Serial Killer Documentary - The Newly Wed Killer

0:05 In March 2001, the emergency services received a call that 27-year-old Mary Goff had fallen down the stairs and was no longer breathing.

0:16 As senior investigators, you deal with many different and difficult cases, but this is one of the most shocking and difficult cases that I've ever been involved in.

0:25 Mary's husband Colin Whelan made the call, but this was no tragic accident. Whelan had murdered Mary for her life insurance payout.

0:35 Some people marry for money. Colin Whelan married for money, but to get the money he had to kill his wife.

0:41 As evidence piled up against Whelan, he decided to evade justice by staging his own suicide and going on the run.

0:49 I saw that he hadn't signed on for three days and that's a breach of his bail. I said, God, where has he gone now?

0:56 I think everybody was satisfied that there's no way Colin had taken his own life. Whatever he had done, he had absconded to where we didn't know.

1:04 As the police search unearthed concerning details from his past, Colin Whelan proved himself to be one of the world's most evil killers. On 28th February 2001, Colin Whelan arrived home from his computing job in the city of Dublin, Ireland, at around 6pm. He enjoyed a meal made by his wife, Mary Gough. They went out to a healthcare appointment together before returning home around 9.30pm.

1:56 Tells us that he went for a shower and then that subsequently Mary went for a shower.

2:01 Just after midnight, Colin Whelan made a frantic call to the emergency services, saying Mary had had a tragic accident.

2:10 He said in his statement that, yes, I was in the house with Mary and I heard her thud, thud, thud, and I found her at the bottom of the stairs and I knew she'd fallen from the top of the stairs and that was it.

2:22 As detectives pieced together what had happened, the truth behind the events of that night started to become clear.

2:29 First of all, everybody thought it was an accident. She fell down the stairs, you know, and that was the consensus. But, you know, within days, you know, it became clear that it was more of.

2:39 This than meets the eye.

2:41 Colin Whelan had set out to murder Mary from months prior to the murders.

2:50 This killer's story begins in County Meath in Ireland. Born on the 14th of July 1971, Colin Whelan was the youngest of five children.

3:03 Colin Whelan was born in a small town called Gormanstown in County Meath, just a little north of Dublin. Middle-class family, one of five.

3:14 His parents, they're from a very decent background, was educated locally and then went to Dundalk to do computer studies.

3:23 I actually spoke to a classmate who sat beside him in the class and he described him as just an ordinary guy, a bit aloof, a bit aloof and a bit detached. But apart from that, he was just an ordinary kid.

3:37 Colin Whelan embarked on a career in the newly emerging field of computer technology.

3:44 Computers were new and it was lucrative work to get into, so he got a job at a Dublin-based financial institution and he was earning, you know, good money. Finance wasn't a problem in his life.

3:57 In 1993, Whelan was 22 years old and earning a decent wage when he met Mary Goff, a 19-year-old barmaid working in his local pub.

4:09 Mary was an only daughter. She was the apple of her brother's and her family's eye.

4:15 Mary was described as a lovable girl, one of the gang, you know. She just wanted to be liked and she was happy, very happy woman.

4:24 All Mary wanted was a family, a husband, a home, to call her own, to live a life. And she was an absolute peach of a woman. Honest, dedicated, you know, family orientated, really, really good person. Nice circle of friends.

4:40 Mary and Colin Whelan got to know each other fairly well during their encounters at the pub.

4:46 They became very close and they were in a relationship pretty quickly and things seemed to be going quite well. Anyone that knew them said they were a perfect couple.

4:59 Two years after the couple met, Colin Whelan abruptly ended the relationship with Mary.

5:06 Mary came home in floods of tears that Colin had broken up without any reason, without any explanation. So she was very upset. She's horrified.

5:17 This is the first time she's really been in love. And yet he treats her as though she's irrelevant. She doesn't know what to do.

5:26 Suddenly, after six months apart, Whelan appeared back on the scene, wanting to rekindle the romance. He bought his grandfather's house in Balbriggan, a seaside town on the east coast of Ireland, and Mary moved in with him.

5:43 When Whelan and Mary got back together, that was because he had planned that. She was still quite invested in him as a partner, and she was probably really pleased that they got back together, but his intentions were not that she should be happy.

6:01 To the outside world, Whelan appeared to be Mr. Perfect, but in truth, he was actually planning Mary's demise. She was besotted with him by this point and trusted him completely.

