Mick Rooney | Journalist & Broadcaster

Marie Kilmartin, 35, of Beladd, County Laois, Ireland attended work at a local day-care nursing home (Portlaoise Area Social Services – P.A.S.S.) at 11 am on 16th December 1993. At 3.45 pm, two of Marie's female co-workers dropped her home and watched her walk to her front door. When Marie's housemate arrived home from her job at 6 pm, she found that Marie was not there and none of the lights in their house had been switched on. The housemate also found the house alarm was set and Marie's groceries were still unpacked hanging on a kitchen chair. A later forensic examination of Marie's home uncovered no evidence of a break-in, nor what may have led to her sudden disappearance. Gardaí did discover that around 4:20 pm on the same day, 16th December, a phone call was made to Marie's landline phone which lasted for two and a half minutes. The call was traced to a payphone in Portlaoise near St. Fintan's Hospital. A witness would later come forward stating that she s...

Written in 1990, published as a limited edition micro-novel, ARCADIA is a complex prose-poem and took its inspiration from the opening of the Book of Genesis. Featuring a mysterious female protagonist, we enter and exit worlds of the past and future. Across three decades, and on two unsuccessful occasions, the micro-novel, almost, but never quite made it to a scripted and experimental short film. Sometimes, a piece of work never quite reaches realisation until the right time comes along. But that is the journey of life itself. Published again as part of my prose collection Filigree & Shadow in 2016, Arcadia now has a visual hand to hold it. And sometimes, it's best to just do it yourself with modern technology. ARCADIA lives again, as it always will long after I'm gone from this world to the next.  

The Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home (also known as St Mary's Mother and Baby Home) operated between 1925 and 1961 in the town of Tuam, County Galway, Ireland. It was a maternity home for unmarried mothers and their children and run by the Bon Secours Sisters, a religious order of Catholic nuns, that also operated the Grove Hospital in Tuam. Unmarried pregnant women were sent to there to give birth and interned for a year doing unpaid work. In 2012, the Health Service Executive (HSE) raised concerns that up to 1,000 children from the Home might have been sent to the United States for the purpose of illegal adoptions, without their mothers' consent. Subsequent research discovered files relating to a lower number of 36 illegal foreign adoptions from the home and concluded that allegations of foreign adoptions for money were "impossible to prove and impossible to disprove". Local historian Catherine Corless published an article documenting the history of the home in 2012...

Farah Swaleh Noor was 40 years old at the time of his death. He arrived in Ireland in December 1996, claiming to be a Somali called "Sheilila Salim" whose family had been killed in Mogadishu during the Somali Civil War. Subsequent investigations revealed that he was in fact a Kenyan. He was granted Irish citizenship in March 1999 because he had become the father of an Irish-born child. Noor had four previous convictions for offences including intoxication, threatening and abusive behaviour and assault. Noor had faced eight charges of disorder and assault, one involving a sexual assault in which a knife was found at the scene by gardaí. He was convicted on three occasions but never served time in jail. Noor lived in a number of areas in Dublin, including Dún Laoghaire and Firhouse, as well as the inner city before moving in with his then partner Kathleen Mulhall. Gardaí described him as being particularly violent towards women. On the 20th March, 2005 sisters Linda and Charl...

Adrian Bestea from Romania, whose badly beaten body was stuffed into a suitcase and dumped in Dublin's Royal Canal on the 8th July 2001, was brutally murdered. Marina Sourovtzeva, his Russian girlfriend, later claimed he had been violent towards her, so she sought the services of three men to evict him from her flat. However, this action had unforeseen consequences. In July 2002, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard that Romanian Adrian Bestea was murdered after Marina Sourovtzeva hired three Russians to teach him "a lesson" for his violent attacks on her. Two of three other men: Igore Derjhack and Dimitro Vasilibech would also be convicted of their involvement. Sourovtzeva (31), a Russian national, of Strand Road, Sandymount, pleaded guilty to false imprisonment and assault causing harm to 21-year-old Mr. Bestea at the Strand Road flat on July 8, 2001. This is a Radio Espial feature of this murder and a body in a suitcase. It will not be the last one featuring similar c...

Sophie Toscan du Plantier, a 39-year-old French woman, was killed outside her holiday home at Toormore, Goleen, County Cork, Ireland, on the night of 23rd December 1996. Her badly beaten body, still dressed in white nightwear and outdoor boots, was discovered by a neighbour the following morning close to an entrance gate at the bottom of her holiday home driveway. British journalist Ian Bailey, who lived several kilometres from Toscan du Plantier's home in Ireland, was a suspect arrested twice by the Garda Síochána, yet no charges were laid as the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) found there was insufficient evidence to proceed to trial. Bailey lost a libel case against six newspapers in 2003. He also lost a wrongful arrest case against the Gardaí, Minister for Justice, and Attorney General in 2015. In 2019, Bailey was convicted of murder by the Cour d'Assises in Paris, and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was tried in absentia in France after winning a legal battle aga...

