Bonus - Eileen Costello O'Shaughnessy

You're listening to the Men's Raya podcast, and this is the story of the unsolved murder of Eileen Costello O'Shocknase. In 1997, Eileen Costello O'Shocknase was 47 years old. She was from Kura Finn in Galway and had married nearly 30 years before. She had two children, a boy and a girl in her early 20s. Her marriage broke down and she moved back to her family home in Kura Finn and in with her mother. Throughout the 90s, she had suffered badly with her Crohn's disease, which had caused her severe abdominal pain, fatigue and digestive distress. But by 1997, her symptoms were more under control and she was living her life to the fullest. She and her mother were very close and the two had fallen into a good routine with one another. Her son Damian was 24 and still lived locally. Her daughter Susan lived in London but was at that time traveling through Australia. Over the years, Eileen had worked a number of jobs. She'd been a hairdresser and had worked in shops, but in 1993, she decided to start driving a taxi. It was something that she had started through friends and she was one of only a dozen or so women drivers at the time. Eileen enjoyed her work. She was outgoing and liked talking to people. She also liked how her days were always different. There wasn't a part of her job that Eileen didn't enjoy. She was facetious and took time over making sure that her accounts were in order. She took note of all her mileage and her fares. The car she drove belonged to the taxi company. She'd drive her own car to collect it and return it to the end of her shift. Eileen preferred working days. Though Galway could be busy in the evenings and at nights, she preferred the company of her daytime customers and perhaps felt that it was a bit safer in the daytime, given that she was a woman on her own. On the 30th of November 1997, Eileen went about her work as normal. She drove to meet her boss and pick up the taxi to start her shift. Her first pick up was in Rahoon on the west outskirts of Galway City. Then she headed to the headford road, one of the main routes into the city on the east side. By midday, she drove the 30 minutes or so back out near to her home in Coruffin. There Eileen met a friend for lunch and after that she went home to her mother. While she was back at the house, her nephew called by. He had arrived back from his travels in Australia that day and had stopped in to say hello to his grandmother. They had a chat and Eileen welcomed him home from his travels. At half past two, Eileen met a friend for a cup of tea at the Skeffington Arms Hotel in the very heart of Galway City on Air Square. The two women had a chat and a catch-up and Eileen told her friend that it had been nice to welcome her nephew home and that she was looking forward to seeing her own daughter, who was also in Australia at the time and was expected to return home closer to Christmas. That afternoon, she was captured on security footage from a local Supermax fast food restaurant. She'd popped in to use the ladies toilet and she also bought herself a drink. After that, Eileen continued on working. As evening drew in and it began to get dark, it was getting close to finishing time. At half past seven, Eileen picked up her last paying fair. At a minute to eight, there was an attempt at a call made from Eileen's mobile phone. She dialed the number to ring her mother, but that call never connected and the phone at home never rang. It's uncertain if there was something wrong with the phone whether its battery had died or the network had dropped the call or whether Eileen ended the call before it could go through. It's possible that someone had approached her car looking to hire the taxi. After that, at about half past eight, Eileen rang the dispatch at her company, Gullway Taxis, to say that she was heading out to Claire Gullway, a town about 25 minutes north of Gullway City Center. The dispatcher who spoke to her assumed that Eileen had a fair. Just 20 minutes after the call, the dispatcher tried to make contact with her again to say that there was a fair and Claire Gullway and to ask if Eileen could pick them up, but she didn't answer. In our later, there was still no word from her, and then Eileen failed to meet the taxi owner at 9pm to hand over the keys for the silver Toyota Carina at Dijkrode on the north eastern outskirts of Gullway City and to collect her own car to go home. The alarm was raised that Eileen was possibly missing, that she hadn't been heard of, and that something had happened to her. In our later, three men finished their own work day and walked out of Lightinghouse Bakery in Gullway City. As they reached the gates and went through, they saw a taxi parked half-hazardly. It was sitting oddly in the middle of a few parking spaces, and was likely to end up blocking others. They decided to have a closer look to see if they could tell what was going on, and when they approached the car, they realized that the windows were down, and the keys were still in the ignition. The men thought it had been stolen, and then abandoned outside the bakery, so they decided to move it from its place in the road to somewhere safer. But when they opened it up to begin the move, they discovered that there were signs of a violent crime. There was blood all over the driver's seat, and the armrest in the front