6:14 I think it would be fair to say that Whelan took advantage of that and made it abundantly clear that he could pretty much decide her fate or her future. This is not a man deeply in love or head over heels. This is a man who's clearly planning in.

6:35 A very careful way.

6:40 Colin Whelan wanted Mary's family to see what a gentleman she was with, putting on big displays of generosity for their benefit.

6:49 We're all out having a meal, like family get together, all this stuff. And Colin got up and paid himself for the whole lot, like, you know, and wanted to be shown as the Mr. Nice Guy. Also, that Christmas of 2000, he had bought Mary a lot of presents and left them under the tree and would not let her wrap them up or anything. They were under the tree.

7:10 So when the families came in and they'd see all the presents under the tree, So they were all, oh, Jesus, this is a great guy, like, you know. But it was pure, his mind was that, I'm Sean, I'm a perfect husband, I'm a good guy.

7:24 He was what we would call love-bombing her, you know, as flowers and presents and you're wonderful and I love you, all made up. It's all a huge act to make sure that he won that person over, and more than won them over, had complete control of them, complete domination, not only of what they did, but of their emotions and the way that they would respond to him. And that was almost like a game to somebody like Colin Whelan.

7:58 Colin and Mary were engaged to be married, and the wedding day in September 2000 was another excuse for a lavish performance from Whelan.

8:11 They had a big wedding, you know, a typical Irish wedding, you know, huge. And people have seen the video afterwards and noticed there's something amiss, you know. It's all fun and what Mary seems to be, you know, if not unhappy, she seems to be distant. You know, you can see she's not herself. There was something just not right, although this was supposed to be the happiest day.

8:34 Of her life.

8:36 While Mary spent the day distant and distracted, her new husband, Whelan, didn't seem to notice or care as he was too busy enjoying himself.

8:46 Colin seems to be loving the limelight, taking, you know, the dominant position, you know, in pictures, you know, greeting people and stuff like that. And Mary just sitting there in the background or standing there in the background.

8:59 Did Mary sense that something was wrong at that point? Did she realise that she was rendering herself into the hands of a man who was probably disinterested in her?

9:13 When I see it now, I can see, you know, a very devious man. He's actually, when he looks into his wife's eyes, you know, he's actually calculating. He knows he's going to kill her.

9:25 Colin Whelan had rekindled his relationship with Mary Gough and had gone on to marry her. From the outside, their marriage seemed like that of any other couple. Whelan liked to lavish his wife with gifts and attention, showing the world he was the perfect husband. But it wasn't long until people noticed that the honeymoon was well and truly over.

9:50 Following the wedding in September 2000, the family saw, I suppose, a change in Mary and a change in the circumstances, where she'd lost confidence.

10:05 Mary's mother and Mary are the best of friends. Mary's mother used to go there and stay there the odd night, but when she got married, that stopped. Mary's communication with her mother was virtually non-existent. and Mary's mother was very upset over this.

10:23 Mary had always taken pride in her appearance, but this had started to deteriorate not long after the wedding, a change that was noticed by Mary's mum, Marie.

10:39 Her clothes were becoming quite shabby, her nails weren't painted, because Mary was very proud of her nails and getting her nails done and that, and she knew that there was something wrong. And any time she met Mary or Mary had called over, she discovered that she wasn't wearing the perfume she used to wear. I said, oh, Colin doesn't like that perfume. And he, you know, so he was controlling her.

11:01 Mary was showing all the classic signs of somebody who's suffering domestic abuse and coercive control. She had become quieter. She was dressing differently. She'd become isolated from her friends and her family. She was not happy. And this absolutely demonstrates that what Mary was going through was probably absolutely horrendous.

11:25 He was, in effect, bringing her down, like he was abusing her mentally, like, you know, because he knew what, in his mind, what he was going to do with her, like, you know.

11:35 On February the 28th, 2001, Whelan and Mary seemed to be going about their business.

11:42 Like any normal day.

11:44 Whelan returned home from work and they ate dinner. They went to a homeopathy appointment and then returned home together.

11:52 We're happy again that they arrived home around 9.30. Colin tells us that he went for a shower and then that subsequently Mary went for a shower.

12:02 But as the evening progressed, things took a shocking turn in the Whelan household.

12:09 Shortly after midnight on March the 1st, 2001, he calls the police and the fire brigade and says that his wife, Mary, has had a dreadful fall down the stairs in their house in Balbriggan.

