Lawyers for Catherine Nevin – who was imprisoned nine years ago for the murder of her husband, Tom, following a trial that enthralled the country – are claiming a miscarriage of justice. Their second appeal, which continues in court this week, focuses on the evidence of three shadowy witnesses
CLOSE TO 10 years on and the story barely needs to be retold. Even with the grim parade of murder cases through the courts since then – with their quotidian tales of greed, revenge, love and betrayal – the narrative arc of this trial seems burned forever into the national psyche.
Catherine Nevin, the accused, was cast as the domineering and scheming killer, consumed by a lust for money and power. By contrast, her husband, Tom Nevin, was the quiet and unassuming publican. There were her brazen attempts to solicit three shadowy men to murder her husband; tales of money laundering and IRA connections; and claims she was having affairs with a criminal, a former Garda inspector and a judge.
Even before the verdict was delivered, her guilt hardly seemed in doubt. Highly suggestive colour pieces in the tabloid press helped ensure that.
She was the one with the “scarlet fingernails” and “scanty underwear”. The media din was so excessive that the late Ms Justice Mella Carroll felt compelled to place a ban on the press commenting on her demeanour or appearance during the course of the trial.
After 42 days of hearings and one of the longest deliberations in legal history, Mrs Nevin was found guilty of the murder of her husband Tom at their Co Wicklow pub, Jack White’s Inn, in 1996. She was also found guilty of soliciting three men to murder him.
CATHERINE NEVIN has served nine years of her mandatory life sentence. Yet, key questions over the safety of her conviction refuse to go away. And new information raises doubt over the credibility of the three witnesses who were central to her conviction.
Nevin’s guilty verdict was ultimately based on the evidence of three men – William McClean, John Jones and Gerard Heapes – who said they were solicited by Mrs Nevin to kill her husband. The jury was told that in order to reach a guilty verdict on a count of murder, they must first reach a guilty verdict on one or all of the solicitation charges. Without evidence of solicitation, there could be no murder conviction.
There was no forensic evidence, and there were no eye-witnesses to the killing. There was no admission by Nevin that she had any involvement in the crime. There was circumstantial evidence, but the jury was told this alone was not sufficient to convict her.
In essence, the credibility and reliability of the three men who say they were solicited by Nevin to kill her husband is at the heart of whether her conviction is safe.
Next week, the latest chapter in Catherine Nevin’s attempt to declare her conviction a miscarriage of justice will seek a date to make an order requiring the Director of Public Prosecutions to hand over material alleged to be “hugely relevant” to her bid to have her murder conviction declared a miscarriage of justice.
The documents sought include Garda security files on three men who gave evidence against Nevin at her trial, material relating to the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974, and Garda security files on the three men. Nevin claims the documents will assist her in undermining the three men’s credibility.
Nevin’s legal team have sought an order requiring the DPP to answer whether McClean, Heapes and Jones were ever State informers and whether McClean, with whom Nevin denied having an affair, had paramilitary connections.
In a statement of grounds for appeal, her legal team have argued that the unavailability of security files could have played a crucial role in affecting the minds of the jury; and this rendered the trial so flawed that the conviction of murder and three solicitations to murder were a miscarriage of justice.
They say that newly discovered facts which “go to the credibility and connections” of the three men reveal there has been a “serious non-disclosure” and that Nevin did not receive a fair trial as a result. The DPP has argued that the documents in question, which have not been seen by Nevin’s legal team, should be deemed privileged for public interest reasons.
It is clear that information was unavailable to the defence at the time of the original trial. Special branch files in relation to McClean, Heapes and Jones were given to the prosecution team and the trial judge in the original case, her legal team say, but they were refused on the basis of lack of relevancy.
Assuming the case progresses through the courts, the spotlight will fall on three key witnesses and on whether new documents mean their evidence is sufficiently credible.
WITNESS ONE - WILLIAM McCLEAN
From Ballinode, Co Monaghan, McClean says he first met Catherine Nevin at the Red Cow Inn in west Dublin in the mid-1980s.“We were just talking on the evening and it went on from there,” he said in evidence, during the original trial. He said they had a sexual relationship that lasted until sometime in August or September 1986.
