Almanac of Story Tellers: Veronica Guerin

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to story telling -- in prose and in poetry, in art and in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of July 5th

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    It is the 186th day of the year, leaving 179 days remaining in 2022.

   

    On this date in 1959, the Dublin journalist Veronica Guerin was born. She was later murdered -- by Irish drug lords she had reported on -- while sitting in her car at a stoplight. 

    She told her newspaper stories with a tenacity equaled by few. She tracked down both police and the people charged with crimes, writing with integrity, honesty, and probity that impressed even the most jaded of her sources. She knowledgably researched financial records to go beyond the typical reporting.

    Her determination and refusal to be cowed led to several threats and attempts on her life. She had been shot at, shot in the leg, and threatened with the rape and murder of her young child. Yet she refused a police escort or other security, saying it interfered with her efforts to go directly to the sources of her stories.

    While she was feared and hated by the gangs selling drugs in Ireland, Guerin was beloved by her readers.

    She was killed on June 6, 1996, when she was shot multiple times by one of two men on a motorcycle who had followed her to the stoplight. A man, Brian Meehan, was convicted of her murder and is serving a life term. Courts later heard that drug lord John Gilligan had ordered her death, although Gilligan denied it.

    The murder shocked Ireland. A week after it occurred, the government passed two laws allowing it to seize money and assets obtained through criminal activity -- an issue that Guerin, a trained accountant, wrote about in her newspaper, The (Dublin) Sunday Independent.

    At least two movies have been made about her life and death. A memorial to her is at Dubh Linn Gardens in Dublin Castle. Her name is on the Freedom Forum Journalists Memorial. A scholarship is set up in her name at Dublin City University.