Episode 491: The Murder of Bridget Cleary

Morbid

Morbid Network | Wondery

True Crime, Comedy, Exhibit C

4.5 • 95.3K Ratings

🗓️ 4 September 2023

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On March 15, 1895, thirty-five-year-old Michael Cleary murdered his wife, twenty-six-year-old Bridget Cleary in their home in Ballyvadlea, County Tipperary. While terrible, the murder was just the last act in a series of bizarre atrocities committed against Bridget, whom her husband would later claim had been taken by malevolent fairy folk and replaced with a changeling.

More shocking, however, was that the barbaric act hadn’t been committed by one man alone, but by a group of rural men, including family.

Was Bridget Cleary really murdered out of fear of fairies? Or had Michael Cleary just convinced himself of as much in order to commit murder?

References

Bourke, Angela. 1999. The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story. London, UK: Pimlico.

Freeman's Journal. 1895. "Strange death near Clonmel." Freeman's Journal, March 25.

Irish Times. 1999. "Burning Bridget." Irish Times, August 7: B24.

n.a. 1917. The Tipperary Witch Case. Toronto, ON: McGill University.

New York Times. 1895. "A with burner sentenced." New York Times, July 6: 5.

—. 1895. "Not witches, but fairies." New York Times, April 22: 4.

Ruxton, Dean. 2016. "The story of the last 'witch' bruned alive in Ireland." Irish Times, November 24.

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Transcript

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0:31.9	favorite podcasts on the go.
0:57.5	I'm not morose, but it was also like, I don't know, it was kind of happy at the same time.
1:06.5	I'm pretty neutral right now.
1:09.0	All right.
1:10.0	So maybe it was like half happy, half morose and that makes a neutral.
1:13.5	Yeah.
1:14.5	Like I went into this, I think like in a pretty happy mood and then I looked back over
1:18.5	this case and I said, oh, it's going to be a rough one.
1:22.1	Oh, yeah.
1:23.1	That'll happen on this show called morbid.
1:24.9	Yeah.
1:25.9	This one's a little different today, though.
1:28.8	Okay.
1:29.8	So I'm going, this is shocking and very out of character of me, but we're going back to
1:33.9	the 1800s.
1:35.0	That's not different.
	...

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