I’ll dig that dissertation out some day. About 40 murder cases at the assizes in the first half of 1840.
I find he starts a lot of projects but never fully finishes them out
His voice does grate a little alright
It’s the delivery that’s weird, has a very peculiar rhythm
A torn-up letter recovered from a bin has shed new light on the mysterious deaths of a reclusive husband and wife whose bodies lay undiscovered in their remote home for a year and a half.
The letter, pieced back together by a garda handwriting expert, indicates that retired sea captain Nicholas Smith (82) and his wife Hillary (79) were distrustful of care available to them under the Irish health system.
In the letter, the English-born couple claimed elderly people were “at risk” from physicians and that they “should never have set foot in Ireland”.
The letter also revealed the poor physical state Hillary Smith was in around the time of their deaths.
It described her as being “weak due to lack of food” and writing with “arthritic hands”.
Details of the five-page letter were disclosed to the Tipperary coroner in a garda statement.
However, its contents were not read out at an inquest held in April, where “open” verdicts were returned because evidence gathered did not fully explain the cause and circumstances of their deaths.
The house in Cloneen where the bodies were found. Photo: Niall Carson/PA Wire
Locals had assumed the couple left for France in late 2020 after they sent a letter to a neighbour saying they were selling up and moving, when in fact both had died inside their rural bungalow in Rossane, Cloneen, near Clonmel.
An extensive Garda investigation found no documentary or physical evidence to support assertions made by Nicholas Smith they were planning to move to France.
Tipperary coroner Joe Kelly said there was also no evidence they self-isolated out of fear of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, he believed it was “apparent they intended to withdraw from society”.
While the letter does not solve the mystery surrounding their demise, it does offer some clues as to their state of mind around the time they died.
Both had been suffering from a range of health issues but it is clear from the letter they strongly distrusted doctors.
The couple, Mr Smith from Norwich and Mrs Smith from Hull, were married in Cambridge in 1967 and travelled the world due to Mr Smith’s work in the Merchant Navy and later as a cruise ship captain.
It is known that at some point he worked for Disney Cruise Line, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company, and that the couple spent time living in the Far East, Australia and England before settling in Ireland in 2006.
Garda inquiries revealed the Smiths had lost all contact with their families in England and only had limited contact with their neighbours.
Their mummified remains were discovered when gardaí conducted a welfare search at the property on June 20, 2022 after a neighbour expressed concerns. No one had moved into the house and the couple’s two Volvo cars remained at the rear.
Gardaí found Hillary Smith, dressed in her pyjamas and night gown and wrapped in blankets, sitting upright in a front room armchair with an electric heater, which was still on, beside her. Nicholas Smith was found clothed and covered by a quilt in his bed. All of the curtains and blinds in the house had been drawn.
A locksmith was needed to gain entry and it was later discovered glue had been poured on the inside hinges of the back door and inside the cylinder recess of the locks to the front and back doors.
The bodies of Nicholas and Hillary Smith were found in this bungalow near Cloneen, Co Tipperary. Photo: Dylan Vaughan
A post-mortem examination determined Nicholas Smith died of severe coronary artery disease, but his wife’s cause of death could not be determined due to severe decomposition.
Although signed in both their names, the letter appears to have been written by Hillary Smith on Christmas Eve, 2020.
This was seven days after the last confirmed outing by either of them. Records showed a card for their joint bank account was last used to buy milk at a SuperValu in Callan, Co Kilkenny, on December 17.
The letter indicates Hillary Smith appeared to be resigned to dying, saying at one point that she and her husband were “perfectly healthy before we came to Ireland” and that it was “so sad and cruel to end this way”.
“We have had excellent medical care around the world until we came here. We had no idea it would be so poor or so uncaring,” she wrote, claiming elderly patients were treated “like children” and in a way that was “very patronising and cruel”.
Mrs Smith also praised Dr Vernon Coleman, an English former general practitioner and conspiracy theorist, who controversially claimed the person most likely to kill someone is their doctor. She described him as “a courageous man” who “saw what so many missed”.
The letter was signed off: “Nicholas and Hillary Smith, late of Hong Kong and other places. We should never, ever have set foot in Ireland.”
No evidence was produced at the inquest to suggest the couple received anything other than competent healthcare in Ireland.
Gardaí discovered that in March 2020, nine months before the letter was written, Nicholas Smith had been admitted to hospital with chest pains and was triaged as “very urgent”. However, having been seen in the A&E department, he discharged himself later the same day, refusing further medical examination or treatment.
His post-mortem examination indicated he had taken fluoxetine, an anti-depressant, over a period of time.
Hillary Smith had a history of rheumatoid arthritis and hypertension.
One neighbour told gardaí she was “terrified of Covid” while another said he had heard she was sensitive to light.
Any time she was seen in the passenger seat of one of their cars, she had a blanket on her lap.
The couple lived in Hong Kong until 1997 and later moved to Leeming in Western Australia and York in England before arriving Ireland in 2006, first living in Cashel, Co Tipperary, and then moving to Cloneen in 2009.
They claimed to be childless, but Hillary Smith had a boy, Michael, with an unknown man in 1961. He was raised by his grandmother and never knew his mother.
Nicholas Smith had a younger brother, Andrew, but they lost contact in the 1980s and he had no idea his brother was living in Ireland.
The bungalow near Cloneen, Co Tipperary, where the bodies of Nicholas and Hilary Smith were found. Photo: Dylan Vaughan.
The Smiths had limited interactions with locals during their 11 years in Cloneen. One neighbour said he had spoken to them only three times in all that time.
However, they did speak more with another neighbour, Mary Morrissey, who received a typed letter from them in late 2020 that outlined a plan to move to France and to sell their home to people from England. That December, Nicholas Smith arranged for the cancellation of their waste collection from January 1 and for the cancellation of their Sky television connection.
On December 14 a two-line note was sent from his email address to a doctor’s surgery saying they no longer required its services as they were moving to France.
On the same day, his email address was used to arrange a “MailMinder”, so any post for them would be kept by An Post and not delivered to the house between then and February 5, 2021.
The couple also made a series of donations totalling almost €16,000 to various charities in November and December 2020.
However, in a statement for the coroner, Detective Garda Michele Cahill said: “Investigating gardaí have to date found no proof of Nicholas and Hillary Smith’s plan to sell their home in Rossane, Cloneen, and move to France, and there is no documentary or physical evidence to support this theory.”
Another unexplained aspect of the case is that a large amount of crockery from shelves and in drawers had been smashed in the kitchen and living area, while a television had fallen or been knocked off its stand.
Hillary Smith had two torches in the pockets of her dressing gown when she was found.
Bowls of food and a kettle were found in the hallway outside the bedroom where Nicholas Smith’s body was found.
When exactly they died is unknown.
The last activity on Nicholas Smith’s phone was a series of three text messages sent on December 30, 2020.
The number texted was not registered to a subscriber and no longer appears to be in use.
At least one of the couple is likely to have still been alive on January 8, 2021. Gardaí discovered that a screenshot was taken that day on an Amazon Kindle found in their home.
The screenshot appears to have been a passage from The Light Between Oceans, a novel by M.L. Stedman about a childless couple who found a baby girl in a washed up dinghy and decided to raise her as their own.