Catherine Nevin
Catherine Nevin was an Irish woman who was convicted of arranging to have her husband Tom Nevin murdered in a suspected contract killing at Jack White's Inn, a pub owned by the couple in County Wicklow, in 1996. She was convicted of his murder in 2000 and the jury in her trial also found her guilty on three charges of soliciting others to kill him after five days of deliberation, then the longest period of deliberation in the history of the Irish State. She was subsequently dubbed the Black Widow by the press. Nevin was the subject of significant coverage by the tabloid press and Justice Mella Carroll ordered a ban on the press commenting on Nevin's appearance or demeanour during the trial.
Early life
Born on 1 October 1950, Catherine Scully lived on a farm near Nurney, County Kildare, before getting a job as a receptionist at the Castle Hotel on Great Denmark Street in Dublin City. She later met County Galway native Tom Nevin in Dublin in 1970 and they were married in Rome in 1976. Within ten years, they owned several investment properties around Dublin and took over the lease of the Barry House pub in Finglas, where a number of Irish Republicans were regular customers. In 1986, the Nevin's bought Jack White's Inn near Brittas Bay for £270,000. They then added a new restaurant to the premises, as well as converting some of bedrooms into bed and breakfast accommodation.Murder of Tom Nevin
On 19 March 1996, Tom Nevin was shot to death with a shotgun while counting the day's takings in Jack White's pub near Brittas Bay in County Wicklow. According to his wife Catherine Nevin, she was woken by someone pressing her face into a pillow. She said: "It was a man shouting: 'f**king jewellery, f**king kill ya'. He had a knife in his left hand. Everything in the room was coming down around." Over IR£16,000 in cash was taken from the pub, and the Nevins' car was stolen and later found abandoned in the Ranelagh suburb of Dublin.Gardaí were suspicious of the circumstances of the "robbery" almost immediately, due to discrepancies in the crime scene and in Catherine Nevin's own statements. Gunshot wounds on Tom Nevin's body suggested he had been shot at extremely close range while sitting in a chair counting money with his hands raised above his head in surrender, which ruled out an accidental shooting while resisting an armed robbery. Detectives were also puzzled why Catherine had not gone looking for Tom for help getting untied instead of triggering a panic button at the front door and then waiting there for Gardaí to arrive. Later interviews conducted by Garda officers with the staff at Jack White's Inn also revealed that the Nevin's had a troubled marriage and slept in separate bedrooms, as well as the fact that Catherine had several extra-marital affairs and seemingly didn't care if her husband knew about them.
On 27 July 1996, Catherine Nevin was arrested on suspicion of withholding information regarding the murder of her husband Tom. However, she maintained her right to silence by refusing to answer any questions and was released without charge 48 hours later. On the same day, former armed robber Gerry Heapes was arrested under Section 30 of the Offensives Against the State Act in relation to Tom Nevin's murder, before also being released without charge. On 14 April 1997, Catherine Nevin was charged with her husband's murder at Dublin District Court and then remanded in custody. She was additionally charged with having solicited three other people to murder her husband between 1989 and 1990 also. Nevin was later granted bail by the High Court on condition she signed on at Wicklow Garda station three times a week and not interfere with any witnesses in the case.
Jack White's Inn was sold for £620,000 in late 1997, and along with the rest of Tom Nevins estate was subject to High Court proceedings from Tom's siblings to prevent Catherine from benefiting financially from it.
