Who Killed Eddie Fitzmaurice?

Let's take a look at this week's case, which is the unsolved murder of a man called Eddie Fitzmaurice.

And I gotta say, this one is so, so disturbing and incredibly sad.

On the evening of Wednesday the 6th of May, 1998, the shutters were still down outside Eddie Fitzmaurice's drapery shop in a small village straddling the Mayo-Sligo border.

They had actually been closed for several days by then.

At first it didn't cause much concern because it was the Maybank holiday weekend and some people assumed that maybe Eddie had gone away and finally taken a hard earned holiday.

But those who knew him understood just how unlikely this was.

Eddie was 83 years old and he still ran his shop by himself.

He opened it every morning, seven days a week.

and he'd usually be found either behind the counter or somewhere nearby.

His home and the shop were connected, as many of those old school kind of shops were.

His son Billy would later say that his father never took a holiday.

The shop was not just his business.

It was his routine, his social life, and in many ways, his entire world.

By Wednesday evening, a local woman had become concerned enough to ask her son to check in on Eddie.

He went around to the back of the building and found a window open.

He called Eddie's name, but there was no response.

He climbed inside the window and made his way into the home and noticed things were out of place.

All of his suspicions were confirmed when he entered a bedroom and found Eddie lying on the floor, partially clothed and bound.

It soon became clear that Eddie's home had been burgled at least a few days earlier and whoever had entered the building managed to do so without raising any alarm in the local town.

Now Balgahi was a small community, Eddie was one of the most recognisable residents and his shop stood on the main road in the middle of the village but nobody saw anything untoward going on around his house that evening.

And almost three decades later, nobody has ever been charged with Eddie Fitzmaurice's murder.

As always, all the cases on this season remain unsolved.

Throughout the episodes, I might discuss suspects, persons of interest, and different theories, but unless I explicitly state otherwise, nobody mentioned has ever been formally charged or convicted of the crime.

Any speculation will be identified and shouldn't be taken as an allegation of guilt, as all of these cases remain open investigations and unsolved.