finally caught up with them, they very nearly got
away with murder.
00:01:23
NARRATOR: John Shaw
and Geoffrey Evans were a deviant duo, driven
by their own selfish desires.
00:01:29
Women were merely objects
to use and discard. Mary Duffy and
Elizabeth Plunkett were two of those women,
who couldn't be left
00:01:39
alive to identify John
Shaw and Geoffrey Evans as two of the world's
most evil killers.
00:01:46
[theme music] August the 28th, 1976, Ireland. John Shaw and Geoffrey Evans
were driving back from Dublin
00:02:15
and thought they'd stop at the
seaside resort of Brittas Bay and rob a few caravans.
00:02:22
It was a boiling hot summer
with loads of tourists about. The caravans were an
easy, lucrative target.
00:02:30
Then they saw Elizabeth
Plunkett walking along the road. In the 1970s, it
would have been easier
00:02:39
to operate as a sexual
predator because you had easier access to victims. There were more opportunities
for you to engage with victims
00:02:48
because there wasn't this
fear of stranger danger back at the time. NARRATOR: The two men
abducted Elizabeth Plunkett
00:02:55
and subjected her to
a horrifying ordeal before killing her and
dumping her naked body
00:03:01
in the Irish Sea. NARRATOR: Three weeks later,
another dark road, this time on the west coast of Ireland.
00:03:35
23-year-old Mary Duffy
met the same fate. I know this sounds
extraordinary, but this was--
00:03:44
this is opportunistic murder. This is opportunistic rape. This is not pre-planned.
00:03:50
This is not carefully
orchestrated. It is opportunistic
in every way. These were two men
who weren't planners.
00:03:57
They were-- they
did it by instinct. And unfortunately, the
instinct was one in the end
00:04:04
which led to rape and murder. JEROME REILLY:
Their stated aim was that they were going to abduct,
rape, and murder a woman
00:04:13
a week. And if they hadn't been
stopped, they would definitely have claimed more victims.
00:04:20
When you attack somebody
and you don't kill them, you have a living witness. You have somebody
who can identify you.
00:04:26
You have somebody who can
provide evidence against you in court. NARRATOR: Geoffrey
Evans and John Shaw
00:04:34
were eventually caught and
confessed to their crimes. But a procedural mistake
by the Irish police
00:04:40
almost set them free. These killers' stories begin
in the north of England. Geoffrey Evans was born
on June the 12th, 1943.
00:04:53
And John Shaw was born two years
later, on July the 6th, 1945. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Geoffrey
Evans and John Shaw
00:05:00
were both born in
Lancashire, in England. One came from a
mining background. That was Shaw.
00:05:07
And Evans was a carpenter. Evans was brought up in
Manchester, and Shaw, well, around Wigan.
00:05:16
NARRATOR: By the time both
men were in their 30s, they'd each racked up
considerable number
00:05:21
of criminal convictions
and served time in prison. Shaw's convictions tended
to be for violent crime,
00:05:29
for sexual crime. Evans's convictions
were more for property crimes like burglary.
00:05:33
But these were two
individuals who had those those intentions
to do harm to other people
00:05:40
in order to get
what they wanted. So when they met in
prison, it was only going to get worse from there.
00:05:46
They weren't master criminals. They were two pretty
average, pretty dim people. I mean, Shaw could barely write.
00:05:55
Evans was a little bit more
eloquent, but not much. But I think they became
partners in depravity because
00:06:02
in the end, with Shaw
and Evans out of jail, they committed-- or it's
believed they committed-- three
00:06:10
rapes in Lancashire,
one of which was the 16-year-old daughter
of a Manchester police officer.
00:06:16
And it was that
rape and the furor that it created that saw them
leave Lancashire for Ireland.
00:06:28
NARRATOR: In 1974 and on the
run from police in Manchester, England, Evans and Shaw
arrived in Ireland.
00:06:37
Neither had any means of
supporting themselves, so they continued with
their criminal ways.
00:06:44
I think the choice of
Ireland is an interesting one. It makes sense on
quite a lot of levels.
00:06:50
It's of close
proximity to the UK, but it's a completely
different legal system.
