What is the episode about?
Elizabeth Plunkett became a victim of one of the most shocking crimes in Irish criminal history when she disappeared without a trace on August 28, 1976, during a holiday in Brittas Bay, County Wicklow. In the second episode of the podcast series Stolen Sister host Roz Purcell reconstructs the critical hours after Elizabeth left the pub McDaniel's. The episode highlights the panic and uncertainty that arose in the Plunkett family when the 23-year-old woman did not return home, and how the local police initially handled the case as a regular missing person case without suspicion of the systematic evil lurking in the area.
The case behind the episode
The case of Elizabeth Plunkett is inextricably linked to the names John Shaw and Geoffrey Evans . The two British men had recently been released from prison and had traveled to Ireland with a dark pact to commit serial murder. Elizabeth became their first victim in a wave of violence that later also cost Mary Duffy her life. Although both Shaw and Evans confessed to the murder of Elizabeth Plunkett after their arrest, the podcast reveals a shocking legal detail: The family discovered in 2022 that neither of the men has ever been formally convicted of the murder of Elizabeth. This is due to legal technicalities and the fact that they were already serving life sentences for the murder of Mary Duffy, which meant that the prosecution in the 1970s allowed the case against Elizabeth to rest.
About the podcast
Stolen Sister is a six-part documentary series produced by RTÉ’s Documentary On One in close collaboration with the Plunkett family. The series marks the first time that Elizabeth's relatives speak publicly about the trauma and the legal injustice they feel has overshadowed the case for nearly 50 years. Roz Purcell guides listeners through historical archives and new interviews that shed light on how two of Ireland's most dangerous criminals could operate freely in the summer of 1976. The podcast serves not only as a review of a criminal case but as a portrait of a woman whose life was stolen and a family still fighting for recognition of her death in the justice system.