console. Immediately they rang Garde and told them what they'd found, the oddly parked car, the keys, the blood. Quickly two Garde were dispatched to the scene, and given the blood it was preserved. Before long, the owner of the taxi had been tracked down, and Eileen Castelo O'Shockmase was identified as the driver of the taxi. More officers were dispatched out to the scene, and thorough searches were undertaken to see if Eileen had perhaps left her car after being injured, but they turned up nothing. Searches continued into the night. At noon the next day, the 1st of December, a tragic discovery was made. A farmer found the body of a woman on a muddy track, known locally as Tinker's Lane, in Noctumore, a village about 20 minutes drive northeast of Galway City, a few miles south of Eileen's home in Caruffin. The missing persons inquiry had turned into one for murder, and both scenes were cordoned off for full technical examinations. It was clear that there had been a vicious attack in the car, but it was not clear where or when exactly the attack had taken place. Nor was there any clear reason why. There were some items missing from the car, but if robbery had been emotive, there was a bum bag left on the floor of the driver's side of the car, and a plastic container filled with coins. Why would those have been left behind? Still, initially, it looked as if there was a sum of money missing from the car, a bag with takings that belonged to her boss, which contained somewhere between 70 and 100 pounds. Her family told the Irish independent at the time that Eileen would have fast to hang onto the bag, particularly because it didn't belong to her. It wouldn't have mattered to her that there wasn't all that much in it. While Gardee investigated the scene, Eileen's body was removed, and brushed to University College Hospital Goaway. The chief state pathologist Dr. Harbison carried out the post-mortem examination. There was clear evidence of a severe physical assault. Eileen had died from damage to her brain, sustained during the attack. Her wounds had been inflicted with an unknown blunt instrument. It wasn't clear if it had been fists or another weapon that had been used, though. Dr. Harbison noted that there were very few defense wounds present on Eileen's body, whatever had happened, and for whatever reason, it appeared that Eileen had endured a sudden blitz attack, which she hadn't seen coming. Eileen's family were devastated, and they were in complete shock. They're dojos. sister and mother had been brutally murdered. Eileen was well-liked, she was chashi and outgoing, and made friends wherever she went. She had no enemies, and her family didn't know why anyone would ever want to hurt her. They had no idea what had happened. And neither had the guardee. The murder didn't look like a robbery. There was no sexual motive. It appeared that Eileen had been randomly attacked. By late 1997 it was confirmed that the missing items from the car were not relevant to the murder investigation. Before the men had discovered the taxi, a number of youths had passed by the abandoned car. They saw the open windows, and on the spur of the moment opportunistically stole Eileen's phone and her cigarettes. They quickly realized that the battery in the phone wasn't working. The young lads smashed it and left it a few hundred yards from where the car was found. A number of people had their fingerprints taken by guardee and were cleared from the investigation. Others provided information, and were eliminated from the inquiry in that way. E gathered up the CCTV footage that was available from that evening in Galway, and attempted to piece together Eileen's movements after she had called Dispatch just after 8. There were also a number of sightings of her taxi as it drove across Galway City and County. At 8pm the car was seen at Cross Street, and Eileen appeared to be talking to a woman. If this was, in fact Eileen and her Toyota, that woman never came forward to tell the guardee what she knew. Then the silver coroutina was seen traveling from Air Square in the direction of the tomb Galway Road. After that it was spotted about three kilometers outside of Galway City, pulled over on the hard shoulder of the road. Then it was captured on CCTV taking a right turn at the mystical Rose Nursing Home on the tomb road and onto Galway Lane. The car had turned without giving a signal. The taxi was also seen heading in the opposite direction back towards Galway City. It was driving erratically. One car was forced to pull over and stop because the silver colored taxi was driving so badly and going very fast. When the car finally turned into lighten house bakery, a witness saw that a man was driving. He was somewhere between 30 and 50 years of age. He had a dark beard, dark hair and a flat face. The witness said that he wasn't a terribly big man. He was a slight build. When the guardee checked the mileage of the car against the notes that Eileen had kept of her trips, there were about 16 or 17 miles travelled between what had been recorded as the last fare and the mileage that the car was found with. It seemed likely that the car had been driven from Galway out to the burrine where Eileen's body was dumped and then back to the city where the car was abandoned. That night shortly after the car was abandoned, around 9pm, another witness who was locking up a shop across