The next contact he had from her was in 1990, he said, when she is alleged to have told him she wanted “a job done” on her husband, and that they weren’t getting on. She mentioned paying around €20,000. When he asked her why she wanted her husband killed, he alleged that she replied: “I’d get the insurance money, the lot, everything.”
McClean admitted to the court that he had convictions for fraud and deception. However, he insisted in evidence on two occasions during the murder trial he had no links to paramilitaries.
Nevin’s legal team have argued before the Court of Criminal Appeal that newly discovered facts show he had, in fact, paramilitary connections at the time of the trial and was a suspect during the inquiry in the Dublin/Monaghan bombings of 1974.
Firstly, the alleged paramilitary connections: a Garda file, or “suspect antecedent form”, prepared on McClean which has come to light shows that he had associations with members of the IRA and INLA.
In addition, Nevin’s legal team say affidavits lodged before the court indicate McClean was suspect at some level in the Dublin-Monaghan bombings of 1974.
A letter, from former chief justice Liam Hamilton in the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Dublin/Monaghan Bombings to the solicitor for the Justice for Forgotten group, refers to confidential information regarding the alleged involvement of suspects received by the Garda. It lists, among others, a “Wilkinson McClean”. This, Nevin’s legal team say, appears to be William McClean.
An extract from the report of this inquiry – also known as the Barron Inquiry – makes reference to an unnamed man who had links with the UVF and was staying in the Four Courts Hotel in Dublin in the days leading up to the bombings and who checked out on the day of the bombings. This same man, the inquiry report says, turned up as a witness in a murder trial in the Republic in February 2000. Nevin’s legal team have said before the Court of Criminal Appeal that this is a reference to McClean.
In their statement of grounds for an appeal, they argue that had Garda files on McClean been made available for the Nevin murder trial, the jury could have taken a much different view on the reliability of his evidence.
Affidavits filed by the Garda, however contain a new statement by McClean, who insists that he had no role whatsoever in the bombing.
WITNESS TWO - GERARD HEAPES
Heapes said he first met Catherine Nevin at a Sinn Féin office in Finglas, north Dublin, in 1985. A self-confessed former IRA man, it emerged during the original trial that he was convicted for an armed robbery of a cash-and-carry store in 1977 and served his time on the IRA wing in Portlaoise jail.
During the trial, he said Nevin approached him on at least 10 occasions about killing her husband, and that he went on hearing the propositions because he was curious and intrigued by the whole thing.
Heapes also acknowledged that at one stage he went to Jack White’s Inn with a colleague to try to con money out of Nevin over her proposition to shoot her husband. He felt he would get money from her “because she wouldn’t be able to go to the police”. Nevin rejected this version of events.
In their statement of grounds before the Court of Criminal Appeal, Nevin’s legal team say newly discovered facts show Heapes was a State informer at the time of the trial.
They point to the original trial, when Justice Mella Carroll ruled that it was not necessary to disclose special branch files in relation to Heapes on the basis of “informer privilege.” Nevin’s team say the nature of informer privilege was not clear at the time, but they now believe this referred to Heapes having been a State informer.
They say the files should have been released because information on his activities and associations would have been crucial for the jury in determining whether or not he was a credible witness.
“This non-disclosure has a very serious impact and could have affected the minds of the jury,” according to her legal team.
WITNESS THREE - JOHN JONES
Jones was a Finglas-based TV salesman and was running a Sinn Féin advice clinic from the bottom floor of his premises during the 1980s.
Jones said in evidence he first came across Nevin in around 1985 when she came to the advice centre and inquired about buying a pub in the area. She later leased the Barry House with her husband, and allowed Sinn Féin members to fund-raise and sell copies of An Phoblacht.
He said he was first solicited by Nevin to kill her husband in 1989. He said she told him: “I have a proposition for you . . . I want you to get the IRA to shoot Tom.”
