All good things must come to an end, or in this instance, all tragic, deeply grim, but informative things must come to an end.
For the ninth and final episode of the hit podcast Runaway Joe, the series producers pull together the missing pieces of this decades old mystery to finally reveal what happened to alleged murderer Joseph Maloney.
The RTÉ Documentary On One team will uncover information that the FBI, Interpol, and An Garda Síochána never knew existed and bring a semblance of closure to the family of June Fisk, the victim at the centre of this case.
June was a nurse, a mother of two, and the former wife of the namesake of this podcast, who was supposed to have been poisoned at her son's fifth birthday party.
You will hear from special guests, that you know intimately from previous episodes but have never heard from directly, nor likely ever expected to….
Also, the creators will divulge never-before-heard secrets and titbits from sources who reached out during the last nine weeks with information about escaped felon Joe Maloney.
Health and safety warning: this article contains spoilers, and this podcast might just help close one of the FBIs oldest open cases.
Now, if you’ve been keeping up to date on your weekly listening, read on (if you dare) or start streaming episode nine - Within Sight.
Planned Encounters
The episode opens with co-producers Pavel Barter and Tim Desmond travelling to Cyprus in search of Joe Maloney and his third wife Sheila.
But they were not the first people to make this journey…
About twenty years ago, the writer Michael Nagy made the same trip, but before he set out on his quest, he wrote two identical letters; one for Maloney’s close friend Rod Fenning, the man who helped him escape Ireland and another for the family of Sheila Chandler O’Shea, Maloney’s third wife.
Michael told his recipients that in two weeks, he would be in Northern Cyprus and would like to meet the elusive couple at Niazi's, a restaurant close to the harbour in Kyrenia.
During his first attempted meeting with Joe and Sheila, he arrived an hour early and watched the restaurant from a nearby cafe. Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of a woman stopping to take a look inside the restaurant before walking on.
By this point in our story, Sheila had a tumour on her head, that she couldn’t afford to treat, so she wore a wing to disguise it. She had been battling breast cancer for nearly a decade.
She had almost disappeared before Michael noticed her, but on his second meeting date, at the same location, four days later, the same woman would reappear. Oh, and she was wearing a wig… please stream on for further details.
Tragically, Michael Nagy drowned in 2006 while attempting to swim to an island off the Galway coast. He never got to write his biography of Joe Maloney. But his research was sent to the friends of June who shared it with the podcast team. His work is what led us to Northern Cyprus in the first place.
Almost an hour had gone by when from round the corner came the same rather peculiar looking lady who'd passed by before. From about 15 yards away she fished a mobile phone out of her handbag. 'He's here,' she said loud enough for me to hear before walking straight by me speaking Turkish - Michael Nagy
No place like Northern Cyprus
Northern Cyprus was created after an invasion which broke international law. So, a lot like Michael O’Shea (Joe Maloney), it does not officially exist.
However, this international loophole means no extradition treaties, so criminals like Joe can live here without a care.
The banking system in Northern Cyprus does not fully link up with the rest of the world, and there are no direct flights to any other country except Turkey. So, it’s a fugitives paradise.
The police don't ask too many questions. So although there are rules and regulations, if you have a bit of money, and you know the right people, you can disappear. And as long as you behave yourself, it's fine. Just keep your nose clean - Former police officer Barry Nicholls
Expats
The team came to Northern Cyprus armed with photos of Joe Maloney to try and determine if any of the well-established expat community would recognise him. If they got lucky, maybe this would help them determine his whereabouts.
They managed to track down a German couple Rica and Andreas, who both recognised a photograph of Joe from the 80s… "In Kyrenia harbour. I just have seen that face - me too - that's it, nothing more, and we show to the same picture both of us."
They connected Pavel and Tim with a woman called Yasemin from the German Embassy in Cyprus; she instantly remembered Joe, especially his eyes…
I remember the eyes especially. I think he was sitting alone and this was the reason why I recognize him. On this time a lot of people was, they're living on boats. It could be that he was living on a boat, ja. He was…I don’t know. He was strange for me - Yasemin Fein
Joey
Since the series was released, it has received a lot of press attention in the town where our story began, Rochester, New York, what the RTÉ Documentary on One team did not realise was that a central character in this tale was following the series.
And that is how journalist Pavel Barter came to meet Joe Maloney or, as we know him, Joey. That’s right, Joey Maloney, the little boy whose mother, June Fisk, was allegedly poisoned by his father Joe Maloney at Joey’s fifth birthday party.
