Veteran BBC journalist Gordon Adair who produced a radio series on an Armagh murder mystery believes the alleged killer escaped the noose with the cloak and dagger help of members of the old UVF and the Orange and Masonic orders.
Veteran BBC journalist Gordon Adair who produced a radio series on an Armagh murder mystery believes the alleged killer escaped the noose with the cloak and dagger help of members of the old UVF and the Orange and Masonic orders.
Adair, who completed the seven-part Did The Right Man Hang? series despite fighting Parkinson s Disease, says he may write a book about his newfound certainty of how Harold Courtney was spirited away to Canada.
Adair s BBC Radio Ulster podcast has opened an online debate about the murder of a 23-year-old pregnant and unmarried woman called Minnie Reid who reportedly had her throat slashed before her body was dumped at the Birches in Co Armagh in July, 1932.
A UVF escape route may have been used to help a prisoner convicted of killing a mother and her unborn baby flee the hangman's noose almost 90 years ago.
BBC News
Published
image captionA newspaper report of Harold Courtney s trial for the murder of Minnie Reid
New information will air in the finale of the documentary series Did The Right Man Hang? on Saturday.
It re-examines the apparent murder of a young woman called Minnie Reid in County Armagh in 1932.
Pregnant and unmarried, she was found with her throat cut at a place called the Birches.
A lorry driver called Harold Courtney was subsequently hanged for her murder. Or was he?
The documentary was originally a six-part series but a seventh episode was added after new information came to light at the last minute.