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Abigail Rieley
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The personal blog of writer and journalist Abigail Rieley, author of Devil in the Red Dress, the true story of the woman who tried to hire a hitman over the internet to kill her millionaire partner and his two sons.
Recent Posts Tagged With ronnie dunbar
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A Busy Year…
It’s the last day of the year and the end of the decade to boot. Time to take stock and look back over the last twelve months with mixed feelings…whatever else 2009 has been it’s seldom been boring. There have been opportunities and set bac...
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A Book Recommendation
A former colleague of mine has just brought out a book on the trial of Ronnie Dunbar for the murder of Sligo teenager Melissa Mahon. The Ronnie Dunbar trial was one of the most disturbing trials we’ve had in recent years. I wrote about it ex...
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The Maximum Penalty
Ronnie Dunbar was sentenced to life imprisonment today. He had been convicted back in May of the killing of Sligo teenager Melissa Mahon. The girl was only 14 when she died, a tragic kid on a fast track to nowhere. She had turned to Dunbar for ...
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Victim Impact Statements Hit a Nerve
Ronnie Dunbar’s trial was always going to be contentious. Whenever a grown man is accused of harming a young girl feelings run high. Dunbar was found guilty of the manslaughter of Melissa Mahon at the end of a six week trial in May. Her f...
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A Room of One’s Own (With Apologies to Virginia Woolf)
Tomorrow I’m back in court for the sentencing of Ronnie Dunbar. He was found guilty of the manslaughter of Melissa Mahon, a 14-year-old from Sligo. It’s going to be a big sentence but I’ll write more about it once it’s bee...
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A Broken Heart and the Faithful Followers
I was rather distracted today. Too distracted to really register the Sun front page with the news that Ronnie Dunbar has dumped the women who yesterday was on two front pages pledging her undying love. Apparently he nobly wants her to “go a...
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Killers of Little Girls
Ronnie Dunbar’s women were all over the media today. Melissa Mahon, who the jury yesterday convicted him of killing, his daughters, Shirley, Samantha and their younger sister, whose testimony helped to convict him. The Herald carried an int...
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Finally the Verdict
It was just after lunch when the knock came. There wasn’t even time for the jury to be sent back to their deliberations after the hour’s break. They all filed in just after 2 o’clock. The courtroom was filling up as the princi...
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Waiting for a Second Day
The Melissa Mahon jury have gone home for a second night…and we are no closer to finding out whether they will convict or acquit Ronnie Dunbar. He denies murdering the Sligo teenager in September 2006 and also threatening to kill his daughter S...
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The First Day of Waiting
The jury went out in the trial of Ronnie Dunbar today. He’s accused of the murder of Sligo teenager Melissa Mahon in September 2006. He denies both that charge and a second one of threatening to kill his daughter Samantha Conroy. We had hea...
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The Depressing Monotony of Murder
So the inquest of Swiss student Manuela Riedo took place in Galway yesterday. Earlier this year Gerald Barry was convicted of her murder after one of the most emotional trials I’ve ever covered. The 17-year-old had only been in Ireland for th...
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The Final Stage…
I’m very aware that I haven’t yet updated the sad story of Melissa Mahon. Anyone who has been looking for the latest in the trial of the man accused of murdering the Sligo teenager in 2006, either online or in today’s newspapers p...
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The Beginning of the End…Legally Speaking
Today the prosecution case came to a close. The jury now have all the evidence in front of them to decide whether the Director of Public Prosecutions has made a sufficient case against Ronnie Dunbar. Over the next few days we will hear the final ...
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Tying Up Loose Ends
As the prosecution nears it’s end the evidence tends to get rather bitty and difficult to categorise. This is the stage of the trial where all the loose ends are tied up and witness’s appear to show the continuity of the case or to back...
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The Spectre of Trial by Media
Once again today we heard allegations of how badly the media had behaved in the initial stages of the investigation against Ronnie Dunbar. The idea that the Irish media step out of line when a man is accused of murder is not new. Just look at the...
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The King of the Battlefield
Ronnie Dunbar was to be king of a new world order it emerged today. His ex fiancée, Ruth Nooney, told the court today that he had told her there was a new world coming and “when it kicked off” there would be a battlefield. He would b...
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A Day When Not a Lot Happened.
Today was another day of bits and bobs in the Ronnie Dunbar murder trial. He denies murdering Sligo teenager Melissa Mahon in September 2006 somewhere in Sligo and in recent days the trial has been bogged down with legal minutiae. Once again the su...
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A Day of Bits & Pieces
The wheels of justice move slowly. Sometimes they move very slowly indeed. Covering a court case from start to finish mean you frequently have to sit through days where nothing happens, very, very slowly. It’s easy to forget as a journali...
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An Inconclusive Post Mortem
The post mortem results are always one of the most eagerly awaited pieces of evidence in a murder trial. It’s where you finally get a picture of how the deceased actually died, what the cause of death was, whether all this ties in with the ev...
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The First Forensics
Melissa Mahon’s bones were tossed about by the winter winds over long months before they were found scattered on a lake shore. It was almost 18 months after her disappearance from HSE care in September 2006 that gardai searching the shores of...
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A Positive Pregnancy Test
Two of Melissa Mahon’s young friends told the court today that she had taken a pregnancy test before her disappearance, a test that had proved positive. The girls described how Melissa had bought the test in Tesco in Sligo town and gone into ...
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Conflicting Accounts & Confusion
In a packed courtroom it can be difficult to hear the subtleties of a witness’s account of proceedings but even with the constant rustling and coughing in Court 16 today the story being told by Ronnie Dunbar’s youngest daughter were cle...
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Old Beyond Her Years…
Ronnie Dunbar’s youngest daughter sat with her head tilted to one side as her older sister had done for most of the morning. She answered the defence counsel’s questions shortly but politely in the soft english accent she shared with he...
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The Rattling of Sabres.
Samantha Conroy will have a stressful bank holiday weekend. The 18-year-old daughter of Ronald McManus, the man accused of murdering Sligo teenager Melissa Mahon has been giving evidence for the past two days. She will have to resume her cross ex...
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A Daughter Condemns…
Samantha Conroy’s voice shook slightly as she described trying to resuscitate her best friend. Giving evidence via video link, the 18-year-old told how she had come home one day in mid September 2006 to find her younger sister crying in the d...
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A Sister Takes the Stand
Shirley Conroy didn’t look at her father as she stepped up to take the stand but he watched her intently. She was about to start giving evidence against him in his trial for the murder of Sligo teenager Melissa Mahon. Ronald McManus, or Dunba...
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Fragments of Bone
Mary Mahon dabbed her eyes with a tissue, the tears welling up in the first show of emotion since the trial of the man accused of murdering her daughter Melissa began. Her husband Frederick hung his head, looking away from the photographs visible o...
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Fragments and photographs
Melissa Mahon was, by all accounts, besotted with the man accused of her murder. In the first five days of the trial of Ronald McManus (known as Ronnie Dunbar by most of the witnesses) witness after witness has testified to her eagerness to be by h...
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Demons, Ghosts & An Egyptian Queen
There were times, sitting in Court 2 today, that it felt as if I’d wandered into an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Evidence in a murder trial can often be dramatic but it’s rare to hear about demon slayers and reincarnated lovers,...
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The Only Person Who Cared For Her?
Melissa Mahon was a lonely child. She had a volatile homelife, was failing in school and had fallen in with the wrong crowd. The only person she felt truly cared for her was the man she referred to as her father and whose family she wanted to be ...
