A true story of murder and vengeance, a shattered community and a miscarriage of justice that echoes down the decades
October 1971. Nineteen-year-old Una Lynskey vanishes near her home in Co. Meath. In the weeks that follow, and on flimsy grounds, gardaí identify three young local men as suspects. Within days of her body being found, one of the three is beaten to death by members of Una’s family.
The entire sequence of events is a tragedy in a quiet rural community – the wrong men jailed, no one ever facing justice – and becomes one of the most notorious failures in Irish policing and judicial history.
In Who Killed Una Lynskey?, award-winning journalist Mick Clifford has built a compelling portrait of the case from interviews with the surviving main players, as well as exclusive access to the files of a private investigator who uncovered information the gardaí missed – or ignored.
A timely, humane and compulsive read, this is a ground-breaking account of the botched investigation and its devastating consequences for not just four devastated families, but also the reputation of the gardaí.
Mick Clifford is Special Correspondent for the Irish Examiner. He has worked in print and broadcast journalism for over twenty years. He is the author of three non-fiction books, including Bertie Ahern and the Drumcondra Mafia (with Shane Coleman) and A Force for Justice: The Maurice McCabe Story, and two crime novels. In 2014, TV3’s Tonight with Vincent Browne selected him as Journalist of the Year for his coverage of the garda whistle-blower story. He was named the newspaper industry’s Journalist of the Year in 2016. He lives in Dublin.