00:06:55
It's a completely
different jurisdiction. And back in the 1970s,
there wasn't the degree
00:07:00
of cooperation and communication
between police forces internationally. So I think that was all part
and parcel of the planning here.
00:07:08
NARRATOR: They adopted
the fictitious names of Geoffrey Murphy for Evans
and John Murphy for John Shaw.
00:07:16
In the first instance,
they carried out a series of robberies, mostly in the area
of Wicklow, which is just south
00:07:23
of Dublin, a picturesque area. They robbed caravans and
houses and basically lived
00:07:30
off their criminal proceedings. NARRATOR: It wasn't
long before they were caught by the
Irish police and given
00:07:37
a two-year prison sentence. They spent the first part of
their sentence in Cork prison
00:07:43
before being transferred
to Mountjoy prison in Dublin, where they became
friends with another Englishman
00:07:50
called Cliff Outram. The police back in England
discovered that Evans and Shaw were incarcerated in Ireland.
00:07:58
They applied for an
extradition order so the two men
could face justice for the sex crimes committed
in the Greater Manchester area.
00:08:06
Relations between Ireland
and Britain were poor. It was the height
of the troubles.
00:08:16
Extradition hearings,
which were usually used by the British authorities to
seek the extradition of INLA
00:08:26
and IRA suspects to answer
charges for offenses caused in mainland Britain, were
notoriously difficult.
00:08:38
The Irish courts demanded
castiron evidence before they would extradite
any citizen from the Republic
00:08:46
to Britain. And I think perhaps there
was an awareness of this on the part of Evans and Shaw,
Evans in particular, in terms
00:08:55
of realizing that those
relationships between the two countries were not in a
particularly good state,
00:09:01
and that that would be something
that would work in their favor. NARRATOR: Both men
were coming close
00:09:06
to the end of their
two-year sentence in Ireland and, with time off
for good behavior,
00:09:11
were due to be released. The evidence presented
by the English police was substantial, but
proved not to be enough.
00:09:20
The Irish court demanded
further evidence be submitted before
an extradition application would be granted.
00:09:28
Despite objections from both
the Irish and English police, Evans and Shaw were
released in August 1976.
00:09:38
JEROME REILLY: While the British
were getting this new evidence together, Evans and Shaw saw
that this was an opportunity
00:09:49
to make a bid for freedom. And so once they received bail,
they basically disappeared
00:09:57
into the countryside. NARRATOR: August the 28th, 1976. With nowhere to
live, Evans and Shaw
00:10:08
stayed with Cliff
Outram, the Englishman they'd met in
Mountjoy prison, who lived in the town of Fethard.
00:10:17
A friend of Cliff's
agreed to lend them a car. The summer of 1976
was blisteringly hot,
00:10:27
attracting many
visitors to Ireland's beautiful coastal resorts. A group of six young people
arrived at Brittas Bay,
00:10:37
50 miles south of
Dublin, for the weekend, where they'd booked a caravan. The focal point of the
resort was the beach
00:10:45
and McDaniel's Pub
and Restaurant. At 9:00 PM, after booking
into their caravan,
00:10:52
they headed for the pub. NARRATOR: Evans and Shaw
were returning from Dublin in their borrowed car.
00:11:20
They stopped off for a drink
before continuing south, where they knew of a caravan
park that might
00:11:25
provide some easy pickings. To pass the time, the
men talked about women. JEROME REILLY: So, on
the night of August
00:11:34
the 28th, 1976, Shaw and
Evans, having had a few drinks in [inaudible],, which was
en route to Brittas Bay,
00:11:44
arrived in Brittas Bay. NARRATOR: The group from Dublin
were now in McDaniel's Pub,
00:11:49
enjoying their evening. Sometime during the
night, during the evening, as they socialized in
the pub, Ms. Plunkett
00:11:58
with her boyfriend and
some other friends, there was a spat. It's unclear whether it was
a spat with her boyfriend
00:12:06
or a spat with some of the
girls who were in the group. But either way, Elizabeth
Plunkett left the pub in a huff
00:12:17
after this minor disagreement. But she is in the middle
of pretty much nowhere. It's extremely dark.
