Podcast Corner: Fascinating tale of 'Stakeknife' Scappaticci from Second Captains
Alfredo Scappaticci, the IRA man known as 'Stakeknife, is the subject of a new podcast. Picture: Alan Lewis
Four years on from Where is George Gibney?, an investigative podcast into a disgraced former swimming coach, Mark Horgan and Ciarán Cassidy are back with a new BBC Sounds/Second Captains production.
Stakeknife is about the double life of Freddie Scappaticci, an IRA enforcer who was a secret informant - a tout - for the British army at the height of the Troubles. His codename? Stakeknife. “Just how was one man able to lead a double life for so long,” asks a grizzled Horgan. “When lies are still being told to this day, who do you believe?”
Scappaticci was a senior member of the IRA’s secret disciplinary unit. His job was to find, interrogate, and to kill suspected informers. The first episode of the 10-part series is about how his identity came out in 2003. He convenes a press conference that weekend. One reporter asks him: “Were you at any stage a member of the IRA and involved in the republican movement?” The silence, the “amm” that he initially gives, will leave the listener hooked.
It is the second episode, ‘Sin É’ that stands out though, one of the finest pieces of audio storytelling in recent years. Horgan spends most of the 49-minute episode on the road with Séamus Carney, whose younger brother Michael (Mick) was murdered - his body was found on the border. Decades later, Carney is still trying to piece together what happened to his brother - ‘Sin É’ retraces Mick’s final journey.
Horgan narrates: “Séamus has told me he’s done this journey in his head a million times over, that he thinks about it all the time. When he’s actually travelled to where Michael was shot, he followed the details of a newspaper report at the time. But something extraordinary happened as we approached the border…. I realise Séamus has never actually been to the spot where Michael was killed.”
He intersperses this with lines from Carney: “Why, is there another road?” It will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up as the listener hears the anxiety grow in Carney in the following minutes as Horgan takes him to the scene of his brother’s murder. It’s superlative podcasting.
Horgan was on Second Captains last week (Episode 3,109) talking about making Stakeknife, which acts as a good accompaniment to the main series. “We’re not talking about some distant, historical case - this is real life, with real people involved,” explains Horgan. “It’s not a true crime podcast where you’re looking at something that’s over in the States. People are affected by this today.”