Fiona Pender (25) was last seen around 6am at her ground-floor flat on Church Street, Tullamore, County Offaly, Ireland on the morning of Thursday August 23rd 1996. She shared the flat with her boyfriend John Thompson. Following a several-month spell living in London from November 1995, the couple had returned back to County Offaly, Ireland in the spring. Fiona left school at 15 years of age after her Intermediate Certificate. A hairdresser by trade and occasional part-time model, Fiona was a bright, outgoing and positive young lady who always wore a smile on her face. She had trained with Kassard’s Salon and also taken up some modelling work with a friend’s agency (Emer Condron). At the time of her disappearance, Fiona was seven months pregnant and had spent the previous day out shopping with her mother. She was reported last seen by her boyfriend at the couple’s flat before he left for work. Fiona vanished without trace and for over 27 years has never been located. Following cold cas...

Welcome to Episode 10 (HOST: VINNY McHALE) My guest this week is Mick Rooney. Mick is an investigative journalist from Dublin. He is also the founder of Radio Espial. Mick has had an amazing career over the past three decades. Beginning as a court reporter he has published many books on several topics. He moved into self-publishing and is now the host of Radio Espial which is a talk radio channel that covers poetry, aviation, true crime and missing people cases. In this episode we discuss Mick’s start as a court reporter. Mick tells us how he moved from the world of self-publishing into world of youtube and the fascination of the public with cases of Missing people.  

Raonaid Murray was an Irish teenager from Glenageary, South Dublin who was stabbed to death at the age of 17 years just a few hundred metres from her home in the early hours of 4th September 1999. As of October 2023, this murder case remains one of Ireland’s most high-profile unsolved cases. The murder weapon has not been located and no one has ever been charged with her murder. Each year her family and the Garda Síochána (Irish Police) issue new appeals for fresh information. The case has been compared in the media to other unsolved incidents such as the disappearance of schoolboy Philip Cairns in 1986 for its length and so many unanswered questions. BACKGROUND Raonaid Murray (Rainy to many of her friends) was born on 6th January 1982 to parents Jim and Deirdre Murray and she lived and grew up in Glenageary, a relatively middle-class suburb of South Dublin, Ireland. Her father was a teacher and had just become a school principal. Her mother had a career background in care therapy. Rao...

My latest poem - The Bridge. No lengthy descriptions. I believe all creative writing should speak for itself in its delivery and performance. This poetry piece is no different. Words and images flow. As with all my recent recitals of both fiction and poetry, I take as much time in producing the piece for the audience as I do in the writing, delivery and performance. But, ultimately, the words should speak for themselves.  

My latest poem release and recital with accompanying video - Echoes of Pink Whispers. Enjoy. #mickrooney #poetry #literature  

In the late afternoon, 12th of June, 2009, a man believed to be in his mid-to-late fifties, thin with short grey hair, with a strong German accent checks into the Sligo City Hotel in County Sligo, Ireland. Four days later, on the morning of June 16th, his lifeless body is discovered by a father and son on the sand and rocks at Rosses Point Beach, a short journey from Sligo Town. The body of the man is only partially clothed and it appears he has been the victim of an unfortunate drowning. However, within days, the possible identity of the man and his last known days in Sligo will lead to more perplexing questions for police investigators examining his case. Over the course of several weeks, countless witness interviews and statements, an intriguing mystery of an unidentified man with no known links to the Sligo area, nor Ireland, will begin to unravel. What we can be certain of is the name he used was simply an alias; that he was terminally ill at the time of his visit to Sligo, Irelan...

Always light after the dark. Three weeks ago I gave up believing it was July into August. We just whispered condolences every day at 6 am and hoped for the best. Accepting it was going to be another March or November day parading as a summer day in sheep's clothing. But there looks to be a chink on the horizon. Dry weather and temps back to normal 22-24 degrees for this time of year in the Netherlands. I dare not ask how long this will last - a renewed dry spell. Sweaters at the ready, the house heating has still not been cracked on since early May. Those moments when I look at her and she looks at me, and we wipe the very idea of reaching for that switch. The poor solar garden lights don't know what is going on. There's been rumour of a garden revolution and the whole household been overthrown by a bunch of LED solar bulbs if things don't pick up soon. Last week the garden lights went on strike for two whole days in protest about there being no sustained sunshine for ...