12:24 And he found Mary in a prone position at the bottom of the stairs. She was bleeding heavily from the face and mouth and that he wanted the emergency service to come to the house immediately.

12:35 The call operator kept Whelan on the line and talked him through how to perform CPR on Mary. Whelan said he was following these instructions, but there was no improvement. When the emergency response team arrived at the scene, they were confused by the condition Mary was in.

12:54 When they arrived, they had taken Mary then from the bottom of the stairs into the sitting room and they tried to resuscitate her and they gave her electric shocks and all that to resuscitate her. And they even commented that they said she was in acetol, and that means that she was flatlined. There was no sign of any heart activity at all, and they would always expect someone that would have died a short period earlier that there would be some activity on the machine that they had, and there wasn't, and they found that strange, and they found as well that she was very cold.

13:30 Mary was taken to hospital in a last attempt at saving her life.

13:35 Although they couldn't get a pulse on Mary... They decided to bring her as quick as they possibly could to Beaumont Hospital and they had a trauma team waiting for her in there. A number of the nurses interacted with Mary and to see if they could save her life.

13:52 Despite the intense efforts of the medical team to revive Mary, there was nothing they could do.

13:58 At 1.25 a.m.

13:59 On March the 1st, 2001, Mary Goff was pronounced dead. the medical team turned their attention to her grieving husband to check on his welfare.

14:14 And a fabulous nurse who was working there on the night was talking to Colin Whelan and consoling him and asking if he was all right. And he was leaning over and his shirt buttons were open down and she could look in and she saw scratch marks.

14:29 The fresh marks made the nurse suspicious and she immediately alerted the police. A superintendent arrived at the hospital to speak to Whelan and suggested that he undergo a medical check. Unaware of the scratches on his body, Whelan agreed to the examination.

14:48 He took off his shirt and there were scratch marks, evident scratch marks on his body and his chest. And he was asked about, and this is where he felt foul as well, he was asked, the scratches and he didn't realise the scratches and he was just, oh, she must have scraped out of me when she was flailed out of me, like, you know. So he was telling the CPR man she's dead, like, you know, there's no breathing, there's nothing. And here he's now saying, oh, she grasped out of me, like, you know. So it just wasn't all fitting together. It was a lot of questions there that needed to be answered.

15:22 Less than 24 hours after the death, a post-mortem was conducted on Mary's body.

15:28 Mary Cassidy had done a post-mortem. She came out to me and she says, well, the bad news is that you have a murder on your hands. Wow, I said, I wasn't expecting that at all. She said, look, she was dragged down the stairs because there's burn marks on her buttocks and her injuries are not consistent with a fall down the stairs.

15:51 It was clear that Mary had been moved to the bottom of the stairs rather than falling down them. And further results from the post-mortem showed that she hadn't died from a fall. The pathologist told Pat Mary of her findings.

16:06 This girl has been strangled by way of ligature. I says, wow, I said, how sure are you? And she says, I'm 110% sure this girl was strangled.

16:15 It was the ligature marks around the neck. with some damage to the larynx, there was swelling of the tongue, and there was evidence of petechiae, which are small hemorrhaging in the skin, under the skin, so they're evident around the lips and the forehead, behind your ears, and in your nostrils even. Obviously, we had a murder at that stage, and that obviously brought Colin to the level of the threshold of being a suspect for the murder of his wife, Mary.

16:48 Whelan's actions and behaviors at the time were being scrutinized. Could the police gain any vital evidence at this early stage to prove that Whelan was responsible for his wife's death?

17:01 Very early, we could see cracks in his demeanor. He was telling people different versions of what happened, and we learned that he was cunning, he was conniving, he was cold-blooded, he was greedy. From an early stage, it was evident that there was a number of red flags that had come to our attention.

17:18 Police suspected Whelan of murder, but needed hard evidence of his involvement. There was still a long way to go with the investigation. One of the first lines of inquiry for Detective Pat Marry was to go back to the emergency call from the night in question.

17:38 If Colin was talking on the phone and he was given CPR like he was told to do and this, that and the other, you would imagine there'd be some blood on his hands that would be on the phone of Mary's and I took the phone, I seized the phone and we had it technically examined in the forensic lab and they told me there was no blood, no saliva, nothing on the phone whatsoever. So it shows he'd done nothing.

18:02 He didn't give two flutes about her.

