Story of young men wrongfully convicted of murder told in powerful documentary

Close friends Martin Conmey and Dick Donnelly experienced an “unthinkable set of circumstances” when 19-year-old Una Lynskey was killed and Martin, Dick and their friend Martin ‘Marty’ Kerrigan were implicated, interrogated and accused of her murder.

“The gardai who interrogated the men would later become notorious as The Heavy Gang. One of the main officers was John Courtney, then a detective sergeant. Over the years, there would be a series of allegations against Courtney and other gardai who worked with him. It would be claimed that suspects in custody were systemically abused to extract confessions.”

“Many of these cases relied solely on confessions for a prosecution. The same group of gardai was involved in investigating the 1976 Sallins train robbery, for which Nicky Kelly was convicted and subsequently pardoned. They also investigated the Kerry Babies case in 1983, in which a whole family confessed to complicity in a murder they could not possibly have committed.”

The trio suffered unbearable pressure and young Marty was ultimately murdered himself by Una’s brothers and cousin before Martin and Dick were convicted and wrongfully jailed, an experience that continues to haunt them to this day.

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