Dark Emerald Podcast Niamh Gordon

In 1995, police in the beautiful and charming town of Spotsylvania Virginia were noticing a frightening pattern. Young girls were being preyed upon, and abducted from their homes in broad daylight. Their abductor kept them alive for a while to rape them before drowning or strangling them and dumping their bodies in the water. It would take the bravery of a 15 year old victim, to finally end the seven year reign of terror of Richard “Marc” Evonitz.

On the 17th of December 2010, Joanna came home to her flat, put down her keys, her phone, opened a small bottle of cider and popped a frozen pizza in the oven. But two days later when her boyfriend came home and found she AND the frozen pizza had completely disappeared, everyone feared she had been abducted. No one could imagine she had been murdered, or that the killer was living VERY close by.

The Lonely Hearts Ad’s gained massive popularity in the 20th century and gave lonely singles a way to meet other people looking for love and companionship. However the ads exposed peoples vulnerabilities, and allowed fraudsters, adventurers and murderers to find easy victims. In this episode, we’ll learn about how one such crook was convinced to let one of his victims become his partner in crime, and about the series of crimes and murders they would go on commit together.

Marriage, Money and Murder! At 3 a.m. one night, retired Texas millionaire Steve Beard made a terrified and confused phone call to 911. He told the dispatcher “my guts blew out of my stomach!” Steve had no idea how his organs were suddenly falling out of his body, but when he died four months later, the whole world would wait to see if the person he treasured most would be held responsible.

Love triangle’s usually have an unhappy ending, but the case of Bobby Ryan- or Mr. Moonlight as he was known is particularly tragic. This episode will focus on his relationship with Mary Lowry and how the affair she had with her brother in law Patrick Quirke caused a deadly obsession.

On August 2nd 2015, successful Limerick born businessman and father of two Jason Corbett was beaten to death by his wife Molly Martens and her father, retired FBI agent Tom Martens. They claim they acted in self defense, that Jason was going to kill them first. But was this the truth? Or is this claim of self defense just another one of Molly’s dramatic and bizarre lies.