After eleven years of waiting, Ireland holds its breath. Ruth Lawrence, extradited from South Africa, has been found guilty of assisting an offender but cleared of murder in the Lough Sheelin double killing of Anthony Keegan and Eoin O’Connor. The verdict — part empathy, part outrage — leaves Ireland divided between sympathy for a woman once controlled by fear and the families still waiting for full justice.

On a cold December night in 2000, 28-year-old Sandra Collins left her aunt’s home in Killala, County Mayo, saying she was going for chips — and vanished. Four days later, her fleece was found folded on the pier, the sausages she bought still in the pocket. No trace of her has ever been found. Twenty-five years later, her family is still searching for answers in one of Ireland’s most haunting mysteries.

What if one harmless chess move turned into one of Ireland’s most haunting crimes? In January 2014, a quiet night in Castleknock, Dublin spiraled into tragedy when researcher Tom O’Gorman was killed by his lodger Saverio Bellante, an Italian man lost in delusion. This isn’t a tale of monsters — it’s a true story about kindness, mental illness, and the moment reason broke. Through verified Irish court reports and psychiatric testimony, this article retraces the chess game that