| Ireland on Sunday | Date: 14th November 2004 | reporter: Ken Foxe |
BLACK WIDOW Catherine Nevin is facing a barrage of medical tests amid fears she has developed cancer.
It is also understood the country's most notorious female murderer is being treated for severe depression.
Ms Nevin was taken to the Mater Hospital this week for chest X-rays after claiming to have coughed up blood, sources said.
A prison spokesman said: 'It would be inappropriate to comment on the medical condition of a prisoner.'
Nevin, who is serving life for the murder of her husband, Tom, is expected to make a return visit to hospital next month.
A prison source said: 'Catherine has been complaining of all sorts of ailments these past few months and now she says that she coughed up blood.
'She has been telling other prisoners that she's worried she has cancer. It's not uncommon among life prisoners for them to get very depressed and then start seeking attention.'
The 53-year-old was taken from her single-occupancy room at the Dóchas female jail in the Mountjoy prison complex. The appointment at the Mater for specialist tests had been booked in advance.
Her trial in 2000 was the longest-running in Irish history and became the subject of two separate books. The Black Widow, as she came to be known, had hired a hitman to kill her husband in 1996.
Ms Nevin faked a burglary, in which she was tied up, and said that Tom had been shot dead by an intruder at their Co. Wicklow pub, Jack White's. . She even claimed that her husband was a member of the IRA, a claim that was rubbished by gardaí.
Nevin had been consoling herself with the fact that she could appeal her sentence but after that failed, she found it difficult to cope with life behind bars.
It is not the first time she has had psychological difficulties. During her trial for murder, she made a half-hearted suicide attempt by swallowing tablets and washing-up liquid. Nevin had hoped it would win sympathy with the jury but the trial judge disclosed only that she had been taken to hospital and did not say why.
Fellow prisoners said Nevin at times appeared to be 'losing her grip' while serving her life sentence.
At one stage, she became obsessed with the occult and the afterlife, doing tarot-card readings for other prisoners and even staff.
She has told one inmate that she was in touch with her husband, Tom, in 'the spirit world'. A source said: 'She would sit. down at the table and spread out the cards. Then, she'd close her eyes like at a séance and make out as if some spirits were talking to her.
'She is obsessed with this stuff and also with alternative religion. In recent months, she's shown a particular interest in the Dalai Lama, constantly asking for books about him.'
Nevin in general avoids the Irish prisoners and has taken a number of foreign inmates under her wing instead. Her two closest friends in recent times have been convicted drug smugglers Evonna Cevat and Charlene Smith.
Cevat - a former lapdancer -was jailed for five years last summer for smuggling around €500,000 worth of heroin into Ireland. Charlene Smith is one of nearly a dozen South Africans serving sentences for the importation of herbal cannabis into Dublin Airport.
Nevin has her own cell with a television in Cedar House, part of the Dóchas centre.
She has also said she is interested in writing her memoirs to help clear her name. However, prison sources said it appeared she had now abandoned that plan.
The source said: 'Nevin used to tell anybody that would listen that she was an innocent woman and that she had been set up by the guards. She's a lot quieter these days.'
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