Catherine Nevin, née Scully, spent her formative years in Nurney, County Kildare. This is a small, close-knit community, which rarely hit the headlines before Catherine was to create unexpected interest in it.
Her parents were regarded as having been excellent neighbours, always willing to help those less fortunate than themselves. Patrick, her father, had a small farm, which provided life’s essentials for his wife Mary and their three children, Catherine, Betty and Vincent. The latter, unfortunately, was stricken with polio at an early age, leaving him with a permanent limp.
Mary supplemented the family’s meagre income by working as a seamstress. Their home has been unfairly described as a galvanised hovel. On the contrary, it was a very nice, well-kept house, small in size – as most Irish houses were when the Scully kids were growing up.
The children were happy and well cared for, similar to those in all the other families in the local community. All three were bright, particularly Catherine. She attended the local primary school in Nurney, and the Presentation College in Kildare town. She applied herself diligently to her studies, realising from an early age that a good education was essential for her future prospects.
Locals would describe Catherine as a pleasant, intelligent girl who was respectful to authority, and driven by a fierce determination to succeed in life. Nurney, and indeed the nearby towns, offered little in the way of meaningful employment, especially to an ambitious young girl such as Catherine, and she decided to seek fame and fortune in Dublin.
Dublin Castle Hotel, near O’Connell Street, a well-known republican haunt, required a receptionist. Opportunity beckoned, and Catherine seized it with open arms. It is debatable whether Catherine realised the reputation the hotel had acquired. If she did not, she would find out soon enough.
Catherine was at an impressionable age, and easily smitten with the idea of rubbing shoulders and conversing with such instantly recognisable personalities as Cathal Goulding, chief of staff of the Official IRA, and Joe Cahill, an active member of the Provisional IRA. She was frequently seen in conversation with them and would boast to her friends about her close friendship with them. It did not cause her any trepidation that these individuals, whom she admired so much, were regarded by most Irish citizens as being nothing more than low-life terrorists. Little time was wasted by her in lavishing attention on the likes of Goulding and Cahill.
Catherine was won over to Goulding and Cahill’s intended political goals, and believed that her own ambitions could be realised more expeditiously with them as her confidantes and benefactors. She would not be the first to discover that she was embarking upon a very dangerous journey.
What attributes would Catherine rely on to achieve these ambitions? She regarded herself as intelligent, and despite any great academic achievements, she most certainly is. Attractive, yes, but nothing sensational. Perhaps what would advance her cause to a greater extent were characteristics which at that stage she may not even have realised she possessed, such as cunning, deviousness and criminal intent. These traits were being swiftly germinated.
The Sinn Féin Advice Centre in Finglas doubled as a TV repair/rental business. Catherine became a frequent visitor there and often sought the advice of one John Jones, who ran the centre. She would also later proposition him to kill her husband on at least six separate occasions.
Tom Nevin, born on 22 September 1941, was a native of Tynagh, County Galway. He was the eldest of six boys and three girls. The family had a medium-sized farm, sufficient to supply life’s essentials. The work was hard. Farm machinery, such as tractors, milking parlours and the like, which are now an accepted part of every farmer’s equipment, was a luxury in those days.
Tom, being the eldest son, would have inherited the farm had he chosen to do so. He had seen many of his friends turn their backs on the hardships of farming and head for Dublin or England. These departed friends by and large painted pictures of a five-day week, good pay, and plenty of social activity, so he decided to give this adventure a go.
Tom, at the tender age of seventeen, set off for the bright lights and the unknown world that was Dublin city. Having an uncle as licensee of Freehill’s pub in Dolphins Barn was a bonus for the impressionable youth from Galway. He lived in his Uncle Willie’s house and would later manage the pub owned by him. Lonely, and as yet without any new-found friends, he sought solace the only way he knew, and that was to get involved in the local GAA club – preferably one with a hurling tradition, his favourite sporting activity. Though not quite of inter-county standard, he was a better-than-average club hurler and would certainly have been welcomed with open arms by many Dublin clubs.
The country-boy tag was slowly but surely being replaced by one marked by maturity, ambition and contentment. Some of his friends would describe him as being frugal, others as being careful with his money. Tom, being easy on the eye to most girls, was not short of female company. He did not have any close or serious relationships until he met June O’Flanagan, a Mayo woman. They seemed to hit it off from the beginning. Both families were pleased with the match, and they married in April 1962. Their first residence was a rented flat on South Circular Road.
Tom had no intention of spending the rest of his life working as a barman, even as a bar manager, and had steely ambitions of one day owning his own pub. This, he felt, would not be achieved in his present employment. England beckoned, and though Tom and June remained there for a few years, and managed a pub, their life was not what they had expected. They returned to Ireland.
Tom got a job in the Inchicore area of Dublin, working in a pub. All was not as it should be in the marriage, and June would later take full responsibility for the breakdown of the relationship. Tom, she maintained, was a great, kind and loving man: ‘a gentle giant’. The marriage was annulled.
Accounts about how and when Tom and Catherine first met differ. Catherine would give many versions. In court, she suggested that they had met in the Castle Hotel when she was employed there. An account given by her to the staff at Jack White’s was that the happy occurrence had taken place at the Bachelor Festival in Lisdoonvarna, County Clare, in 1970, when she was nineteen.
As the romance blossomed, so too did Catherine’s cunning, deviousness and evil intent. Tom had put his cards on the table about his first marriage to June O’Flanagan. Catherine’s acceptance of Tom’s previous marriage was reassuring, and perhaps even enhanced the high esteem in which she was now held by him. June may have been past history for Tom, but Catherine had questions she wanted answers to, and only June could provide them.
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A careful plan had to be devised, and expertly executed, if Catherine was to gain the trust of June O’Flanagan for a meeting she was planning.
In June 1972, Catherine, resplendent as usual, knocked on the door of June’s house in Clontarf, Dublin. She said she was a social worker and was greeted and admitted. No identification was requested or provided. Catherine, in her own inimitable way, put June at ease, and there was an instant rapport between them.
Catherine was meticulous in the choice of subjects she broached. It was imperative that she got to know more about Tom’s first wife to find out if she was a person of substance, intelligence or beauty – and, most important of all, if she had any hold on Tom, either financially or otherwise. As Catherine’s queries became somewhat more intense, June became apprehensive. Why, she wondered, had Tom given such detailed information about their marriage, their pending annulment, and their sex life to this woman? Still, the reassuring fact remained that this was a social worker doing an honest day’s work.
Catherine got the answers she wanted: no, Tom had never strayed; no, a reunion was a total non-runner; and, most important of all, no, June would never make any financial claim on Tom, dead or alive. Satisfied at last that June would pose no problems in the future, the way was now clear for her to become Mrs Nevin.