Joey reached out to the team and spoke directly with Pavel for this episode. He is 61 years old and lives in Florida. He is married with two sons and two grandchildren.
He has not had any contact with his parents since 1967, when his mother was murdered, and his father fled the US.
But he has a few childhood memories left of life before he and his sister Patti-Ann were both adopted by the same, thankfully loving family. They rarely spoke about their past life. When news of his father’s arrest became front page news in 1985, he was already a young adult.
He said his father was strict but never violent with him, but he has distinct memories of his parents arguing, mostly over religion.
Joe was a strict Catholic, while June was a protestant. Joey said his mother would sometimes "air quotes, sneak us to the Protestant church." His father did not take this well…
Until recently, he had not seen a picture of his mother, June, in 50 years.
Despite being just five Joey knew there was nothing wrong with his mother the night she was poisoned.
"I remember she just pulled her car off the road and started crying, and she just sat there and cried for a while. And then, after let's say five, maybe 10 minutes, we just drove to the apartment."
While his mother was ill Joey, and his little sister Patti Ann stayed with their mother’s friend Wanda. Wanda wanted to adopt the children, but she was advised it would be best if they had a fresh start.
Nearly sixty years later, the Runaway Joe team reunited the two.
I last saw Wanda when I got in the car and drove away and then never heard from her again. I just want to let Wanda know that we're fine - Joey
Homecoming
Earlier in the series we connected with Karen Maloney Keyes, the first daughter of Joe Maloney from his first marriage to Joan Howland.
But Karen was not the only child missing from the Maloney family record book…
After Pavel connected with Karen, he asked her to consider uploading her DNA to ancestry.com to find her father. She got not one but two hits, neither were from her father…
"I found one brother," she says. "And he told me about another brother. One brother was born on Joey's birthday, the one I talked to and the other one was either born two weeks before or two weeks after that."
These two new Maloney siblings were from different mothers, born in the same month of the same year. That means when June was pregnant with the couple's daughter Patti Ann, Joe was conducting at least two separate affairs.
In total, the podcast series found four additional children that Joe had fathered before or during his marriage to June Fisk. In total, he had at least six children.
Pavel broke this news to Joey during their first telephone conversation. In a strange turn of events, a podcast managed to help stick this family back together and unite six siblings, all in their late 50s and 60s.
So in the same year, Joe Maloney had three different children born to three different mothers, including his wife, June Fisk. From that point on, we knew Joe Maloney had fathered at least six children - Journalist Pavel Barter
Justice for June
Throughout the podcast, the creators made their overarching goal clear, to finally get justice for June Fisk. Last year, Pavel visited her grave in upstate New York with her niece, Amy Emerick.
The inscription on the Fisk family headstone reads daughter June Maloney 1940 to 1967. She was just 26 years old when her husband Joe allegedly murdered her by spiking her cocktail with methyl alcohol.
"It's very difficult because I never got to meet her. So, in a way, I'm not, I'm not missing someone I knew. It's a little different."
The RTÉ Documentary On One team reconnected Amy with her long-lost first cousin Joey. The pair have been in touch every week since their first phone call, sharing family photos and finally getting to know each other.
You know, justice can come in many different forms – and sometimes the courts aren’t the best. Sometimes it’s people. I think maybe all that could be done has been done by you - Retired prosecutor Wendy Lehmann
Closure
Based on my teasing introduction you are likely wondering (screaming) what happened to the namesake of this podcast. Is he dead, alive, incarcerated?
The makers thought they had uncovered everything they could about the fugitive, but just three days before this episode went live, a family member of Joe’s third wife, Sheila, made contact with the team.
They explained that in the late 1990s, Sheila returned to Dublin for cancer treatment. She refused to tell her family anything about her husband. But by doing this, she never put them at risk of withholding information from the authorities. Nobody ever knew if she believed that her husband killed his former wife June.
However, Sheila did reveal certain details about the pair’s life on the run. They ate healthily, grew their own produce and were essentially self-sufficient. She never had children with her husband.
Sheila Chandler O’Shea died in 2010 at the age of 65. Her death certificate stated that she was "married but separated."
The relative also provided a nugget of information that would completely change the course of this episode, the case and the lives of all those impacted by the murder of June Fisk.
By now, you know that I’m not going to tell you, so stop wasting time and start listening to the final episode of Runaway Joe.
For 18 months now, we’ve been trying to find out what happened to Joe Maloney - and right now, right here at the very end of this journey, 9 episodes in, it appears we’ve done just that - Journalist Pavel Barter.
Listen back to all the episodes of Runaway Joe here.