00:12:26
We do not have masses
of street lights. And she sets off down the road. NARRATOR: Evans and Shaw
pass Elizabeth Plunkett
00:12:36
walking along the road. JEROME REILLY: Evans
was the driver. And he continued
on past Elizabeth
00:12:42
Plunkett a short
distance away and let John Shaw out of the car. He then turned the
car around, pulled in
00:12:53
beside Elizabeth Plunkett,
and offered her a lift. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: So she
gets into the car with him.
00:13:01
And looking at this from a
21st century perspective, we think, wow, this is quite a
risky, dangerous thing to do.
00:13:08
But this was the 1970s,
when hitchhiking, when thumbing a lift
was something that
00:13:13
was very normal, especially
in rural places in Ireland and in the UK. I mean, she thought she
could look after herself.
00:13:21
He didn't look
particularly frightening. And she's a strong woman. I mean, she's done swimming,
and she's done judo.
00:13:29
And she's, you know,
strong and capable of standing up for
herself, she thinks. But of course, that's
based on the fact
00:13:37
there's only one man in the car. NARRATOR: August the 28th,
1976, on a dark country
00:13:46
road in Brittas Bay Island,
23-year-old Elizabeth Plunkett had accepted a lift
from Geoffrey Evans.
00:13:54
ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
[inaudible] was quite a small, not particularly
intimidating-looking man.
00:13:58
So I think she made
that risk assessment. But I think what
she didn't account for was that she was in the
grasp of a killing team here.
00:14:07
And just up the
road was Shaw, who Evans would pick up on the way. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Evans
drives a little further
00:14:14
along with Elizabeth
in the passenger seat and then stops and
picks up Shaw, who gets
00:14:18
into the back seat of the car. Now, there are two men in the
car and Elizabeth Plunkett.
00:14:24
And perhaps, for
the first time, she begins to wonder and worry about
what might be going to happen.
00:14:32
She has every right
to worry because they are about to attack her. NARRATOR: To stifle
her screams, they
00:14:40
repeatedly punched
her and stuffed paper tissues into her mouth. They took her to a nearby
wood, just a short distance
00:14:49
away from McDaniel's Pub,
called Castletimon Wood. They climbed over a fence. Basically, they frogmarched
poor, fortunate Elizabeth
00:15:03
Plunkett into the
woods and demanded that then she lay down. There then followed a litany
of horror for this young woman.
00:15:19
She was raped repeatedly. NARRATOR: Elizabeth's ordeal
continued throughout the night,
00:15:24
with the two men coming
and going from the woods. Evans and Shaw
discussed whether or not
00:15:30
they should kill Elizabeth,
a debate she could hear. Evans kept reminding Shaw,
remember what happened
00:15:37
in England, where
they'd let their victims live to identify them. So, again, you must
take your own judgment
00:15:48
about who exactly
said what and to whom, because we do not know. Sadly, tragically,
Elizabeth Plunkett
00:15:57
was not simply raped
repeatedly, but was eventually strangled by Shaw
with the sleeve of a shirt.
00:16:05
He wrapped it around her
neck and garroted her. And now they have a dead
body on their hands.
00:16:14
And they don't quite
know what to do. ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
Elizabeth left the pub.
00:16:22
And where she went after
that was a mystery to those who she'd been with in the pub.
00:16:28
Her boyfriend, Damien, later
traveled to Dublin to see whether she'd actually
arrive there, and it
00:16:34
was clear that she hadn't. So when she left
that pub, to them, she had disappeared off
the face of the Earth.
00:16:41
NARRATOR: The search
continued throughout the night and into the next morning and
through the following day.
00:17:04
NARRATOR: Evans and Shaw left
Elizabeth's body in the woods and broke into some sheds
not far from McDaniel's Pub,
00:17:11
looking for heavy implements. They returned and placed
Elizabeth in the car and drove to the beach, where
they stole a rowing boat.
00:17:21
Ever resourceful, if you
take that word ironically, they weight her body
with a lawnmower
00:17:29
so that she's not going to
bob up back to the surface in no time at all. So here we have
the dead of night.