Deirdre Jacob is an Irish woman who disappeared very near her parent’s home just outside Newbridge town, County Kildare on the 28th July 1998 at the age of 18. In August 2018 the Garda Síochána (Irish police) announced that her disappearance was being treated as a murder case. CASE SUMMARY Deirdre Jacob was born on October 14th, 1979 to Michael and Bernadette Jacob and she spent her childhood growing up in a bungalow just outside Newbridge, County Kildare in an area called Roseberry. During the 1980s, it was a quiet place that had yet to see the sprawling housing developments that would soon come. When she completed school, Deirdre had developed a passion for writing, playing the piano, and she quickly decided she want to teach. She left Ireland in 1997 and began studying to be a primary level teacher at St. Mary’s College in Twickenham, London to qualify. By May 1998, her first year of study was completed and she returned back to her parent’s home in Newbridge, Ireland. During her tim...

This is the first time I have put together an extract and recital from my debut novel Academy (2008). From chapter four - The Elevator and Cinema. An extraordinary journey into fiction, surrealism, and some of the greatest artist and innovators of the past. Leonardo Buonarroti works as a clerk for the region's Academy. The Academy is an all-controlling, totalitarian government ruling in every aspect of a citizen's life. Set against a snow-covered, post-war, apocalyptic landscape, this Orwellian novel sets an austere atmosphere of unease throughout, merging surrealism and historical documentary. It weaves a complex and fragmented journey, from the Great Siberian Explosion of 1908, to the lives of artists and inventors, including, da Vinci, Von Zeppelin and the Russian explorer, Kulik. On his journey from the Academy to the Underground, Leonardo discovers the lies and truths in his own life.  

Josephine "Jo Jo" Dullard, 21, of Callan, County Kilkenny, was living in Harold's Cross, County Dublin when she went missing on 9th November 1995. She had recently finished a beauty therapy course after finding it very difficult to juggle work and college. On the day she disappeared, she was planning on moving from Dublin back home to Callan for good. She had missed her last bus to Callan and had to take another bus to Naas, County Kildare instead. She was last known to be in the Moone area of County Kildare while hitchhiking home to Kilkenny. She had been driven from the Naas area to Kilcullen, County Kildare and then on from Kilcullen to Moone. She was last seen using a payphone in Moone and through telephone records, Gardaí found out the call was made at 11:37 pm to Dullard's friend, Mary Cullinane. She ended the call as she was about to enter another car. There was also an unconfirmed sighting of her walking along the road in Castledermot, County Kildare. The driv...

UPDATE MAY 2023 Having announced in March 2023 that Annie’s case was to be upgraded to a murder enquiry, further revelations are broadcast in a May 8th RTE documentary - Missing: Beyond the Vanishing Triangle. This documentary introduces two new pieces of information. However, I’ve some serious concerns about the accuracy and relevance of this information against the known facts and timeline.     Documentary Review, Keeping with Reality - Missing: Beyond the Vanishing Triangle (Annie McCarrick Case)  

Mick Rooney reads an extract from Gabriel Byrne's memoir, Walking with Ghosts (Mrs. Gordon). In vivid, melodic prose, Irish actor Gabriel Byrne revisits his childhood in Ireland, a world that has long since been renovated by time, and juxtaposes these memories with scenes from later years, in which he develops and occupies that strange identity of movie star. Impressionistic and sensual, Byrne's visions of home, of boyhood and adolescence, are gracefully interspersed with jump-cuts to pointedly unglamorous scenes from his life as he becomes an actor, as he becomes celebrated, as he becomes forever recognizable. Byrne is interested in exploring the pathos in what it means to be famous, in what it means to be praised when everything you’ve learned tells you that are not worthy of praise. Reciting this memoir extract from Byrne's book, published by Grove Press, New York, Rooney is an author and journalist who grew up in the same Dublin locale in Dublin.

Philip Cairns, a 13-year-old schoolboy, disappeared on the afternoon of the 23rd October 1986 while walking back to local secondary-level school, Coláiste Éanna in Rathfarnham, Dublin, after his lunch break. He never returned to school and has never been found after more than 36 years. A large-scale investigation was carried out but no physical trace of Philip has ever been found. His disappearance has long been treated as a high-profile child murder case, the only similar incident in Ireland being the murder of young Robert Holohan (11 years) in January 2005 and Philip’s case remains one of the most high-profile disappearances in recent Irish history. Across almost 37 years, Philip's family have issued numerous appeals for information. A reconstruction took place in 2007 and was later televised on Irish TV network, RTÉ One, while a reward of €10,000 has also been offered. The book, When Heaven Waits by Emma McMenamy, published in 2007, featured an interview with Philip's mothe...

  The Child Inside is my latest poem and recital. A full recital with music accompaniment by Kevin MacLeod. Enjoy.