A Murderous History of Limerick

Blood on the Streets

The first book to focus on the most notorious murders committed in County Limerick

Anthony Galvin is the author of several true-crime books, including The Cruellest Cut: Irish Women Who Kill, Inside Man (with Philip Bray) and the forthcoming Ring of Death: Famous Kerry Murders. A former journalist, he lives in County Cork and has two children.

Limerick is known as the Treaty City, commemorating the site where peace was made during one of Ireland’s bloody wars. However, since the 1980s the city’s reputation has been tainted by gang feuds, earning it the infamous nickname ‘Stab City’. 
 
In Blood on the Streets, Anthony Galvin explores the many notorious murders that have been perpetrated in the city over the years, including the case of Deborah Hannon, who, along with her father’s lover, Suzanne Reddan, hacked her best friend to death with a Stanley knife. Galvin recounts the murder of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe, shot by the IRA during a botched armed robbery, and the story of the last man hanged in Ireland following his conviction of the rape and murder of a nurse on a quiet suburban road. 
 
Blood on the Streets also spotlights the city’s hit men, including the only hit man in the country to have been convicted of murder twice, and delves into some of the most notorious of the recent gangland killings.

Anthony Galvin

Famous Kerry Murders

To all appearances, Kerry is an idyllic tourist destination. Yet scratch beneath its scenic surface and the sordid secrets of the county known as 'the Kingdom’ flow free like blood . . . 
 
Some of the most notorious murders in the history of Ireland have taken place in Kerry, including a two-day orgy of slaughter perpetrated by state forces during the Civil War. Another is the case of two farmers fighting over a patch of land not big enough to accommodate a picnic blanket, resulting in a killing that inspired the play and film The Field. The county’s most infamous case was the discovery of a baby stabbed to death on a beach, with another infant’s body found during the subsequent investigation. To this day, the identities of the children, their mothers and the murderer remain a mystery, but the case led to the government setting up a tribunal to investigate the Gardaí and how they had handled the inquiry. 
 
In Ring of Death, true-crime writer Anthony Galvin explores the bloody history of Kerry and the many fascinating murder cases that have occurred in the county over the past century.

Anthony Galvin

Books by Anthony Galvin

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