Who Killed Patricia Curran? : How a Judge, Two Clergymen and Various Policemen Conspired to Frame a Vulnerable Man

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I had to make that boy tell me the truth about his private life and most secret thoughts,” he said. The court ruled the enforced confession that led to him being found guilty but insane of the frenzied stabbing of Patricia Curran, 19, a judge's daughter, was inadmissible, and quashed his conviction.

Former Holywell Hospital patient Iain Hay Gordon died in 2012 an innocent man - but a gravely wronged one. Belfast councillor Jeffrey Dudgeon last night expressed sadness over the death in South Africa of Father Desmond Curran, who many believe held the last possible key to the unsolved murder that continues to grip Northern Ireland after 60 years.Pretty soon both agreed that no matter how he came to be in their care Gordon was not a lunatic and they had no treatment to offer him. To this day, her murder remains officially unsolved. The suspicion is that the murderer was in fact her mother, Lady Doris Curran, who was committed to a mental institution shortly after her daughter’s death. Gordon was charged with the murder of Patricia Curran on 2 March 1953 at the Co Antrim spring assizes before Lord McDermott LCJ (lord chief justice), a close friend of the Curran family, and a jury. At this point, Malcolm Davison (a friend and the family’s solicitor) and his wife arrived. They had been told by Judge Curran that Patricia had not returned home and that the family was going out to search for her.

Mr Hay Gordon, who was stationed at a base near the Curran home, had only met the family a handful of times and swears he was nowhere near the house on the night of the murder. But two months later, in January, he was arrested and charged.Armed with that damning document the case went to trial and Lord Chief Justice McDermott found him ‘guilty but insane’.