About This Episode
In late August 1976, Elizabeth Plunkett left McDaniel's pub in Ringsend, Dublin, alone. The 23-year-old would never return home. She had been abducted by Geoffrey Evans and John Shaw, two English serial killers fleeing rape charges in the UK. What followed was a brutal murder that would remain unsolved for nearly five decades—until a groundbreaking RTÉ podcast brought new witnesses forward and forced authorities to confront a dark chapter in Irish criminal history.
Evans, born 12 June 1943, and Shaw, born 6 July 1945, were both from the north of England when they arrived in Ireland. On 28 August 1976, they abducted Plunkett after she left the pub. She was taken to Brittas Bay, County Wicklow, where she was raped and murdered. To dispose of her body, they tied it to a lawnmower and dumped it in the Irish Sea. On 28 September 1976, Plunkett's remains washed ashore at Duncormick beach in County Wexford, more than 110 kilometres away.
Just weeks later, the two men struck again. Mary Duffy, also 23 years old, was abducted while walking home from a cook shift in Castlebar. Shaw and Evans took her to Connemara, where over two days she was beaten and raped. She was then murdered. Her body was weighted down with a concrete block and sledgehammer before being dumped in Lough Inagh, County Galway.