18:05 The lies were starting to become apparent from an early stage. Whelan's initial account of the evening was revisited.

18:12 He is saying it was only himself and Mary that were in the house and she ends up being strangled as per the pathologist. So, obviously, the finger of suspicion was somewhat pointing towards Colin Whelan. Initially, that there's a lot of questions here that have to be asked and answered.

18:32 The post-mortem showed that Mary was strangled and Whelan's own admissions made him the prime suspect. Forensic teams moved in to examine the property.

18:42 The evidence was quite clear. blatant in that. In the bedroom of the house we found blood staining on the saddle board and on the wall between the ensuite and the door into the bedroom. When someone has been strangled, they emit blood from their nose in a mist format that can't really be seen by the naked eye. But this spray was found on the wallpaper between the door to the bedroom and the en suite. So we knew that the struggle or she was strangled in that location between those two doors.

19:20 The forensic search of the property continued to provide results for the investigation team.

19:26 The forensic team also discovered Colin Whelan's dressing gown and on that dressing gown there was what you tie your robe with and that was stretched and taught in the middle so we suspected that that was the actual murder weapon and on analysis of that particular item we did discover Mary Goff's DNA and there was saliva on it and all of that so we knew that that was the murder weapon.

19:56 All of the evidence now pointed to exactly how Mary Goff had been murdered by Colin Whelan. But from the outside, the couple had seemed to live a normal, happy life. So what was the motive for such an horrific attack? Police made the decision to examine Whelan's computer hard drives for more information.

20:18 Incidentally, he's wiped his own computer, but the one at his office has kept a record of his communications.

20:26 So every keystroke that was ever made in the building was recorded.

20:31 And everything Colin Whelan did was on those tapes.

20:35 With a vast amount of historical records to sift through, police needed to find a way to analyse the data fast.

20:43 We could see where Colin Whelan was looking up on the internet sites of strangulation, asphyxiation, choking, smothering, you know, all of these type of sites.

20:55 He had been trawling the internet for ways, you know, to kill people. without leaving any trace.

21:03 On the 2nd of January, Whelan had looked up asphyxiation, choking, smothering, and blocking the air supply. On the 29th of January, he searched the term death by asphyxiation. On the 19th of February, he researched causes of instant death. And on the following day, Whelan looked into how a lack of oxygen can cause death.

21:28 What was going through this man's mind? We all know what was going through his mind now, that he was pure evil.

21:35 Whelan was off the scale, and he'd been planning this for a very long time.

21:39 Further computer history showed that Whelan had been looking to a notorious serial killer for inspiration.

21:47 We discovered that he had been researching a guy by the name of Henry Lewis Wallace, who had murdered nine women in North Carolina, and he was convicted. of the murder of them all after strangling them. And he used a towel to put around their neck. And whatever ligature he had, he would then strangle them. And that would not leave a mark on their neck. And he'd use the towel then to mop up any blood or that type of thing. And when Mary's body was found at the bottom of the stairs, the ambulance men found a towel at the bottom of the stairs in a duvet which she had been wrapped in.

22:30 The Irish police are certainly in even less doubt now that Whelan is actually guilty. They've got the bloodstains on the wallpaper, they've got the strange position at the bottom of the stairs, they've got the fact she was cold when she came downstairs. Every single finger seems to be pointing at Colin Whelan as the killer of his wife Mary.

22:52 The likelihood that Colin Whelan murdered his wife was quite evident. Now, the next question is, well, why did he do this?

22:59 Investigators were confident that Colin Whelan was responsible for his wife's death, but before arresting him, they needed to be 100% sure. While Mary's family grieved, the search for evidence continued, and Colin Whelan remained a free man, a killer roaming the streets of Balbriggan.

23:19 This was a unique case because openly and to the public, Colin Whelan and Mary Goff were in a loving relationship, had got married and seemed to have an ideal life. But behind the scenes, things were different.

23:33 On the 28th of February, the day he probably killed her, he buys her an expensive present and makes a great show of telling the shop assistant that it's for his wife, who is convinced that he's a really nice man.

23:47 But this pretense was all part... of his sickening act.

23:51 Somebody like Colin Whelan is not capable of feeling love in the way that we know it. He's not capable of that. So if we think, did he really love Mary? The answer would have to be no. Not only did he not love her, he didn't really have any care for her. And this isn't because Mary wasn't lovable. This is because someone like Colin Whelan can't love anybody.

