Never let serial killer Shaw out, case detective warns
A SERIAL killer who has lost a court bid to ‘die a free man’ must never be released from jail, the detective who cracked the case has said.
John Shaw, 72, who helped abduct, rape and murder 24-yearold cook Mary Duffy and office clerk Elizabeth Plunkett, 23, in 1976, is serving a life term.
Although ‘lifers’ are generally released on licence after a current average of 18 years, Shaw has spent the past 42 years behind bars due to the exceptionally ‘heinous’ nature of his crimes.
No-one serving life has any guarantee of ever getting out on licence. It is entirely up to the justice minister of the day to decide if any ‘lifer’ should ever be released.
As revealed by the Irish Daily Mail last July, Shaw sued for improved prison ‘concessions’, including escorted days out to ‘go shopping’, that would pave the way for his eventual release. Since being taken into custody in 1976, he has never been granted a single day out of prison. On Friday, he lost his case, the Mail can reveal.
Speaking ahead of that verdict, Tom Connolly, the retired detective who secured Shaw’s confessions that led to his 1978 conviction, said ‘life must mean life’ in this ‘horrific’ case – and that he wouldn’t recommend moving the killer to any open prison where he might ‘walk out the gate’. The respected ex-investigator said: ‘What he did was horrific. I can still remember talking to the man [in custody] and being so shocked at what he was telling us.
‘To me, life means life and I think this is the only case I was ever involved in – or have heard of in my lifetime – that deserves what it says. There has to be some light at the end of the tunnel for prisoners – that’s what supervised days out are for – but I wouldn’t allow him out of sight for one moment.
‘To inflict him on the public would be reckless.’
In his recent book, Detective: A Life Upholding The Law, Mr Connolly wrote of the effect that Shaw’s crimes had on him personally: ‘It affected me for a long, long time… You wake up at night and these things come back to you.’
Shaw and his accomplice Geoffrey Evans – Ireland’s first known serial killers – captured south Dublin woman Ms Plunkett as she holidayed with friends in Brittas Bay. She was savagely beaten, taken to woods and raped. Having killed her, they tied a lawnmower to her waist and dumped her body at sea.
A month later, they pounced on Ms Duffy after she finished her shift at a Co. Mayo café, held her captive for days, drugged and repeatedly raped her. Having killed her, they tied a concrete block to her legs and dumped her body in a lake.
The pair, from Lancashire, England, were about to strike again when gardaí tracked them down. Shaw was said to have told gardaí on his arrest that he and Evans had set about ‘doing one [woman] a week’. Both were convicted in 1978. Evans died in May 2012.
Shaw’s sentence has been reviewed by the parole board every three years since 1990. In 2016, the parole board recommended two days a year ‘escorted outings’ – but this was vetoed by the then justice minister Frances Fitzgerald, his High Court case heard last year.
Judge Mary Faherty rejected the case he took on all grounds.