00:17:37
It's pitch black. Two men in a rowing boat
and the now naked body of Elizabeth Plunkett between
them on a rowing boat,
00:17:46
being rode out to sea. They get a suitable way out. And they pour poor
Elizabeth Plunkett
00:17:54
into the Irish sea, weighted
down with the lawnmower. I think they believe this
was a failsafe way of ensuring
00:18:01
her body wasn't discovered. They thought they were more
clever than they actually were.
00:18:07
And I think the reason they did
this, rather than bury her body somewhere, is because
when a body is buried,
00:18:13
there is always the
potential that somebody will come along and find it. But this gives them control
over their victim's body.
00:18:21
They're the only ones
who know where she is. And they think that they're the
only ones who will ever know.
00:18:26
They think she's
gone forever now. NARRATOR: Back on the
shore, Evans and Shaw lit a campfire by
the side of the road
00:18:35
and tried to burn
Elizabeth's clothes. By chance, a Garda
police detective, Joseph [inaudible] unaware
of Elizabeth's disappearance,
00:18:44
came across the two men. He asked them who they were. Evans quickly gave the
false name, Geoffrey Murphy.
00:18:56
Shaw played along
with the deception. He said he was
Geoffrey's brother, John. But for whatever
reason, decided to take
00:19:06
the registration
number of the car and other particulars
of the details. NARRATOR: After a whole
weekend had passed,
00:19:16
the search for
Elizabeth intensified. 31st of August, 1976. On Monday morning,
Elizabeth was officially
00:19:27
reported missing to the Gardaí. The search was
widened to the roads leading out from
McDaniel's and a dirt road
00:19:37
at the back of the pub
that led to some woodland. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: When
the police detectives were
00:19:42
searching the area
around the McDaniel's Pub where Elizabeth had
gone missing from,
00:19:46
they found several items that
were later connected to her. So there was a watch
and some underwear,
00:19:52
which her parents
identified as being hers. And they also
found a green shoe, which was identified by
her boyfriend's sister, who
00:20:01
was also her best
friend, as a shoe that she'd been wearing on
that particular evening.
00:20:06
Evans and Shaw were on
the run on the double. They were on the run from
the British authorities
00:20:14
for the sexual assaults in
the Greater Manchester area. Now they were on the
run also for the murder
00:20:24
of Elizabeth Plunkett. NARRATOR: The Irish
police force, the Gardaí, had an elite investigative
unit in their crime
00:20:32
branch based in
Wicklow that covered serious crime nationwide. When called into service, the
unit brought in assistance
00:20:41
from across the country. Detective Tom Connolly was
one of the officers recruited
00:20:46
to assist the investigation
into the disappearance of Elizabeth Plunkett. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: And this was
the name that one of the men
00:21:23
had given to the police
detective who would come across those two
men burning clothes
00:21:29
in the Brittas Bay area. So the pieces started to come
together at this point in time.
00:21:35
There was a trail of
evidence that would lead right back to Evans and Shaw. NARRATOR: Evans and Shaw
had fled Brittas Bay
00:21:44
and returned to Cliff
Outram's in Fethard. They gave the car back. And on September
the 10th, two weeks
00:21:52
after the murder of
Elizabeth Plunkett, Cliff gave them a
lift to Limerick. They decided to lay
low in Galway City
00:22:00
and moved out to the seaside
resort called Salthill. They came up with a
cunning plan to keep
00:22:07
themselves out of the public
eye to a certain extent. They bought a
caravan, paying 380
00:22:16
pounds at the time
for the caravan in the village of Barna. NARRATOR: They move their
caravan to a quieter
00:22:25
part of the park and laid low. After a few days,
they traveled 60 miles to the prosperous
market town of Clifden,
00:22:33
another tourist
hotspot, and stole a fern green Ford Cortina car. They brought the car
back to the caravan park,
00:22:42
changed the number plates, and
hand-painted the car black. They now had wheels. They now had the means to
travel around the country
00:22:53
to carry out their evil plan. NARRATOR: And that evil
plan was to abduct, rape, and murder a woman each
week until they were caught.
00:23:07
September the 10th, 1976. The Gardaí's serious
crime unit called a briefing about
the disappearance
00:23:15
of Elizabeth Plunkett. As the team were discussing the
items found in the woodland,
00:23:20
including the name tag of
Geoffrey Murphy, Joseph [inaudible] who was
new to the team,
00:23:26
informed them of the two
suspicious Englishmen he'd encountered by a campfire
on the night of August
00:23:33
the 29th, the day after
Elizabeth had gone missing. The police now had two names,
Geoffrey and John Murphy.