24:20 Further analysis of Whelan's computer provided evidence that he wasn't the dedicated husband that he wanted people to believe he was.

24:29 This guy had engaged with a cyber affair with a lady in Wales to such an extent that that lady in Wales was in love with Colin Whelan, even though she had never met him in any physical format, just pictures and talk and greeting cards and that type of stuff. She told him where she was and the mother had died and she was lonely and she was vulnerable. You can understand her position, she was grieving. And he took advantage of that. And that was as simple as that and played her along the whole way. He spoke to her at lunchtime the day of the murder, spoke to her for half an hour. He then lifted the phone and spoke to his wife, and then he went straight onto his computer and looked up a sight on strangulation.

25:19 You know, it's mind-boggling, really, you know, but it is evil. It is, like, you know, his thought process.

25:26 The police needed to find out more about this cyber affair.

25:32 On the 9th of March, not long after Mary's death, the Irish police visit the lover in Wales and discover the extent of the lies that Whelan has told her.

25:44 Just want to talk to you, said, his wife died.

25:45 I know, she said.

25:46 And I was, right, he told me she died in an accident, like a road traffic accident, like, you know, and that he was widowed, like, you know, he was, you know. I said, no, no, no, his wife died on the 28th, I said, you know, and she was murdered. And with that, she collapsed on the ground.

26:05 Uncaring Whelan had targeted this woman at her most vulnerable, promising her a perfect future together.

26:16 For an internet relationship, it was quite intimate.

26:19 He sent, you know, love letters and, you know, little emojis and all sorts of things over to her. She actually believed that this guy was going to come over and live with her.

26:30 And that's what he said.

26:30 I mean, he.

26:31 He was so manipulative, he convinced her.

26:34 He would use anything in his power to get what he wanted. And he seemed to want the attention of women, especially. Always got to be this larger-than-life, perfect representation of himself to make sure that he absolutely wins over and dominates that other person.

26:56 Conor Whelan's online lover in Wales, you know, really believed she had met the man of her dreams.

27:02 But she could have met the man of her nightmares.

27:07 The cyber affair pointed towards a possible motive. Perhaps Whelan had been wanting to move on from Mary to another woman, but police still weren't convinced that this murder was entirely motivated by a desire to be with a new partner. And these suspicions seemed to be confirmed when they discovered yet more incriminating evidence at the couple's home while Colin Whelan was staying with his parents.

27:33 The police, early on, they couldn't find a motive for the killing. But when they searched the house, after the forensics were done, and they went to search the house, they found an insurance policy taken out on both Colin Whelan and Mary Goff. Initially, it was for £ 200, 000.

27:47 And we're satisfied, without Mary's knowledge, that he increased that to £ 400, 000 on the 1st of June 2000. So it was about seven or eight months before he murdered Mary.

28:00 He had been in a relationship with her, had dumped her, discarded her, wasn't really worried about her as a person, but seemed to start formulating this plot in his head that he wanted to make money.

28:17 Although not unusual for couples to take out insurance policies to help the other in the case of death, this particular one didn't make logical sense.

28:30 The policy itself was kind of an obsolete policy because after 10 years, there was no cash in value to it. So it was just like in the prime of their lives. So between 30 and 40, you know, normally people wouldn't die suddenly.

28:47 It was taken out, you know, almost on the premise that one of them would die and the survivor would get € 400, 000. So this was absolutely the reason why Colin Whelan killed Mary Goff.

28:59 At that stage of his life, Whelan had a decent job. He wasn't struggling financially. His plans seemed to be entirely motivated by greed.

29:11 We could see from his Internet history, he was looking up expensive holidays, expensive cars, you know, holidays around the world, all of this type of stuff. So he was planning what he was going to do with his money when he got it.

29:24 He was an honest man. decent young woman going about her life and her husband is happy to kill her just for financial gain.

29:38 For the police, the investigation was coming to a conclusion. They had hard evidence that this was a premeditated killing and had established a motive for the murder. On Tuesday, the 10th of April, 2001, at 8 a.m., detectives went to Whelan's parents' home to make the arrest.

29:59 He was arrested for the murder of his wife. He made no comment. He had to be cautioned. And he was immediately brought to Bad Breakin' Garda station. We wanted to make sure that we had all our ducks in a row, all our evidence was available, and we were able to put it to him, particularly the computer evidence.

30:14 That was very, very significant. Most of the answers he said, no comment. He denied looking up these sites, can't remember the stat and the other, you know. But it was quite evident we had him nailed at that stage.

