Who Killed Patricia Curran? : How a Judge, Two Clergymen and Various Policemen Conspired to Frame a Vulnerable Man

She took a bus to her home village of Whiteabbey on the shores of Belfast Lough on the evening of November 11, 1952. She was seen leaving the bus stop in the village around 5.30pm. She lived with her parents and two older brothers in a nearby big house in its own grounds. Usually someone gave her a lift from the bus stop but being early she began walking up the winding 600 -yard tree-lined avenue alone. She was never seen alive again. Sometime after midnight her body was found in trees near the house There was no evidence of a sex attack. The autopsy found that Patricia died a virgin.

Her father was a judge and huge pressure was put on the Royal Ulster Constabulary to bring the perpetrator to justice. The Metropolitan Police in London sent one of its most experienced investigators to help. Detective Inspector John Capstick became focused on a young Scottish recruit at an air force base in Whiteabbey. At the end of three days of non-stop interrogation Iain Hay Gordon confessed. He was found guilty but insane of the murder of Patricia and that was that. Except it wasn’t, he was neither guilty nor insane, as an appeal court much later accepted. The question then and now was who murdered Patricia Curran – this book answers that question.