The Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home (also known as St Mary's Mother and Baby Home) operated between 1925 and 1961 in the town of Tuam, County Galway, Ireland. It was a maternity home for unmarried mothers and their children and run by the Bon Secours Sisters, a religious order of Catholic nuns, that also operated the Grove Hospital in Tuam. Unmarried pregnant women were sent to there to give birth and interned for a year doing unpaid work. In 2012, the Health Service Executive (HSE) raised concerns that up to 1,000 children from the Home might have been sent to the United States for the purpose of illegal adoptions, without their mothers' consent. Subsequent research discovered files relating to a lower number of 36 illegal foreign adoptions from the home and concluded that allegations of foreign adoptions for money were "impossible to prove and impossible to disprove". Local historian Catherine Corless published an article documenting the history of the home in 2012

Sophie Toscan du Plantier, a 39-year-old French woman, was killed outside her holiday home at Toormore, Goleen, County Cork, Ireland, on the night of 23rd December 1996. Her badly beaten body, still dressed in white nightwear and outdoor boots, was discovered by a neighbour the following morning close to an entrance gate at the bottom of her holiday home driveway. British journalist Ian Bailey, who lived several kilometres from Toscan du Plantier's home in Ireland, was a suspect arrested twice by the Garda Síochána, yet no charges were laid as the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) found there was insufficient evidence to proceed to trial. Bailey lost a libel case against six newspapers in 2003. He also lost a wrongful arrest case against the Gardaí, Minister for Justice, and Attorney General in 2015. In 2019, Bailey was convicted of murder by the Cour d'Assises in Paris, and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was tried in absentia in France after winning a legal battle aga

Fiona Pender (25) was last seen around 6am at her ground-floor flat on Church Street, Tullamore, County Offaly, Ireland on the morning of Thursday August 23rd 1996. She shared the flat with her boyfriend John Thompson. Following a several-month spell living in London from November 1995, the couple had returned back to County Offaly, Ireland in the spring. Fiona left school at 15 years of age after her Intermediate Certificate. A hairdresser by trade and occasional part-time model, Fiona was a bright, outgoing and positive young lady who always wore a smile on her face. She had trained with Kassard’s Salon and also taken up some modelling work with a friend’s agency (Emer Condron). At the time of her disappearance, Fiona was seven months pregnant and had spent the previous day out shopping with her mother. She was reported last seen by her boyfriend at the couple’s flat before he left for work. Fiona vanished without trace and for over 27 years has never been located. Following cold cas

Elaine O'Hara went missing from her home on 22nd August 2012. It was initially assumed she had disappeared while volunteering at the 2012 Tall Ships' Races in Dublin. Inside her house, however, she had left her bag, purse, and mobile phone, and security footage would later reveal her leaving her home with a different phone. She was last seen by a jogger in Shanganagh Park in the county of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown just to the south of Shankill, Dublin. It was later determined that she had gone to Shanganagh Cemetery, where her mother was buried. A woman was heard crying loudly in the graveyard by another witness. This witness saw a woman, fitting O'Hara's general description, crying beside an old grave, but she could not positively identify her as Elaine O'Hara. Elaine’s car was later found nearby, and it was assumed she had, given her psychological history, committed suicide by jumping off the nearby cliffs. In September 2013, more than a year after Elaine’s disappear

Sandra Collins was 28 years old when she went missing from Killala, Co. Mayo, Ireland on Monday 4th December 2000. She is the eldest of six children in her family. She was born to Eleanor and Francie who also had James and Bridie together. Francie, her father, died in 1978 and Eleanor remarried Joe Collins in the mid 80’s. They went on to have Patrick, David and Mary together. The family experienced an earlier tragedy. Sandra’s younger brother James was killed in a workplace accident just six months before she disappeared. Her mother Eleanor passed away not knowing what happened to her daughter. Sandra moved from her family home in Crossmolina at 16 years of age, temporarily to care for her aunt, but weeks became months and she soon became her full time carer. At the time of her disappearance, she was still living with her aunt at Courthouse Street, Killala. She left her aunt’s home at 7.30pm to buy groceries, calling in on their elderly neighbour, William Johnston, to see if he needed

Welcome to Episode 10 (HOST: VINNY McHALE) My guest this week is Mick Rooney. Mick is an investigative journalist from Dublin. He is also the founder of Radio Espial. Mick has had an amazing career over the past three decades. Beginning as a court reporter he has published many books on several topics. He moved into self-publishing and is now the host of Radio Espial which is a talk radio channel that covers poetry, aviation, true crime and missing people cases. In this episode we discuss Mick’s start as a court reporter. Mick tells us how he moved from the world of self-publishing into world of youtube and the fascination of the public with cases of Missing people.

Raonaid Murray was an Irish teenager from Glenageary, South Dublin who was stabbed to death at the age of 17 years just a few hundred metres from her home in the early hours of 4th September 1999. As of October 2023, this murder case remains one of Ireland’s most high-profile unsolved cases. The murder weapon has not been located and no one has ever been charged with her murder. Each year her family and the Garda Síochána (Irish Police) issue new appeals for fresh information. The case has been compared in the media to other unsolved incidents such as the disappearance of schoolboy Philip Cairns in 1986 for its length and so many unanswered questions. BACKGROUND Raonaid Murray (Rainy to many of her friends) was born on 6th January 1982 to parents Jim and Deirdre Murray and she lived and grew up in Glenageary, a relatively middle-class suburb of South Dublin, Ireland. Her father was a teacher and had just become a school principal. Her mother had a career background in care therapy. Rao