30:30 Despite the evidence stacked against him, Colin Whelan refused to admit what he'd done. For the Director of Public Prosecutions to authorise a charge, there needs to be a strong case file.

30:44 In this case, there was more than sufficient evidence available, so Colin Whelan was charged with the murder of Mary Gough.

30:52 And he was kept in custody overnight to appear in court the next morning. He was thought to be a bit of a heave. And there was an awful lot of people there. So he was taking them out of the van and people were trying to get a scalp at him and they were calling him all types of names.

31:07 A trial date was set for October 2003. Colin Whelan was to return to court then to have his case heard.

31:18 Everybody's presumed innocent until proven guilty. So he went to the High Court and with a number of conditions, he was given bail.

31:27 Nobody was really surprised that he got bail because that's the way it is in Ireland, you know, the court case could be, you know, maybe.

31:32 Two years down the line.

31:34 And if you're not deemed, you know, a flight risk or you won't interfere with witnesses, you know, you usually do get bail. So it wasn't surprising, you know, that he got bail.

31:43 We did make conditions that there had to be an independent insurer with a certain amount of money and that he sign on at Balbrig and Garda station on a daily basis.

31:53 In March 2003, after following the rules and signing on each day as required for two years, Whelan suddenly went missing and failed to turn up at a police station. Detectives had no idea where to find him. He had seemingly vanished into thin air.

32:14 We learned from the local police that he hadn't signed on a particular day and we thought it could have happened, he could have been sick, but when the second day arrived, we knew there was a problem. And I spoke to some of my own team to say, listen, Colin Wheeler hasn't signed on. I wonder, has he absconded?

32:32 I saw that he hadn't signed on for three days and that's a breach of his bail. And I said, God, where has he gone now, like, you know?

32:41 The race was on to find the suspected murderer.

32:45 On the 12th of March, 2003, he drives to Cliffs, not far from Dublin, parks his car, and disappears.

32:56 We initially then learned that his car was found on the hill of Hoth.

33:01 The abandoned car was left at Hoth Cliffs, a well-known suicide spot, and evidence found in Whelan's car certainly looked as if the driver had the intention to end his life.

33:14 There was items in his car, particularly a bottle of alcohol. The keys were left in the car. And from initial viewing of the car, one could suspect that Colin Whelan could have maybe committed suicide and jumped into the Irish Sea at the bottom of the cliffs.

33:32 But police knew Whelan well by this point and weren't convinced by this suggestion.

33:39 I think everybody was satisfied that there's no way Colin had taken his own life. We were happy that whatever he had done, he had absconded to where we didn't know.

33:49 If Colin Whelan was in Singapore, or if he was in Colombia, or he was in, let's say, the North Pole, I would get him because I would not lie until I got him.

34:04 After being charged with the murder of his wife, Whelan had set his plan in motion. He used another person's identity without them knowing and applied for a passport in their name.

34:16 Like something from a spy novel, he went to extreme lengths to find a new identity.

34:22 And he used that passport with his picture, with a different identity, and could travel all over the world, really.

34:28 He's got away with it.

34:30 He's disappeared.

34:32 Nobody knows where he's gone.

34:36 Knowing that Whelan hadn't committed suicide, the police started to look for the wanted man. They knew Whelan had gone on the run, but they.

34:45 Didn't know where.

34:47 Detectives decided to search the main routes out of Dublin.

34:52 At that time, there was no CCTV at the train station. We seized all the CCTV in Dublin Airport and we spent hours upon hours, days, looking at the CCTV.

35:02 As part of their investigation, the police had looked into Whelan's background and past relationships.

35:10 Was there other people in his life? Had he acted like this previously? Had he been violent towards any other girlfriends or friends for that matter?

35:18 What they found was disturbing.

35:21 We did come across girls that had relationships with Colin Whelan. Some of them only had time limits, small relationships with him, but they all said the same. He was overpowering. He was, like, buying them presents, trying to win them over.

35:37 Police were building up a clear picture of a man who was a danger to women. With the concern that more women could be at risk of this predator, even more pressure was on to find Colin Whelan.

35:55 He was on the run for approximately 18 months. He went to Belfast and got out. flight from Belfast to Barcelona, and then got a boat from Barcelona out to Mallorca, like.