the road from the bakery saw a man who looked to be in his 20s, getting down from on top of a wall. He was described as being between 510 and 511 with a scruffy beard. He was of slight build and was carrying a cream or beige colored sports bag. At 10 past 9, a young man was spotted walking through a field behind a witness's house near to Terryland on the northeastern edge of Galway City in a residential area. The witness thought it was strange that the man was walking through the grass. It was a wet night and there was a path nearby that he could have taken. He recalled that the man looked lost. The final sighting of importance was made early on the morning of 1 December. A red car was seen at 2am on Tinker's Lane having reversed up the muddy track. It had its parking lights on and so stood out in the dark night. Gardee appealed for the person or persons in that car to come forward but they were never identified. A number of people were questioned in relation to Eileen's murder and one of them was early on considered a possible suspect. That was Thomas Murray. He was the subject of episode 29, the killer of first Willie Manion in 1981 and then Nancy Nolan in 2000. In both of those murders the victims were elderly, older than Eileen and had been attacked in their own home with hammers. They died of blunt force trauma like Eileen had. Murray had been allowed out of prison on license after serving a number of years for the murder of Mr. Manion and was known to be living in the Galway area around the time of the murder of Eileen Costalou Chocnacy. Initially inquiries into the possibility that Murray might have been responsible for this murder too seemed to discount the idea. E had been at home at the time of the attack in the room he was renting from a couple. On top of that he'd been in prison since he was 17 and had never had a driver's license. The person who'd killed Eileen certainly knew how to drive or at least sort of did. But it was discovered later that this initial information was not reliable. The couple that Murray was lodging with weren't actually home on the evening of the 30th of November and Murray had learned to drive in prison of all places. He was back on the list as a person of interest. In July of 2001 Murray was brought to Ross Common Gardestation from prison in question for 12 hours in relation to Eileen Costalou Chocnacy's murder. But her family told the Irish Times in 2002 that they believed that Murray was not involved in the murder. They felt that Eileen had been killed by someone she knew and that she certainly did not know Thomas Murray. On top of that Murray was serving his second life sentence. They thought surely he would have nothing to lose by confessing and putting the family out of their misery. On the 15th anniversary of Eileen's death, her colleagues, the taxi drivers of Galway City, put stickers in their cars, calling for justice for Eileen in the hopes that it would jog people's memories or convince someone to come forward with new information that might lead to an explanation of what had happened to Eileen that night. A friend of the family, Henry Hegergy, also a taxi driver, spoke to the papers around that time in the midst of the campaign to bring the case back to the public's attention. He told the Irish examiner that the family would not be able to rest until they knew what had happened to Eileen and who was responsible for her death. He said, quote, "This person walks free among our society, among our community, and I appeal for that person to come forward. It's not a mistake to admit to what happened. The family have been waiting for each day over the last 15 years for a phone call. They need closure at this stage." A reconstruction of the events that night, including sightings of the car while being driven north of the city, was shown on RTE's crime call program on the 20th anniversary as well, and the murder, headed by the serious crime review team. A number of calls came into the guardian after that reconstruction and were followed up by officers based out of mill street and go away. But to this day, the murder of Eileen Costello O'Chachnacy remains unsolved. Guardian still appeal for anyone with information about the murder to come forward. In particular, they would like to speak to a blonde woman seen on the hard shoulder of the road near to Tinker's lane that night at about half eight. The bearded man seen driving Eileen's cab heading back towards Galway City. The man seen hopping off a wall at around 9 p.m. near to Leidenhouse bakery. And the occupant or occupants of the red car seen in Tinker's lane at 2 a.m. that night. The one with information is asked to call Guardian at Clifton Gardestation at 095-22500. Thank you for listening to mensraya, the true crime podcast. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @mensrayaPod or you can send an email to [email protected]. This podcast is made possible in part from generous nations by supporters on Patreon. please do check it out at patreon.com/minsrayapod. Our Thee Music is Quinn Song that Dance Begins by Kevin McLeod. Additional music is by Wannita Meisel and Kevin McLeod. This episode was researched and written by me, your host, Cheneyte. All sources for today's episode can be found in the show notes or on our website, www.mensrayapod.com. And so, till next time, don't do anything I wouldn't do. [Music]