Runaway Joe: A Murder, A Hidden Identity, A Six-Decade Manhunt by Pavel Barter

At his son’s fifth birthday party, Joseph Maloney was alleged to have poisoned his wife. While awaiting trial in the psychiatric wing of a Rochester hospital, he escaped and vanished. Years later, a charming stranger calling himself Michael O’Shea surfaced in Dublin.

Claiming roots in the west of Ireland, he married a local woman and sold his garage business to buy a grand country estate. For years he lived as a country gentleman and worked at the pinnacle of Ireland’s film industry – until a US extradition treaty exposed his true identity. Arrested in 1985, Maloney escaped justice again when his trial collapsed on a technicality.

He fled Ireland, leaving US and Irish investigators clueless as to his whereabouts – until an RT Documentary on One podcast picked up his trail decades later. Runaway Joe is the story of a man who reinvented himself with chilling ease – a portrait of a remorseless manipulator whose acts left devastation across continents.