Court row for Black Widow’s will

The executor of Black Widow Catherine Nevin’s will is ready to take the place of the dead husband murderer in a court battle to see who gets his €1.1 million fortune.

As revealed by the Irish Daily Mail last month, Nevin – who was convicted in 2000 of organising the 1996 murder of her husband Tom – left most of her worldly goods to a mystery beneficiary ‘with a significant disability’.

Up to her death in February from a brain tumour, she had been involved in a court battle with members of Tom Nevin’s family, who wanted to stop her inheriting the estate.

Her claim that she was entitled to the whole estate was rejected by both the High Court and Court of Appeal but she lodged a Supreme Court appeal that was unresolved when she died.

Yesterday, Nevin’s senior counsel Colman Fitzgerald told Chief Justice Frank Clarke, in the Supreme Court, that the ‘sole surviving executrix’ [the female word for ‘executor’] of his client’s will, an unnamed woman, was willing to take the dead killer’s place in that appeal.

This will have to be approved by another judge in the coming weeks.

A full hearing of Nevin’s Supreme Court appeal will begin on July 2.

Before her death, Nevin argued that just because she was convicted of murder by a jury, this was not ‘conclusive’ proof of her guilt.

And even though both the High Court and Court of Appeal dismissed her argument, she was granted permission for a Supreme Court appeal, less than a year before her death.

Regardless of her crime or any final court decision, Nevin was in line to inherit half of her late husband’s estate. This was because of a previous High Court judgment granting wifekiller Eamonn Lillis half of his late wife Celine Cawley’s estate.