00:23:41
They also had a car registration
number that Detective [inaudible] had taken note of.
00:23:56
NARRATOR: Evans and Shaw,
hiding out in their caravan, were feeling confident
they'd got away with murder.
00:24:04
They decided to
explore further west and went across the county
border to the town of Castlebar
00:24:11
in County Mayo. 23-year-old Mary Duffy was
working in the Wimpy Bar Restaurant in Castlebar on the
evening of September the 22nd,
00:24:24
1976. She lived in the
village of Belcarra, six miles from Castlebar, with
her parents and six siblings.
00:24:33
In 1976, Mary's brother,
John, was 19 years old. NARRATOR: Mary's
shift at the Wimpy Bar
00:25:18
Restaurant in Castlebar
ended around 11:00 PM. The Wimpy Bar is shut. She goes to a phone box.
00:26:00
She phones her brother,
Michael, but he's out, just giving someone else a lift. And she'll know.
00:26:06
And she says to whoever takes
the message, look, I'll walk. I'll just tell him
to catch up with me.
00:26:12
NARRATOR: As Mary
made her phone call, she had no idea that
she was being watched.
00:26:17
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: And
this is when Shaw attacks. So Shaw, on foot, goes up to her
and slammed straight into her,
00:26:24
knocks her to the
ground with such force that her dentures fall out. So Shaw was absolutely
determined that Mary Duffy was
00:26:33
going to be their next victim. And Evans, once again,
brings the car back. And the two, Shaw
and Duffy engaged
00:26:43
in a full-scale struggle. Evans was in the front seat,
opens the door, the back door
00:26:49
behind the the driver's seat. And they try and pull
her into the car. Eventually, Shaw manages
to get her into the car
00:27:00
and tells Evans to drive off. It's the same modus operandi
as Elizabeth Plunkett.
00:27:07
Shaw is now in the back
with the young woman. Evans is driving. NARRATOR: Mary's screams were
heard by local residents,
00:27:17
but no one thought it was
anything to be alarmed about. Detective Tom Connolly
and his colleagues
00:27:26
were following up on
the lead given to them by Detective Joseph
[inaudible] They'd
00:27:32
identified the owner of the
car he'd seen at the campfire. The owner confirmed the
car had been borrowed
00:27:40
and returned by two Englishmen. And he pointed them in the
direction of Cliff Outram
00:27:46
in Fethard. NARRATOR: The Gardaí now had
the names of Geoffrey Evans and John Shaw and were able to
identify them as individuals
00:28:10
wanted in England for a
series of sexual offenses, giving them a full
description of the men,
00:28:16
fingerprints, and photographs. All police stations
nationwide were alerted. And the identity
of the two wanted
00:28:25
men was given to the media. You can imagine the
shock to the community of Southern Ireland.
00:28:32
We're not talking
about Dublin here. We're talking about
rural Ireland. It's a shock to the
communities that they could
00:28:39
actually have been hiding two
men who were prepared to rape and kill. You know, it was
deeply, deeply shocking
00:28:47
and a sense, too,
that it was completely against everything that
Catholic Ireland stood for.
00:28:57
NARRATOR: Shaw and Evans
drove Mary Duffy to a forest and attacked her. Evans went back to their
caravan and returned
00:29:06
with some sleeping pills, which
they forced Mary Duffy to take. At this time, she must
have been at her wit's end.
00:29:14
She's been held by two men,
both dangerous, both vicious. She's been raped repeatedly.
00:29:22
And now, what are
they going to do? Well, one can only shed
a tear for Mary Duffy.
00:29:31
She must have known, she must
have realized that she wasn't going to escape these two.
00:29:36
At some point,
during that ordeal, I'm sure she begged to be-- let me go. I won't tell anyone.
00:29:44
But they didn't. They weren't going to. And in the end,
Shaw smothers her with a cushion from the car.
