About This Episode
In late August 1976, Elizabeth Plunkett left McDaniel's pub in Ringsend, Dublin, alone. The 23-year-old would never return home. She had been abducted by Geoffrey Evans and John Shaw, two English serial killers fleeing rape charges in the UK. What followed was a brutal murder that would remain unsolved for nearly five decades—until a groundbreaking RTÉ podcast brought new witnesses forward and forced authorities to confront a dark chapter in Irish criminal history.
Evans, born 12 June 1943, and Shaw, born 6 July 1945, were both from the north of England when they arrived in Ireland. On 28 August 1976, they abducted Plunkett after she left the pub. She was taken to Brittas Bay, County Wicklow, where she was raped and murdered. To dispose of her body, they tied it to a lawnmower and dumped it in the Irish Sea. On 28 September 1976, Plunkett's remains washed ashore at Duncormick beach in County Wexford, more than 110 kilometres away.
Just weeks later, the two men struck again. Mary Duffy, also 23 years old, was abducted while walking home from a cook shift in Castlebar. Shaw and Evans took her to Connemara, where over two days she was beaten and raped. She was then murdered. Her body was weighted down with a concrete block and sledgehammer before being dumped in Lough Inagh, County Galway.
The pair had planned far worse. According to police records, they had intended to rape and murder one woman per week—a chilling blueprint for systematic predation.
On 26 September 1976, Evans and Shaw were arrested. Both received life sentences. Yet despite their confessions to both murders, neither man was ever formally convicted of killing Plunkett or Duffy. The legal outcome remained a hollow victory: two serial killers imprisoned, but the actual murders of their victims never adjudicated in court.
Before coming to Ireland, the two had been detained in Cork for burglary and each served two-year sentences, being released after just 18 months. They became long-serving prisoners in the Irish penal system, spending decades behind bars.
The case might have remained a footnote in Irish criminal history had it not been for RTÉ's investigative podcast "Stolen Sister," which aired in May 2025. The series examined the murders and the failures of the justice system to fully account for what happened to Plunkett and Duffy. The podcast's impact was immediate and profound.
In June 2025, eight new witnesses came forward with previously unreported information. In July 2025, seven more people contacted authorities. This surge of public engagement prompted further investigation, and in 2025, a District Court jury in Gorey finally returned a verdict of unlawful killing in Plunkett's case, with the cause of death recorded as asphyxia due to strangulation.
For the families of Elizabeth Plunkett and Mary Duffy, "Stolen Sister" offered something that decades of silence had not: recognition. The podcast gave voice to victims whose murders had been technically unsolved despite the perpetrators' imprisonment. It also raised uncomfortable questions about how justice systems handle cases where confessions exist but formal convictions prove elusive.
Today, Evans and Shaw remain imprisoned in Ireland. Evans died in prison on 20 May 2012, never facing trial for either murder. Shaw's current status is as a long-serving lifer. The case stands as a sobering reminder of how predators can slip between jurisdictions, and how institutional failures can leave victims' families without closure—even when their killers are known and caged.
Sources: - https://about.rte.ie/2025/05/30/stolen-sister-a-new-podcast-series-from-rte-documentary-on-one/ - https://www.rte.ie/radio/doconone/1513256-stolen-sister - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/stolen-sister/id1842314270 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Evans_and_John_Shaw - https://www.kildarenow.com/news/local-news/1814708/story-of-ireland-s-first-serial-killers-comes-to-light-in-rte-s-stolen-sister-podcast.html
