Sometimes, when you meet someone new, the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, your stomach twists and your mind races. Translation: something is seriously wrong.
Listeners, we've finally hit the midway point in Runaway Joe, but instead of things calming down, they’re going to get a lot weirder, as the plot takes a sharp turn to include stowaways, stately homes, iconic Irish cinema - and the origin story of Dún Laoghaire shopping centre.
When I said weird, I was not downplaying this episode….
This week, the team will unpack the lost decades of Joe Maloney’s life after he evaded justice in the US and reinvented himself in South Dublin under the alias Michael O’Shea.
For anyone new to the podcast, this series chronicles one of the longest open cases in the FBI’s books; it was all but forgotten until the RTÉ Documentary On One team came across it.
Nearly 60 years ago, June Maloney was poisoned, at her son's fifth birthday party, Joe, her ex-husband, was arrested for the crime… that was until he escaped a mental institution, multiple kinds of armed forces and a pack of bloodhounds.
The creators have rounded up his former friends, neighbours, and co-workers in an episode that will have you questioning every "trusting" relationship you have.
Also, considering Joe’s second wife Sheila Chandler seemingly had no clue her husband was a fugitive, this might not be the best listen for the newly single…
Read on for a full recap of episode four, Living Large, though I would save time and listen above now… and I wrote this article.
TIPS: If you have any information or knowledge of Michael O’Shea/Joe Maloney, please send it through to documentaries@rte.ie
Becoming Michael
In the late sixties, a dishevelled man began working on a fishing trawler in Dún Laoghaire. His new colleagues did not ask many questions. However, you do not expect the new guy to be an escaped prisoner charged with first-degree murder…
An accident aboard the trawler would put Michael O’Shea (Joe Maloney) on a new career path. He got a job at an engineering firm in Dublin. We love a primary source on this podcast, so the son of Joe’s former Irish employer breaks down what he was really like back back then.
You might think a fugitive on the run would lay low, but not Joe Maloney instead he approached special effects expert Gerry Johnston for a job.
Gerry had been in the film business a long time and had worked with everyone from Boorman to Kubrick, but to him there was something off with this newcomer.
Gerry’s friend Pat met Joe in hospital - Joe said he was injured on a ship from America. Gerry deduced this man was not a paying passenger, so he must be a stowaway.
It also did not help that Joe could not contain his interest in explosives, evidently not the best way to get a new job. That, and he immediately started brandishing his passport...
"I had a sneaky suspicion he was maybe involved with subversives," says Gerry. "You don't show a person that you meet, immediately your passport".
Unsurprisingly, Gerry sent Joe packing.
He didn't stay long working for my father. Yeah, he was very gregarious and outward and so on you know and then I didn't see him for a good while but I knew my father was friendly with him
- Pat Fitzsimons
New Neighbour
This next bit will make you rethink the whole "love thy neighbour" concept.
In the early 1970’s Joe bought a garage in Dún Laoghaire.
In 1971, Joe moved into a rental property in an affluent area. He quickly made friends with the owner of a local record shop, Desmond Fenning. Desmond's daughters Pamela and Vanessa spoke to journalist Pavel Barter about their interesting former family friend…
The sisters described him as "larger than life," a man who went to great length to make a lasting positive impression.
According to Vanessa, he was always on your side: "If your car broke down. He would drop everything and come pick you up."
But there was something Joe Maloney could never escape - his unfettered rage. Pamela recalls a friend telling her that Michael tried to kill her brother with a car over a legal matter…
He was definitely volatile, really, really volatile. One of my closest friends is a solicitor and she knew Michael from some legal thing… she said 'Oh he tried to kill my brother," and I said, "What?"
- Pamela Fenning
Military Man
Joe started to tell people he was from an Anglo-Irish family in Kerry and had served in the Middle East with the Royal Engineers, a regiment of the British Army. He liked to tell stories of getting ambushed by a young terrorist in Aden and would flash a scar on his stomach.
He did have a scar on his stomach, but needless to say, it was not from fighting in the British Army. However, it was one of the identifying physical features the FBI were circulating at the time in their hunt to find him.
But people in 1970s Ireland did not have their eyes peeled for a wanted international fugitive.
I liked him, you know. I thought he was interesting. Well he was so plausible he didn't have an American accent or anything you know
- Pat Fitzsimons
Landed Gentry
In the 1970s, Joe came into a substantial sum of money, compliments of the Dún Laoghaire shopping centre.
Yes, you read that correctly.
His garage (literally) stood in the way of the council's plan to build the centre, so our fugitive received a hefty sum to sell.