00:29:56
NARRATOR: The following
day on September the 23rd, when Mary Duffy failed to return
home to Belcarra after work,
00:30:03
her family began to worry. ELIZABETH YARDLEY:
Mary's sister reported her missing because she
hadn't turned up for work.
00:30:11
And when Mary didn't
come home on the evening that she was expected to, she
was quite a gregarious, quite
00:30:18
an outgoing person
with a lot of friends, and her family
assumed that she'd stayed over at a
friend's house, and she'd
00:30:23
gone on to work from there. But when that didn't
happen, that's when her sister reports her missing.
00:30:30
NARRATOR: After Mary Duffy
was reported missing, the police caught a lucky break.
00:30:35
Around four hours before
Mary had gone missing, the owner of a
petrol station about
00:30:39
40 miles south of Castlebar had
encountered two suspicious men. NARRATOR: The
petrol station owner
00:31:19
reported the two men to the
police the following day. Mary Duffy had now been
missing for over 24 hours.
00:31:27
Evans and Shaw now had another
dead body to deal with. JEROME REILLY: Nearby
was the beautiful Lough
00:31:35
Inagh, the heart of Connemara. Again, they stole
some heavy implements, rowed out into the middle of the
lake, and dumped Mary's body.
00:31:51
NARRATOR: Having disposed
of Mary Duffy's body, Evans and Shaw returned
to their caravan in Barna.
00:31:58
In Castlebar, the police
were conducting house to house inquiries and
searching the local area
00:32:04
for any sign of Mary Duffy. A portion of her dentures
had been found near the phone
00:32:09
booth, and residents
had reported hearing screams
around 11 o'clock and a car driving rapidly away.
00:32:17
No one had thought it was
suspicious at the time. A description of the
hand-painted black Cortina
00:32:24
stolen by Evans and Shaw had
by now been widely circulated. On the evening of
September the 26th,
00:32:31
Evans and Shaw, hiding out in
their caravan near Salthill, decided to go out for a
drink at the nightclub
00:32:38
of the Ocean Wave Hotel. NARRATOR: Driving along
the promenade of Salthill around 2:00 PM,
the two policemen
00:33:10
spotted the tail of
a badly painted Ford Cortina sticking out. JEROME REILLY: It was decided
that Gardaí Cochrane would go
00:33:19
on foot back to their station
to seek reinforcements, while Gardaí Boland
would stay behind.
00:33:29
Almost immediately after
Gardaí Cochrane had left, Shaw and Evans emerged from
the Ocean Wave Nightclub.
00:33:39
It seems pretty clear
now that they were looking for their next victim. NARRATOR: Gardaí
Boland watched the two
00:33:45
men get into the Ford Cortina. He revved up the engine
of his patrol car, put his headlights on
full beam, and called
00:33:53
for immediate assistance. They couldn't move until
he had passed them by. And they couldn't see
there was a police
00:34:01
car because of the headlights. NARRATOR: Geoffrey
Evans and John Shaw were taken into custody
initially for possession
00:34:11
of a stolen vehicle. They were brought to
Gardaí HQ at Eglinton Street Station in Galway.
00:34:18
While Geoffrey Evans was
being processed into custody, the police found a receipt
for a caravan purchase
00:34:25
from Barna House Caravan Park. He believed that there
was still the possibility that Mary Duffy
was very much alive
00:35:02
and that she may
be in that caravan. And so he immediately went to
Barna and entered the caravan
00:35:10
and searched it. NARRATOR: Geoffrey
Evans was first to be interviewed by the police.
00:35:15
He claimed they'd arrived
in Brittas Bay on Sunday, the 29th of August, the
morning after Elizabeth
00:35:22
Plunkett had gone missing
from McDaniel's Pub. NARRATOR: Late at night
on September the 27th,
00:35:43
1976, Geoffrey Evans confessed
and signed a written statement admitting to the murder, rape,
and abduction of both Elizabeth
00:35:53
Plunkett and Mary Duffy. He also implicated John Shaw
as his partner in crime. In the early hours of
the following morning,
00:36:06
John Shaw was brought out
of his cell and interviewed. NARRATOR: Evans and Shaw
agreed to take the police
00:36:28
to the locations of where they
disposed of the bodies of Mary Duffy and Elizabeth Plunkett.
