SPOILER: Shock final episode of Runaway Joe murder suspect who lived in Laois
RTÉ Documentary on One Podcast reveals a dramatic new twist
The final episode of the RTÉ true crime podcast series Runaway Joe has uncovered news about the FBI murder suspect who spent a decade living in a Laois mansion.
The documentary makers have discovered that Joseph Maloney is dead and reveals that he fathered at least six children at the time he was accused of poisoning his wife.
The suspect went by a pseudonym when he lived in Capard House in the Slieve Bloom Mountains from the mid 1970s to the mid '80s, with a local person recently telling the Leinster Express / Laois Live what he was like to work for.
Runaway Joe has been telling the story of Irish-American man Joseph Maloney, charged with the first-degree murder of his wife June Fisk in upstate New York in the 1960s.
And with the help of DNA, the series has also discovered that Joseph Maloney fathered six children; two daughters to his first wife Joan Howland, a son and daughter to his second wife June Fisk and two more boys with two women he had affairs with while married to June. Almost none of these children knew about each other and are only now beginning to reunite.
From their investigations, and since the podcast began, the RTÉ Documentary on One team behind Runaway Joe has come further than any of the authorities in discovering what really happened to Joe Maloney since he went on the run. Through extensive interviews and research, the team revealed that when Joseph Maloney and his wife Sheila fled Ireland in 1986, they first settled in Berlin, East Germany - before then moving to Northern Cyprus after the fall of the Berlin wall. Both destinations did not have extradition treaties with the US, which is why Maloney fled there.
Despite the news that 70-year-old Joseph Maloney died around 2005, his wife Sheila never made the location of his burial site known. The series also tells how Joseph Maloney was reportedly unwell before his death and had Alzheimer’s.
The former Assistant District Attorney Wendy Lehman who worked this case from the 1980s through to her retirement is viewing the news of Maloney’s death as a ‘pretty definitive closure’.
Series producer of RTÉ Documentary on One Liam O'Brien agrees.
“Whilst we may have thought at one stage there was a chance we could find Joe alive, and help bring him to justice, what we’ve found over the last 18 months has amounted to overwhelming indications, from numerous sources, that Joe Maloney is dead – we’ve not found a single indicator that he’s alive – so for us, the case is now closed”.
The full series of Runaway Joe is available wherever you get your podcasts.