Around this time, Joe met Sheila Chandler. They swiftly married and purchased a large country estate in Laois. The podcast believes Sheila had no idea she had married a man charged with the murder of his previous wife.
Somehow, he went from a wanted felon to an affluent landowner.
The couple's new home was Capard House, a 19th-century mansion at the foot of the Slieve Bloom Mountains. Journalist Pavel Barter visited the property to interview some of Joe’s former friends and employees. They had a lot of interesting things to say…
The stately home had a lake, shooting rights and stables. It also had a caretaker named Erika Lotze. Note to reader, bookmark that name.
At one stage, Joe employed nearly 20 local people. Peter Collins worked for Joe at Capard House in the 1970s. He described his personality as larger than life, with lies to match.
"He had the appearance of a 45, 50-year-old man," says Peter. "But if you added up together, all the things that he had done, he had to be 136 or 7."
Despite Joe’s best efforts, the mask always slipped. His friends, the Fitzsimons, recalled a visit to his country estate: "Do you remember the cattle broke into his garden or his field, and he got mad excited with a shotgun? He was going to start shooting them."
Then again, Joe always liked to keep weapons close to hand...
He was a man that invented himself as he went along and if you accepted that then he was a very attractive person to be around because he was very imaginative great raconteur… But if you gave him an arm and a leg you had no guarantee that you're going to get it back"
- Peter Collins
Sheila Chandler O’Shea
So far in the podcast, we have learned very little about Joe’s second wife, Sheila Chandler.
The elusive figure who declared, "I don’t care how many he has killed," during one of her husband's court appearances (see episode one for details).
But before Joe, Sheila had an entirely different life. She worked as a sales assistant at Switzer's, an elite department store on Grafton Street in Dublin.
She was the complete opposite of her future husband; quiet, mousy and short. She had spent her youth reading in her Garden in Dublin.
But despite these glaring differences, Sheila was completely devoted to Joe.
"I found it kind of hard to fathom because they were so utterly different personality-wise um you know she was shy, introverted. You know Michael couldn't see deer walking across the fields without thinking how he was going to bring it down and put it in the freezer…"
- Peter Collins
Joey
Joe liked to trek across his land at Capard House on horseback. He was not a skilled horseman, but was completely enamoured by one horse, a "quarter thoroughbred" called Joey.
Now, for newcomers (stop spoiling the plot and start streaming) Joey was the name of Joe’s son, whom he abandoned in upstate New York after June’s death.
When Joe left his son and daughter, Patty Ann, to escape to Ireland, social workers repeatedly tried to place the children up for adoption. What happened to them? You’ll have to keep listening to find out.
A caseworker employed by the Monroe County Department of Social Services, alleged that Joseph Scott Maloney and Patricia Ann Maloney, children under sixteen years of age, have been neglected and abandoned by their father, Joseph M. Maloney…
- News Report
Behind The Camera
Despite failing to secure a job with special effects professional Gerry Johnston, Joe never gave up on his dream of working in the movies.
When Ardmore Studios went into liquidation Joe purchased a Mole Richardson tracking vehicle. In essence, it was a high-spec camera car with rigs on it. It was also the only model of this camera in Ireland.
This machine would open up a whole new world for Joe and help him work alongside some of the biggest names in cinema.
It was a big deal, and he was the only one in Ireland who had it
- Barry Blackmore
Excalibur
Joe’s film career went from zero to a hundred at warp speed and he soon found his way onto one of the biggest movie productions Ireland had ever seen - Excalibur.
The film launched the careers of some of Ireland’s most iconic talents, including Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne and directors Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan.
But Joe was not there to provide a camera, he was there providing weapons…
Maurice O’Callaghan worked on Excalibur as a horse stunt rider; he told the podcast that Joe was good at "anything to do with fighting."
"With providing weapons for fighting, be it sword fighting, fencing, shooting ultimately in other pictures that he did. He was like an arms provider. He was into weapons. That was his thing."
Joe soon crossed paths with special effects expert Gerry Johnston once again, but this encounter would be even more unnerving and involve the Dublin quays and a car loaded with firearms…
Curious? Hit play.
Gerry standing in central Dublin alongside a man armed to the teeth who was wanted on a first degree murder charge and considered armed and dangerous by the FBI
- Pavel Barter, Journalist
If you have any information or knowledge of Michael O’Shea/Joe Maloney, please send it through to documentaries@rte.ie
New episodes of Runaway Joe are available every Friday, wherever you get your podcasts - catch up here.
