Who Killed Patricia Curran? : How a Judge, Two Clergymen and Various Policemen Conspired to Frame a Vulnerable Man

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And that was cemented when the author travelled to Antrim on a number of occasions to speak with locals who remembered Gordon’s stay in the town. This is one of the multiple tragedies of this case, he says, for the Currans, for Gordon and his family, and “the tragedy of a legal system that knew at the time of the trial, in 1953 eminent lawyers knew this was a bad verdict and it took nearly 50 years to remedy”. A JESUIT priest from a devoutly Protestant family at the heart of the Northern Ireland establishment has died in South Africa - taking to his grave the last chance of shedding further light on one the north's most notorious murders.

During the past week alone, he revealed that he had received no fewer than 50 letters of complaint. The murdered woman's body described as " a drained corpse, stabbed many times, her murderer unfound, to be brooded over in coming decades as an exemplar of morbid desire"... She had 37 stab wounds and must have struggled with her murderer, who would have been drenched in blood, yet her belongings were piled neatly several yards from the body. Further conflicting evidence on Mr Hay Gordon's whereabouts later multiplied the contradictions. Patricia's body was found on the driveway of the Curran family home in Whiteabbey. She had been stabbed 37 times. From the start the whole thing stank to high heaven. Judge Lancelot Curran would not allow members of the family to be interrogated, nor the house to be searched. Suspicious circumstances, evasions and outright lies piled up. It would appear that Curran covered up the murder of his own daughter. It would also appear that he colluded in the conviction of an innocent man for the murder, a man who would have been hanged were it not for some collusive sleight of hand from his colleagues in the bar library. It was quite dark there and I said to Patricia, "Do you mind if I kiss you?" or words to that effect. We stopped walking and stood on the grass verge on the left hand side of the drive. She laid her things on the grass and I think she laid her hat there as well. Before she did this she was not keen on me giving her a kiss, but consented in the end. I kissed her once or twice to begin with and she did not object. She then asked me to continue escorting her up the drive. I did not do so as I found I could not stop kissing her. As I was kissing her, I let my hand slip down her body between her coat and her clothes. Her coat was open and my hand may have touched her breast, but I'm not sure.And so it goes on, one verbose sentence after another, tagged on to otherwise quite normal passages. The three judges agreed and they ruled the confession was inadmissible, and the case against the by now elderly and frail Iain Hay Gordon collapsed. Mr Hay Gordon, who was stationed at a base near the Curran home, had only met the family a handful of times and swears he was nowhere near the house on the night of the murder. But two months later, in January, he was arrested and charged.

On 12 November 1952 Patricia, aged 19, and a student at Queen's University, Belfast, was murdered. Her body was found in the driveway of the Curran home, Glen House, Whiteabbey, County Antrim. She had been stabbed thirty-seven times. [6] But no matter how hurtful the allegations may have been to Fr Curran, he remained friendly, courteous and good humoured throughout the three days he spent in the company of John Linklater and myself — enjoying meals out with us each night after interviews.Scottish journalist John Linklater and myself travelled to Cape Town in 2001 to interview Desmond about the murder which had been wrongly blamed on a young Scots RAF serviceman called Iain Hay Gordon until his name was finally cleared at Belfast’s High Court in December 2000. It was John’s view that the Currans allowed poor ‘patsy’ Iain Hay Gordon to take the blame for a crime he did not commit. What exactly happened to Patricia Curran may never be known with certainty. The case is much more complicated than the simplified version I’ve described, much of the ‘evidence’ remains unclear.

He was the only item on the agenda that month at a special meeting of Antrim Rural Council, with the Town Commissioners in attendance. But because of the conviction he struggled to find work. A book publisher eventually employed him. It was a fresh start, but he was still living under the shadow of murder. And yet…Patricia…that face looking out from the yellowed newspaper. Innocence lost in the noir world of white mischief, corruption and transgressive sex. Haunted and haunting. As the case against her alleged killer was built, a parallel case seemed to be come into existence against the 19-year-old. That she was wilful, promiscuous, consorted with older men. The sly narrative that takes hold in cases like this, that somehow the victim had brought the whole thing on herself. As a writer, he had been thinking about the case for years but he “couldn’t find a way into it”; her photograph, and the discovery that Gordon had whistled a tune, The Blue Tango – which was in the charts at the time – in between interrogations gave him “not just the title of the book, it’s the texture of it, it’s the noir feel of it.This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. I am not sure if McNamee tried to write without presenting a confirmation bias, but his portrayal of all the characters seemed hyperbolized and almost untruthful. (Maybe not so much as UNTRUTHFUL as it is potentially unfaithful to the actual events that occurred and people that existed. Perhaps that is what makes this a novel versus a non-fiction?) I found myself struggling with the portrayal of the women in the text (Doris Curran, Patricia, Hillary...etc.) because I couldn't help but feel awful that they are representative of damaging and limiting female tropes: the mad woman in the attic/upstairs, the promiscuous young woman who "deserved it", and the innocent friend. Interestingly, I find the representation of homosexuality in this novel to be more forgiving than how McNamee dealt with the women. Sure, there was an injustice (confirmation bias) done in the persecution of Iain Hay Gordon, but there was a kinder representation (and almost acceptance) of this "inappropriate behaviour" (hey, it's Northern Ireland in the 50's) than of women being complex creatures. Maybe this is true of the time, and McNamee wrote from a lot of existing secondary sources, maybe he even had the chance to interview real people for this book... I have no idea, and nor will I ever know. When one googles "Patricia Curran" her FATHER is the top hit. This is where I learned that the rest of McNamee's Blue Trilogy is centered around Judge Curran. Why is he such an attractive figure? One so untouchable and seemingly redeemable in all of this mess? That kind of started me off on the idea of noir and the idea of predestination which kind of works its way through the book, and the idea of Calvinism where your fate is written before you start out.” Antrim folk – many with relatives and friends working in Holywell – knew they had nothing to fear from this young man and they allowed him to heal in peace.

And the judge himself? Nine years after his daughter’s death Lance Curran went on to become Ireland’s last hanging judge. In 1961 he convicted Robert McGladdery from Newry and sentenced him to death for the murder of 19-year-old Pearl Gamble. The evidence was circumstantial and McGladdery maintained his innocence but Curran weighed in with a well-timed and cynical steer to the jury and McGladdery was hanged in Crumlin Road gaol that December. That story became Orchid Blue, the second book of an unintended trilogy. Eventually he decided that if he co-operated with his interrogators that he would be released. At this stage he would have admitted anything. His confession is a very webby document, filled with gaps, generally incoherent and clearly suggested to him if not actually dictated. This was the main part of the confession: I met Patricia Curran between The Glen and Whiteabbey Post Office. She asked me to escort her to her home up The Glen. I noticed that Patricia was carrying a handbag and something else, I just forget what it was. It appeared to be wrapped up, whatever it was, books or something.To this day, her murder remains officially unsolved. The suspicion is that the murderer was in fact her mother, Lady Doris Curran, who was committed to a mental institution shortly after her daughter’s death.