Trial
On 14 January 2000, Catherine Nevin went on trial at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin before Justice Mella Carroll. Nevin plead not guilty to the murder of her husband Tom Nevin in 1996, and also to three counts of soliciting others to murder him on various dates before his death.Opening Statements
Chief prosecutor Peter Charleton S.C. outlined to a jury of six men and six women how Tom Nevin was the victim of a contract killing, disguised as a botched robbery, that was organized by his wife Catherine, who as well as having a deep dislike for him had a primary financial motive of wanting to gain full control of their business. Although the State did not have evidence on who exactly carried out the actual killing, strong circumstantial evidence would be presented that would prove Catherine was the mastermind behind her husband's death, along with eyewitness evidence from three separate individuals who she had previously approached asking them to murder her husband. Charleton S.C. also highlighted unusual incidents on the night in question, such as the pub alarm system not being switched on after closing time and the fact that, despite allegedly being tied up by her hands and ankles, Catherine made her way to the front door to activate a panic alarm instead of using a similar panic button in her bedroom.Prosecution evidence
After dropping two customers home, Tom Nevin returned to Jack White's Inn to count the takings from the busy Saint Patrick's Day Bank Holiday weekend. Examination of the cash registers showed he started totaling the money at 12:56am on the morning of Tuesday 19 March 1996. James Curry, who monitored alarms for Bell Communications security company, testified to the court how at 4:31am that morning a panic alarm was activated at Jack White's Inn, and he immediately rang Wexford Garda station to alert them. Garda Sean Whelan told the court how he received the call and thereafter sent out an alert for Gardaí to locate the Nevin's black Opel Omega car, incase it was somehow linked to the ongoing incident at the pub. Garda Sergeant Martin McAndrew and Detective Garda Paul Comiskey arrivied at the scene at 4:45am, where they found Catherine Nevin bound and gagged behind the slightly open front door of the pub, who informed them that a man wearing a balaclava had apprehended her in her bedroom while armed with a knife. While her bedroom was ransacked, Gardaí found no evidence of ransacking in the other bedrooms or any of the rooms in the downstairs premises. An examination of the crime scene found all external doors and windows to be locked with no signs of forced entry, only the front door was unlocked and open, while the alarm system was also found to have been switched off. Several floor safes were found unlocked and empty, with Nevin estimating that £16,000 in cash from the weekend's takings was missing. Garda Sergeant McAndrew found the dead body of Tom Nevin approximately 80 feet away in the kitchen, and noticed that despite the obvious gunshot wounds there was no smell of any gunsmoke, which he found unusual.State pathologist Doctor John Harbison testified how Tom Nevin had died from a single shotgun blast to the torso. Nevin was shot from less than 3 feet away under his right armpit, with the pellets crossing the chest through his heart and lungs, causing an instant catastrophic blood loss to his brain and rapid death thereafter. Doctor Harbison remarked that although the caliber appeared to be common twelve gauge, the pellets themselves were much larger than usual, possibly of buckshot type, with 6 individual pellets having caused 4 large exit wounds to Nevin's body. Detective Garda William Brennan informed the court how the pellets recovered from the crime scene were approximately 8.38 millimeters in diameter, and appeared to be from "SG" size cartridges.
Assistant Garda Commissioner Jim McHugh testified how he arrived at Jack White's Inn at 9:30am on the morning in question, where he interviewed Catherine Nevin after first having briefly inspected the crime scene. According to AGC McHugh, when asked to recall what happened, Nevin claimed a hooded man woke her up demanding her jewellery, while pushing her head into a pillow. She then had her hands tied behind her back, and her wrists were then tied to her ankles. After a while she heard the sound of two cars driving off from outside the pub, after which she managed to partially wriggle free and activate a downstairs alarm. She didn't know where Tom was or what happened to him until the Garda officers that arrived informed her he was dead in the kitchen, adding that she did not hear the fatal gunshot either. AGC McHugh revealed that on the day of Tom Nevin's funeral, Catherine had mentioned to him that the smell of incense in the church reminded her of the odor of cordite she had smelled in the kitchen where Tom was killed. This made him immediately suspicious as she had previously denied having been in the kitchen before Garda had arrived, and any smell of gunsmoke would only have been apparent for a short time after the fatal shot had been fired. AGC McHugh returned to Jack White's Inn on 23 March 1996 for another interview with Nevin, where she claimed her husband Tom was an alcoholic who was sometimes violent towards her. Although Nevin initially refused to give an official witness statement, asserting that she didn't trust officers based in Arklow Garda station, Nevin later gave a statement to Detective Garda Joe Collins after receiving legal advice. Defence lawyers claimed that Nevin's reluctance was due to earlier sexual assault allegations in July 1991 by a teenaged female relative of Tom Nevin against officers from Arklow Garda station, which resulted in two Gardaí being suspended from work.
Detective Garda Thomas Carey described to the court how he and Detective Garda William Brennan later carried out ballistic tests in the kitchen where Tom Nevin was found dead, in order to determine the noise levels generated during his murder. After first positioning other Gardaí in various rooms of the pub, the two detectives first fired a normal long barreled shotgun and then a sawn-off shotgun into a retrieval box. Detective Garda Carey confirmed all of the shots could be heard throughout the premises, regardless if any of the internal doors were opened or closed. Detective Garda Carey also noted that a mobile panic alarm was found on a window sill of the bedroom where Catherine Nevin was allegedly tied up by whoever shot her husband, which was found to be fully working whether the pub alarm system was activated or not. Detective Garda Joe Collins testified how he and Detective Garda Sergeant Fergus O'Brien had interviewed Nevin in her sitting room at Jack White's Inn on 12 April 1996, and when she briefly left the room they both inspected an open address book with the name and telephone number of Gerry Heapes visible on the page. The detectives found Nevin having Heapes's contact details to be highly unusual, as he was known to Gardaí for being a former member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army with convictions for armed robbery. However, when Detective Garda Collins later examined the same address book on 18 May 1996 this name and number had been scribbled out.