Man charged with pensioner’s murder

More than 28 years after her violent death, a man is due to appear in court in Killkenny this morning charged with the murder of pensioner Ann Nancy Smyth.

The partly burned body of the 79-year-old was discovered in her small cottage on Wolf Tone Street in Kilkenny on September 1987 by firemen, who found her pet dog dead beside her.

On the night she was murdered the recently widowed woman, who was only just over 4ft in height, had been socialising in O’Gorman’s Pub near her home.