Runaway Joe: RTÉ’s new podcast has all the ingredients for a gripping true-crime narrative

“He was a pillar of society.” How often do we have to hear these words about a man in court accused of committing heinous acts before we reconsider the social architecture?

In this case the pillar of society was Michael O’Shea, a well-dressed, respected member of his south Co Dublin milieu. The person who describes him thus in the opening moments of a new RTÉ podcast is Gillian Hussey, the presiding judge – now retired – at his extradition hearing, who was noting the calibre of those in attendance that day in March 1985: “There was an array of people that you would never, never have expected to see. Not in a criminal courtroom, anyhow.”

The reason for the hearing was that O’Shea was on the FBI’s most-wanted list under the name of Joseph Maloney, with a murder charge hanging over his head in the United States. And despite the best efforts of the Irish and US authorities, this pillar of society is still on the run.

Lord knows, the podcasting world loves an unsolved mystery. And this new Documentary on One podcast, Runaway Joe, is a doozy that goes all the way back to 1967, with the murder of a young mother of two. June Fisk was the estranged wife of one Joseph Maloney, the son of Irish immigrants who had been born and raised in Rochester, New York.

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Fisk and Maloney had been celebrating the fifth birthday of their eldest child when she fell ill; she died in hospital a few days later. All the evidence pointed to her estranged husband, a man who had asked a friend for poisoning tips two weeks before Fisk’s death from methyl alcohol poisoning.

Through the exhaustively researched Runaway Joe we get a fuller picture of the man who was charged with murdering one wife and later showed up in Dún Laoghaire with a brand new wife toting a very large handbag. Through interviews with old friends of Maloney, and with Fisk’s friends and neighbours, we meet a man who lied extravagantly, was obsessed with explosives, was once arrested with a Thompson submachine gun, reactivated a decommissioned American Civil War cannon, and was abusive and coercive towards his wife. All this before he even got to Ireland, BTW.

Runaway Joe has all the ingredients for a gripping true-crime narrative

Before his US trial, he was sent for psychiatric evaluation to Rochester State Hospital, and it was from there that he escaped, evading police and the FBI until his fingerprints were revealed to match those of a man called Michael O’Shea who was living in Ireland and had aroused the suspicion of at least one canny member of the Garda Síochána.

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Pavel Barter and Tim Desmond have tracked down an impressive list of sources, among them Maloney’s one-time best friend (and poison adviser); neighbours of Fisk; the prosecutor on Maloney’s Rochester case, Wendy Lehman; Lehman’s observant husband, Gary, who noted the giant handbag placed between Maloney and his wife at the hearing and was convinced they were using it to pass information between them; and Judge Hussey herself, who describes the proceedings that were just one part in a decades-long catch-and-release game with a man whose whereabouts are still unknown.

Runaway Joe has all the ingredients for a gripping true-crime narrative, and in the capable hands of Barter and Desmond we’re off to a promising start. But whether these two can shed new light on a case that has been dark for years – legal shenanigans over the extradition agreements between the US and Ireland meant Maloney was ultimately released before being extradited, and was never seen again – is part of what keeps listeners engaged. Every episode calls for anyone with information to come forward. In the wake of a conviction following the Australian podcast The Teacher’s Pet, it’s not implausible that an audio series could help find justice for victims of unsolved crimes. But will Runaway Joe find its titular escape artist, not seen since the extradition agreement collapsed, in 1986? In Pillars of Society versus Podcasts, I’m rooting for the latter every time.