At around 4.30am on March 19, 1996, a panic alarm alerted gardaí to a disturbance at Jack White’s Inn near Brittas Bay in Co Wicklow.
Arriving at the scene, the guards discovered Tom Nevin dead in the kitchen of his pub in what initially appeared to be a robbery gone wrong.
The place was in disarray and Mr Nevin had been shot dead at close range.
His wife, Catherine Nevin, was found nearby, behind the hall door of the pub, her hands tied with a dressing gown cord.
She would claim that a hooded man had threatened her with a weapon as she slept, tied her up, ransacked the area in search of money and valuables, and murdered her husband in the process.
One part of her story would turn out to be true – her husband was indeed murdered, but his grieving widow was not the innocent bystander she claimed to be.
Thirty years on from the killing, host Fionnán Sheahan is joined by Mary Wilson, former RTÉ legal affairs editor and host of Drivetime and Morning Ireland, on the first of a two-part Indo Daily special to look back at the emergence of one of Ireland’s most notorious criminals; The Black Widow.