36:06 Whelan had got himself a job working behind a bar in the upmarket resort of Puerto Portals on the island. In a stroke of luck for the police, Whelan was spotted by somebody that he'd been at school with.

36:22 The person seemed as a barman, and they said it bore a great likeness to Colin Whelan.

36:30 If Colin Whelan had had an iota of remorse, or indeed an iota of the intelligence he pretended to have, he most certainly wouldn't have been so silly as to make himself abundantly obvious to Irish tourists.

36:47 It's inconceivable.

36:50 And yet that's what he did, and that was to prove his downfall.

36:53 Not long after the first sighting, the police were alerted to a second.

36:59 The couple who were in Spain and befriended an individual Irish man in a pub, who was working in a pub, by the name of Keane Sweeney.

37:08 And she had a good chat with him and he said, oh yeah, I'm from Galway. God, I'd love to buy an Irish rugby jersey. And she says, sure, look, give me your email address and your address and I'll get one and I'll post it out to you.

37:21 Unbeknown to the fugitive, the couple had realized that Kian Sweeney was in fact Whelan. Around the same time, an Irish newspaper was running a fresh appeal to try and find Whelan, which the couple had seen.

37:36 Thankfully, they had taken up one of the local papers and saw the picture of Kian Sweeney, but actually just Colin Whelan.

37:44 This was the same man that the woman had been talking to in the bar.

37:50 And she got afraid. She said, oh, my God, that's... You know? So she got in contact with the incident room. I was contacted. I spoke with her. She showed me the paper. That's Colin Whelan. He goes by the name of Kian Sweeney.

38:03 Police back in Ireland now had enough to suspect that Kian Sweeney was, in fact, their wanted man. Spanish police were sent to the bar in Puerto Portals to make the arrest.

38:17 They did go and arrest him. And Colin protested that they had the wrong person, that he wasn't Colin Whelan. But they had the set of fingerprints and they took the set of fingerprints off him over there and they matched. And then he put his hands up and he said, yeah, I'm Colin Whelan.

38:32 It was great relief for Mary's family because they never thought he was dead. Mary's family were absolutely delighted because now they were going to get justice.

38:42 Colin Whelan was to stand trial on the 11th of April 2005, four years after the murder of.

38:49 Of his wife. We initially viewed that that trial could maybe take four, five, six weeks, maybe. So it's a long, you know, prolonged trial, particularly for a murderer. So we did a lot of work.

39:05 It was initially thought that Colin would brazen it out, you know, being the character he was and, you know, plead not guilty in court. On the day of his trial, he let it be known fairly quickly that, you know, he was going to plead guilty. The reason for that was because he, you know, he knew he had no chance.

39:23 The evidence he gave was overwhelming. He was going to be convicted. And rather than have the evidence come out, he somehow thought the despicable character he was, you know, maybe it would be hidden.

39:34 On April the 13th, 2005, at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin, Colin Whelan was sentenced to life imprisonment.

39:43 The judge said, sentencing Whelan, that this was the most calculated... and callous killing he'd ever encountered in his time in court. I think the judge is absolutely right, both callous and calculated. There is no sign whatever of any remorse for Mary's brutal killing, no explanation, no nothing to indicate that Whelan is anything but proud of having committed this dreadful crime.

40:15 It is breathtaking, his arrogance.

40:20 As senior investigators, you deal with many different and difficult cases. But this is one of the most shocking and difficult cases that I've ever been involved in.

40:30 Colin Whelan was psychopathic. He was calculating, devious and evil.

40:38 He planned over a period of time, right, you, I'm targeting you and I'm going to kill you to get the money. Murder doesn't get any worse than that. This was an unusual case. It's probably one of the most cold-blooded cases I've ever seen.

40:56 After serving over 18 years of his life sentence, Colin Whelan is allowed to apply for parole regularly. If granted, he would be moved to an open prison before being released back into society.

41:13 Colin Whelan is probably the most manipulative man I've ever come across. I believe a man who can kill, you know, his new bride for money, you know, it's really capable of anything.

41:23 He could do anything.

41:26 Colin Whelan married Mary Gough and immediately started a pattern of domestic abuse towards her, taking away her confidence and isolating her from friends and family. Whelan used and abused Mary before murdering her purely for financial gain. He was motivated by greed and his own sense of entitlement. Refusing to face justice for what he'd done, Whelan faked his own death and fled the country. Colin Whelan has shown no remorse for his horrific actions and will be remembered as one of the world's most evil killers.