My prison encounters with two very different killers

THE death of Catherine Nevin last Monday and the subsequent coverage of her life and crimes reminded me of my encounter with her and other murderers in Irish prisons. In 2016, I was invited by a number of prisons to give a lecture on my book about the 40 children killed during the Easter Rising in 1916. During these visits I had two remarkable encounters with convicted killers.

When I arrived in the Dóchas women’s prison in Mountjoy, it was clear from the outset that Catherine Nevin was in charge of running the library.

She was busily setting up a projector for me. She introduced herself simply as Catherine and proceeded to talk to me about the library which she was running and how important it was for the other prisoners.

Dóchas is a really well run institution with great staff, but Nevin, confident and assertive, was regarded with awe and respect by the other much younger prisoners.

After the lecture she spoke to me about her interest in addiction studies and asked me to look at a short essay she had written on the topic. She served 16 years in prison – and was only fully released because of her terminal illness.

I thought of Tom Nevin, the husband she paid someone to murder. His life was cut short when he was in his 50s while his widow lived until her mid-sixties.

This mixture of a heinous crime coupled with no admission of guilt and her subsequent good works in prison presented the authorities with a serious dilemma about how to deal with serious criminals and the issue of parole.

My second encounter with a murderer was when I was approached by Brian Kearney in 2016 in Wheatfield Prison, where he is serving a life sentence for the murder of his young wife. Siobhán McLaughlin will be dead 12 years next Wednesday. Kearney was, to me, the archetypal self-centred, deluded, cocky criminal, like so many I met when I worked in the Probation Service. After talking about current affairs and the 1916 Rising, he handed me a letter.

This jaw-dropping note asked me to raise the idea with the Government of an amnesty for certain prisoners to mark the centenary of the Rising. He pleaded that this had happened in eastern European countries when they got their independence.

I presumed he was including himself in this campaign.

I binned the letter when I left the prison. I privately told Siobhán’s sister Brighid of this bizarre encounter with this deluded killer.

This week, Siobhán’s family made a powerful plea to be heard when Kearney applies for parole – which he is entitled to do. Brighid spoke of the family’s distress. ‘It’s like living in a Stephen King horror novel,’ she said.

The impressive chairman of the Parole Board, John Costello, listened to them as they argued that life should mean life.

They called Kearney an ‘evil, sociopathic bastard’.

It was also revealed on Claire Byrne Live, where they were all appearing, that when a family write to the Parole Board, the prisoner is entitled to read the correspondence. Listening to the McLaughlin family, it’s a reminder that a jail sentence isn’t just about punishment and deterrence of the criminal; it also needs to take into account the concerns of the victim’s family.

Costello from the Parole Board pointed out that while a murderer can apply for parole after seven years, most serve at least 17. But he did say that he was open to change. The death of Catherine Nevin has focused our minds on heinous crimes. We clearly need to talk about those who commit murder, punishment, and the concerns of victims’ families.