Podcast Corner: Chilling story of an Irish serial killer
Ever since arrived in late 2014 and transformed the podcast landscape, there have been many imitators and it was only a matter of time before we got an ‘Irish Serial’. is a six-part series from and Third Ear Productions in Denmark.
According to its creators: “This podcast features something never previously heard — anywhere, from anyone — the confession tape of an Irish serial killer.
A true crime story that’s both bizarre and at times hard to believe, it’s taken almost five years to piece together.
The first murder happens within the opening minute of episode one — whether a song, new Netflix show, or podcast, you’ve got to hook the consumer quickly — as Kieran Patrick Kelly pushes a man in front of a train at Baker Street Station in London in 1953, the queen’s coronation year.
Narrator Tim Hinman teases that it’s the first of the Irish emigrant’s many killings, though “he would never be charged or prosecuted for the vast majority of these crimes either”.
His last comes 30 years later, drunk in a jail cell, when he killed another prisoner with his socks.
The next morning, the detective inspector sits down with the killer. And this is the tantalising USP of : it’s the actual police interview tape of Kelly from 1983.
Hinman tells us:
It’s a very rare and difficult thing to get hold of, I can assure you — it took us over three years to get hold of this tape and to get permission to use it.
By the end of the tape, and the episode, Kelly has admitted he murdered 13, 14, or 15 people over the past three decades, often when drunk, always on purpose — that’s more victims than Jack the Ripper, Fred and Rosemary West, and the Moors Murderers.
So The Nobody Zone is not a whodunnit, rather it leaves us asking why Kelly did it and how he managed to escape prosecution. New episodes are released weekly, with episode two out tomorrow.
YOU’VE GOT TO HEAR THIS:
BBC Sounds has ramped up its podcasts offerings this year, with a host of interesting ones to come soon, including the Second Captains-produced Where Is George Gibney? Two that have already launched include Mortem, the forensic science of (fictional) victims; and Manhunt: Finding Kevin Parle.
