Veteran republican Marian Price to sue Disney over ‘Say Nothing’ murder scene

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Veteran republican Marian Price is to sue Disney+ for defamation after she was depicted killing mother-of-ten Jean McConville more than 50 years ago.

Ms Price, who is also known as Marian McGlinchey, has denied firing the shots that claimed the life of the widowed mother more than 50 years ago.

She has been accused of the murder in a new nine-part Disney+ series, Say Nothing, which focuses on the life of her sister Dolours Price.

The well-known sisters were convicted for their part in the IRA car-bomb attack on London’s Old Bailey courts in 1973.

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Marian Price (left) with her sister Dolours pictured in prison after their 1973 conviction for bombing the Old Bailey in London.
Marian Price (left) with her sister Dolours pictured in prison after their 1973 conviction for bombing the Old Bailey in London.
One man died and more than 200 people were injured in the bombing.

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Dolours Price died at her home in Dublin in January 2013 at the age of 62.

The acclaimed Disney+ series includes background details of the Old Bailey attack and the role played by Dolours in the IRA, including her time in a secret republican unit called “The Unknowns”.

Part of her work with the unit was to transport IRA prisoners across the border for interrogation.

This included Mrs McConville who was abducted, shot dead and secretly buried by the IRA in 1972.

Her remains were eventually discovered buried on a Co Louth beach in 2003.

In one dramatic scene the Price sisters are shown standing behind Ms McConville who is kneeling over a freshly dug grave.

The film depicts Marian taking a handgun from her sister who is seemingly unable to fire the fatal shot.

Marian is then seen to let off a shot before the widowed mother-of-ten falls into the grave.

The Say Nothing series is based on a book of the same name written by Patrick Radden Keefe and draws on interviews given to the Boston College project by several people including Dolours Price.

In pre-action correspondence, a solicitor acting for Marian Price, Peter Corrigan, of Phoenix Law, said his client intends to sue for defamation.

“As a result of the instant publication, our client has been publicly connected with the murder of the innocent mother, Jean McConville,” Mr Corrigan writes.

“This allegation is unfounded in all respects.

“Indeed, it is difficult to envisage a more damaging allegation in which to level at our client without any evidential foundation.”

Mr Corrigan claimed the shooting scene was created for “the purposes of theatrical elaboration.”

Mr Corrigan added that the “murder of Jean McConville is one of the most egregious murders pertaining to the Northern Ireland past, to which your publication seeks to identify and allege our client’s involvement”.

“Given the inaccuracy of the proposed publication and the innuendo that arises from same, the damage to our client’s reputation is obvious,” Mr Corrigan wrote.

Solicitor Peter Corrigan
Solicitor Peter Corrigan
Mr Corrigan added that the production has been “published on a worldwide scale”.

The solicitor on Tuesday repeated the denial of his client’s involvement in the McConville murder.

“It is illustrated by the fact the police didn’t even arrest her for this offence because there was not reasonable suspicion of her involvement in the murder of Jean McConville,” Mr Corrigan said.

While in jail in England for the Old Bailey bombing the Price sisters embarked on a well-publicised hunger strike in a bid to force the British government to repatriate them to the north.

During their fast, which lasted 200 days, they were force fed by prison authorities on 167 occasions.

Their experience, and determined stand, resulted in both having exalted status within republican circles.

Marian Price later parted company with the Provisional republican movement as the peace process evolved.

In 2011 then secretary of state Owen Patterson revoked her early release licence.

In the same year she was charged with providing a mobile telephone linked to the shooting dead of two British soldiers at Massereene barracks in Antrim in 2009 and she has also separately accused of holding a statement for a masked Real IRA man at an Easter Rising commemoration in Derry in April 2011.

In December 2013 she pleaded guilty to both offences and was later given a suspended sentence.

Earlier that year she had been released on licence by parole commissioners.

A year previous she was moved from Hydebank Prison to a Belfast hospital where she was being treated for depression, arthritis and lung problems.