Laois mansion was home to FBI's wanted murder suspect Joseph Maloney

AN FBI murder suspect on the run, now the topic of a new RTÉ Documentary on One podcast, once spent a lavish decade in a Laois mansion.

'Runaway Joe', Irish American Joseph Maloney, alias Michael O'Shea, ran Capard House from the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s before disappearing again to avoid FBI charges of killing his wife.

At Capard House, a historic mansion in the Slieve Bloom Mountains, he lived the life of a lord, with lavish parties for celebrities, according to a former employee.

The local woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, spoke to the Leinster Express / Laois Live.

"He employed about 60 local people and he worked with Ardmore Studios supplying film props. Nobody had a bad word to say about him, he could wrap people around his fingers.  

"He came to Capard like as if he was a famous Hollywood person. He renovated the house and the sheds to turn them into living quarters. He reopened the lakes. He had fellas coming from all over the world to fish and shoot. He had any selection of guns for shooting. 

The since restored Capard House in Laois, currently owned by US property developer John Picerne.

"He knew when the deer would come to the front of the grounds to graze and they would sit at the front door and shoot them.

"He was married to an Irish woman who worked in Switzers. He had two houses in a posh part of Dublin.

"He never got into photos, even if his horses were at the races. He was tall, well built, not good looking. He had lots of parties, people would be out on the green, drunk," she said.

O'Shea's dark side was known locally too.

"He went on as if he was a lord, but he owed colossal money locally. All my family used to say, 'don't ever be on your own with O'Shea' because he was fond of the women," she said.

"We knew he was accused of poisoning his wife in America, whether that's because he bragged about it or what. We were told it was done with one of those poison blow darts used in Africa. He had two children back there but he never spoke about them. But one of his horses had the same name as his son, Joey," the former employee said.

"To me, he was ruthless."

"I think its too late now to find him, he's probably dead. It's over 40 years since he was at Capard," the local woman said.

She has shared her knowledge with the makers of the podcast, which is accepting new information on the unsolved murder case.

Runaway Joe, a multi-episodic podcast series from RTÉ Documentary On One, tells the story of Maloney, accused of murdering his wife June in upstate New York in the 1960s.

Having begun releasing on January 19, the series quickly topped the charts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify in Ireland and continues to do so whilst also being downloaded in over 140 countries to date.

Through their investigations, and since the podcast began publishing, the team have come further than anyone else – even the U.S. federal authorities – in discovering the final destination of Joseph Maloney, one of the oldest open cases in the FBI’s books. They have also uncovered the most up to date photograph of Joseph Maloney, dating back to the early 1980s when Maloney would have been in his early to mid-40s working in Ireland. This photograph, courtesy of Michael Nagy, updates the most up to date photo the FBI had of him by 20 years approximately.

Escaping American custody, Joseph Maloney is discovered living in Ireland under a different identity, Michael O’Shea. Due to institutional failures, he escapes justice 20 years after his alleged crime, and he remains wanted by the FBI to this day.

The podcast makers Tim Desmond and Pavel Barter want people to contact them with more information.

“To see the series at the top of the Apple and Spotify charts has given us a real sense that this is a story worth telling and that we are telling it in the best way for people to engage with and follow this extraordinary tale.

The help we've had from listeners since the first episode of the series dropped has been really important both to us and to the people directly affected by the actions of Joe Maloney here in Ireland and in the United States. And we’ve been contacted by people we never thought we could find, all of whom have a unique insight into Joe Maloney.

Having been given access to testimony and memories from people who haven't spoken before - and as the series goes on – we hope that people who have information about Joe Maloney's life as a fugitive and of where he went after leaving Ireland in 1986 will now come forward. We’re hopeful too that someone somewhere might recognise the man in this newest photograph of Joe Maloney we’re releasing – as we believe Maloney changed his identity again in the late 1980s ”.

If you, or anyone you know has any information about Joseph Maloney / Michael O'Shea, please email documentaries@rte.ie