00:36:49
NARRATOR: A team of divers was
brought in from the local area to search the loch.
00:36:55
19-year-old John
Duffy, Mary's brother, was there with a friend,
who'd volunteered to dive.
00:37:21
NARRATOR: On October the
10th, 1976, divers found Mary Duffy's body in Loch Inagh.
00:37:27
On September the 28th,
the same day as both men confessed, Elizabeth
Plunkett's body
00:37:33
washed ashore south
of Brittas Bay, 31 days after she
was last seen alive. Evans and Shaw
individually led the police
00:37:43
to the scenes of their crimes. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: And it was
important that they did this
00:37:47
separately so that they could
ensure that these two were not colluding with each
other and that they
00:37:54
could compare the accounts
that each of them gave. NARRATOR: What should have
been an open and shut case
00:38:01
didn't turn out that way. NARRATOR: It was almost
a year later that John Shaw was brought to trial.
00:38:38
His defense team argued that
his constitutional rights had been infringed. They argued he'd been
arrested without a warrant,
00:38:46
and that he should have
been brought before a court the morning after his arrest.
00:38:51
Therefore, he'd been held
in custody unlawfully. And his statements,
including the confession
00:38:57
and accompanying the
police to the crime scene, were all inadmissible in court. The counter argument
made by the prosecution
00:39:06
was compelling in its
defense of the police. They believed that
Mary Duffy was possibly
00:39:13
still alive on
that Monday morning when they first started
to question Shaw, and that that was the reason
why he was not brought
00:39:24
to court as soon as possible. It was also argued that
the search of the caravan was also illegal because it was
carried out without a warrant.
00:39:38
Again, the argument put
forward by the defense was that Mary Duffy, who
may still have been alive,
00:39:44
and her constitutional
rights were also valid and superseded those of a
person suspected of involvement
00:39:53
in her abduction. NARRATOR: The trial judge
declared that any statements, including the confessions
made by Evans and Shaw,
00:40:01
were inadmissible in court. The only hope for a
conviction lay with a jury. NARRATOR: The jury could
not agree on a verdict.
00:40:32
And there was a retrial. During the second
trial of John Shaw, the prosecution had
their ducks in a row
00:40:44
and argued forcibly, cogently,
and with great authority, that the delays in
bringing the two
00:40:52
men to court after their
arrest were perfectly valid. NARRATOR: The case
against Geoffrey Evans ran
00:41:01
into the same legal
hurdles, but as with Shaw, the prosecution prevailed
and both men were eventually
00:41:08
found guilty of false
imprisonment, rape, and the murder of Mary Duffy. Following the
successful conviction
00:41:16
for the crimes committed
against Mary Duffy, the state did not pursue
a further conviction
00:41:22
for the murder of
Elizabeth Plunkett. Both men were sentenced
to life in prison.
00:41:39
NARRATOR: In 2008, following
a heart bypass operation, Geoffrey Evans suffered a
stroke and lapsed into a coma.
00:41:48
He never regained consciousness
and died in 2012 of sepsis. John Shaw remains in prison
and is now Ireland's longest
00:41:58
serving prisoner. Over the years, he's
made many applications to be granted at least two days
of escorted temporary release
00:42:06
per year. To date, his applications
have been unsuccessful. MELLA NESBITT: I'm so sorry,
but it's too upsetting
00:43:43
for me to talk about this. Even after 45 years,
I still miss her and often think of her life was
taken from her by two evil men.
00:43:52
Liz was my best
friend, full of life, a warm-hearted and
lovely friend, who had so much to give to this world.
00:43:59
Her kind heart will
be with me forever. I thank God for
the lovely memories I do have and treasure them.
00:44:06
Till we meet again. Rest in peace, Liz. Yours faithfully, Mella Nesbitt. NARRATOR: John Shaw
and Geoffrey Evans's
00:44:16
petty criminal offending
escalated to a horrifying level of depravity. They escaped extradition to
answer for their vicious crimes
00:44:26
in England and went on to
brutally torture and murder two young women in Ireland
because they remembered what
00:44:33
happened in England
and vowed never to leave one of their
victims alive again, making them two of the
world's most evil killers.
00:44:43
[music playing]