The BelTel

30 years on from the violent killing of publican Tom Nevin, part two of this special podcast looks at how Nevin's wife, Catherine Nevin, emerged as the prime suspect; the murder trial and media blitz that followed; and why Ireland’s ‘Black Widow’ still fascinates us to this day.  Host: Fionnán Sheahan  Guest: Mary Wilson   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Roger Casement was hanged in August 1916 for treason against the Crown. Formerly Sir Roger, his assistance to Germany during the First World Ward was undeniable and from a British point of view he was a traitor.  From from an Irish nationalist point of view, he was a rebel and a hero who now took his place in history among the martyrs of republicanism and the leader of the 1916 Rising.   No knight of the realm had faced treason charges for centuries, let alone be executed. His story was without precedent.  A Protestant Anglo-Irish man who had been a loyal servant of the British empire, he had exposed horrific abuses of indigenous people in Africa and South America. But he then came to believe Ireland urgently needed to free itself of Britain.  Who was this complex individual and how did he end up being killed by the state he had served?    Casement is a subject of a new book – A Rebel And A Traitor – by Rory Carroll, the Guardian's Ireland correspondent.  He joined Sam McBride on the BelTel.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Members of the jury in the Noah Donohoe inquest have been asked to indicate their availability for the month of May.  The inquest officially began on the 19th of January and was expected to finish up in mid-March.  Fourteen-year-old Noah’s body was discovered in north Belfast on the 27 of June 2020 - six days after he had gone missing.   This week an anonymous witness at the inquest denied being the caller who informed police that Daryl Paul had been trying to sell Noah Donohoe’s laptop.  Liam Tunney has been covering the inquest for the Belfast Telegraph.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Murderer Stephen McCullagh has been aptly described as “a monster hiding in plain sight”.A week on from his conviction there has been a lot of reaction to the the nerd-culture YouTuber’s conviction of murdering Natalie McNally.He denied the killing, but the jury unanimously found him guilty in a matter of hours. He has yet to be given his tariff, but Natalie’s family says he should never be let out. They say he is simply “too dangerous to let out on the street”.Meanwhile, the Sunday Life has revealed that a film made by McCullagh as a student chillingly foretold the murder and how he pretended to be one of our journalists to find out what evidence the cops had on him. The Sunday Life’s Angela Davison joins Ciarán Dunbar with some of the stories which could not be told whilst the trial was ongoing and what has emerged since McCullagh’s conviction.This podcast was amended at 10:00 am on Monday 30th March in order to correct an error. A previous version mentioned in the podcast intro that 'McNally' made a video whilst a student, when it should have said 'McCullagh' made a video as a student. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

‘How I stumbled on Stormont’s new policy of extreme censorship - which means we’ll understand NI’s past less fully’.   That was the stark headline on a recent comment piece from my colleague Sam McBride – the Belfast Telegraph’s Northern Ireland editor.   He discovered the unannounced policy whilst exploring declassified files in London - a policy which has been used to cover-up official attitudes to the Famine.   Sam McBride joins Ciarán Dunbar to explain the story behind the headline.Stormont’s extreme censorship of Famine remarks – and how we unravelled it Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.