Jones said she asked him to get the IRA to murder her husband and make the killing look like “a botched hold-up” on at least five or six occasions over the course of a year.
He said the party was not into that type of thing and reported the approach to more senior members of the organisation.
During the murder trial, it emerged that Jones was arrested in the early 1980s and questioned about his then business partner, Dessie Ellis, a former IRA prisoner and bomb-making expert. Jones said he was unaware of Ellis’s action at the time.
Nevin’s legal team say Jones is a self-confessed republican activist and that the Garda ought to be in possession of material relating to him. The files the original trial judge refused to admit in evidence on the basis of “informer privilege” also relate to him, the legal team argue.
In addition, the fact that evidence of documents listing Jack White’s Inn on a list of public houses with suspected connection with the IRA had been disclosed to the defence subsequent to the trial was also relevant to the appeal, Nevin’s legal team state.
*
This article is based on arguments previously made to the Court of Criminal Appeal and on affidavits lodged by gardaí and Catherine Nevin’s legal team
IRA links, extramarital affairs and contract killers
TOM NEVIN’S GLASSES were still on his nose, and his pen was still in his hand, when gardaí found his remains on the floor of Jack White’s Inn in March 1996.
He had been totting up his takings from the St Patrick’s weekend pub tills when he was killed by a single short-range shotgun blast.
There was widespread mourning for a publican widely seen as a quiet, hard-working man. His wife, Catherine Nevin, appeared grief-stricken, standing by his graveside and holding a single red rose. Four years later, she stood in the dock, accused of murdering her husband and repeatedly attempting to hire three men to kill him.
The trial itself kept the country enthralled between February and April of 2000. Each day more sensational details emerged: contract killers, IRA links, and extramarital affairs involving Catherine Nevin with a Garda inspector and a District Court judge (which both men denied).
In the end, two juries were discharged; the first because a juror had to withdraw for personal reasons and the second because the jury room was found not to be soundproof.
Nevin, for her part, claimed that thieves were after the takings from the pub and she had been threatened by the raiders. She claimed her husband’s involvement with the IRA might have been linked to the robbery. Gardaí said Tom Nevin was never suspected of paramilitary involvement.
Ultimately, the jury didn’t believe her. After the longest deliberation in the history of Irish criminal law, Nevin was convicted of the murder of her husband and sentenced to life imprisonment.
An emotional Ms Justice Mella Carroll, who presided over 61 days of the trial, told Nevin at the time: “You had your husband assassinated and then you tried to have his character assassinated.” Three years later, Nevin was back in court, this time trying to have the conviction declared a miscarriage of justice. This followed information which came to light showing that Jack White’s Inn had been listed by gardaí in the past as having links to the IRA. This, her defence team argued, bolstered her case that Tom Nevin had been shot by the IRA.
The Court of Criminal Appeal ruling was unequivocal. It said it was “completely satisfied” there was nothing in the new material that could have assisted Mrs Nevin’s defence, and the appeal was dismissed.
Today, life for Catherine Nevin is in the Dóchas Centre, the women’s section of Mountjoy Prison. Home is a second-floor bedroom in Cedar House, one of several units in the complex which she shares with other prisoners serving sentences for offences ranging from drugs to homicide.
Her most recent appearance in public was in the witness stand just over a month ago, when she was acquitted of possession of a mobile phone in prison, an offence that can carry a five-year sentence.
The media focus, once again, was on her carefully groomed appearance, this time wearing a black trouser suit, pink shirt and a chiffon scarf.
Assuming good behaviour, it is possible that Nevin could be placed on supervised early release in around two years, although that is far from certain. A successful appeal against her conviction would not only hasten her release, but would have major implications for assets she held with her husband.
Tom Nevin’s brothers and sisters have had Catherine Nevin’s share of the proceeds of the sale of Jack White’s Inn frozen (she sold it in 1998 for €620,000); they have also managed to ensure that at least €20,000 in rent payments from houses the couple owned be transferred out of bank accounts in Catherine Nevin’s name.
