DEATH OF ‘BLACK WIDOW’ NEVIN ( 67)
CANCER CLAIMS LIFE OF MURDERER
CATHERINE Nevin has died aged 67 in a Dublin Hostel having passed away on Monday night.
The convicted murderer, who was sentenced to life in prison for organising the murder of her husband Tom in Jack White’s in 1996, was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2016.
Last year, she was given full-time temporary release from prison so she could see out her final days in a nursing home.
Prior to that she was being supervised by the Probation Services after receiving temporary release from the Dochas Centre in Dublin.
She was released following months of medical treatment for an incurable brain tumour. For a period, she had been receiving care at Dublin’s Mater Hospital.
She was required to sign-on once every four weeks with probation officers.
Born Catherine Scully in Nurney, Co Kildare, in October 1950, she came from a farming family and attended the Presentation College in Kildare town. She met her husband-to-be, Galway man Tom, in 1970 and they married six years later in Rome.
Initially she worked as a beautician before joining Tom in the pub trade. They started running Jack White’s in Brittas Bay in 1986.
In April 2000, Nevin was jailed after a jury found her guilty of paying a hitman to murder her husband Tom in their home at Jack White’s Bar, Brittas Bay, on March 19, 1996.
Her trial gripped the nation and made international headlines, with Nevin parading in front of the waiting media on each day of the trial dressed in an expensive array of outfits.
The trial lasted 42 days and the jury deliberated for a record five days before reaching their decision, then the longest period of deliberation in the history of the state.
Nevin claimed she had no part in the murder and said she been tied to her bed by attackers before freeing herself on the night her husband was killed.
Speaking at her sentencing, Miss Justice Mella Carroll told Nevin she had ‘assassinated’ her husband twice, once by ordering his murder and again when she tried to destroy his character in court.
Speaking to Tom Nevin’s family, the judge said: ‘I hope this family will take some consolation form this result.’
As well as being jailed for life, Nevin also received a concurrent seven-year sentence for soliciting three men – William McClean, Gerry Heapes and John Jones – to kill her husband in 1989 and 1990.
After the verdict was delivered, the Nevin family delivered a statement through their solicitor Sinead Curtis, saying: ‘Whilst nothing will ever diminish the grief and sadness which we have suffered as a result of Tom’s death, it gives us some relief that a person primarily responsible for his murder has, today, been convicted of that offence.’
The family then expressed their appreciation to the Gardaí, the prosecution team and the jury before asking for time, space and privacy to deal with their brother’s death
Later that same night cars beeped their horns as they passed Jack White’s Inn in a show of support for Tom Nevin’s family.
Nevin lost an appeal against her conviction in 2003. In 2010, she also lost an application to have her conviction declared a miscarriage of justice.
In 2014, a Supreme Court appeal against t her conviction was dismissed.
She was also disbarred from inheriting her husband’s estate but had recently launched a legal challenge to that High Court ruling. g.
Tom Nevin died without leaving a will. His s assets included Jack White’s, which was jointtly owned with Catherine Nevin, and which h she sold in 1997 for £620,000. Other assets included two Dublin properties, a £78,000 insurance policy and cash of £197,000.