Podcasts · History · True Crime

The Póilíní Podcast

Tinpot Productions

8 episodes

The Póilíní Podcast brings listeners on a journey through stories from the history of Irish policing, stretching over 200 years. Each week, we’ll take a story from our policeman’s notebook to paint a picture of incredible, often untold, events and through the lens of these stories, look at the lives of serving members, their families and society in Ireland and beyond.

More about the show

The podcast is presented by Garda historian Dr John Reynolds, and writer and journalist Helen Moorhouse.

Dr John Reynolds, PHD, holds 40 years’ service as a member of An Garda Síochána. During his career, he worked in surveillance, serious crime investigations, Disaster Victim Identification and frontline emergency dispatch. Since retiring from the force, he has founded the Garda Museum and served as chief coordinator for the Garda centenary. Helen Moorhouse is a writer, journalist, novelist and self-confessed ‘history nerd’.

Together, they have compiled a casebook of gripping yarns, tragic tales and forgotten people - not to be missed.

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Episodes

  1. Haunted Barracks: Ghost Stories from the Irish Policing Archive

    · 38 min · S1 E7

    In this Halloween special, we open the policeman's notebook on the unexplained, from the ghosts said to haunt the Garda College at Templemore, to a 1955 Garda Review account of a coal-shovelling spirit at Dublin…

  2. The Birdhill Baby: A Tragic Discovery Wrapped in the Evening Herald

    · 33 min · S1 E6

    In April 1941, a railway gatekeeper in Birdhill, County Tipperary, found a newborn's body wrapped in a copy of the Evening Herald. This episode explores how Gardaí handled cases of concealment of birth and infant death…

  3. The First Ban Gardaí, Yvonne Burke and the Women Who Broke the Mould

    · 39 min · S1 E5

    In 1959, twelve women joined An Garda Síochána amid marriage bars, Dáil sexism and instructions to avoid "girlish giddiness". Thirty-four years later, Garda Yvonne Burke and her colleague chased shotgun-wielding armed…

  4. The Macushla Ballroom Martyrs: From Showbands to Showdown

    · 32 min · S1 E4

    In November 1961, hundreds of rank-and-file gardaí defied their own commissioner and packed the Macushla ballroom in Dublin to protest draconian conditions and a pay deal that shut out the newest recruits. Within days,…

  5. Stringybark Creek: The Irish Policemen Who Hunted Ned Kelly

    · 41 min · S1 E3

    This episode follows the Irish threads running through Australia's most famous outlaw story, from John "Red" Kelly's transportation for stealing a pig to the four Irish-born policemen — Kennedy, Scanlan, Lonigan and…

  6. The Kidnapping of Gilbert Potter: A District Inspector's Fatal Sense of Duty

    · 31 min · S1 E2

    In April 1921, at the height of the War of Independence, RIC District Inspector Gilbert Potter was seized by the IRA after stumbling into the tail end of an ambush near Clogheen, Tipperary. Marched over the…

  7. The Carrickshock Massacre: Ten Minutes That Shook Irish Policing

    · 36 min · S1 E1

    In this episode of The Póilíní Podcast, writer Helen Moorhouse and retired Garda Sergeant and police historian Dr John Reynolds, unpack the Carrickshock Massacre: the brutal tithe system that provoked it, the newly…

  8. The Póilíní Podcast Trailer

    · 0:38 · Trailer

    The Póilíní Podcast starts 17th Sept 2026. Hosted by writer Helen Moorhouse and Garda historian Dr John Reynolds, this exciting podcast will explore stories pulled from more than 200 years of Irish policing history.…

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