In January 1982, Charles “Charlie” Self, a talented stage and set designer with RTÉ, was found brutally murdered in his Monkstown home. Known for his groundbreaking work on The Late Late Show and many other RTE flagship programmes at the time, Charles was a rising star in Irish television before his life was cut short in a violent and still-unsolved attack. This Radio Espial timeline episode explores his life and career, the night of the murder, the Garda investigation, and the social and cultural climate of 1980s Ireland. More than 40 years later, Charles Self’s case remains one of the country’s most enduring unsolved crimes.
In the early hours of Sunday morning, September 20th, 2009, a man parked his car outside Carlow Garda Station in Ireland. He sat in his car for a while penning a note on paper. A while later he entered the Garda station and slid the note across the counter along with his car keys to the attending female garda officer on duty. Written on the note, very clearly… ‘I’ve done something terrible […] Less than an hour later, around 6 am, Detective Brendan Murphy and members of An Garda Siochana made entry to a house at number 4, High Street, Leighlinbridge, Carlow, 13 kilometres away from Carlow Garda Station. There, they found the lifeless body of 24-year-old Lisa Doyle, an Argos retail supervisor, lying fully dressed in her bed with the sheets covering her. This is the Radio Espial Timeline into the murder of Lisa Doyle. #LisaDoyle #LisaDoyleMurder #IrishTrueCrime #truecrimedocumentary