An unpublished story I wrote for an in-class exercise about former BCFE student Ali Bracken and the publication of her first crime book, Passport to Murder. This is written in a style leaning towards broadsheet.
Passport to Murder is the former Ballyfermot College student’s first foray into publishing.
Bracken, who also works as a crime correspondent for the Sunday Tribune, focuses heavily on the human stories behind the tragedies and vividly brings to life the emotional toll each death takes on their friends and family.
One case examined in the book includes that of Swiss student Manuela Riedo, whose killer had a history of sexual violence against women.
Another example is the case of Paiche Onyemaechi, a Malawian mother-of-two who was beheaded in a ritual murder. She was working as a prostitute, and her on-the-run husband is the chief suspect.
In an extract from her book published in the Sunday Tribune, Bracken tells Onyemaechi’s story.
“For three days, she was simply an unidentified female body, cruelly decapitated and discarded. Her decomposing remains were discovered in bin bags on the banks of a river in Kilkenny in 2004, shocking and scaring the community in equal measure,” writes Bracken.
“To her two young sons, she was a loving mother. To her father, the chief justice of Malawi, she was a wayward, strong-willed child. To TJ Carroll, then one of Ireland's wealthiest pimps, she was an extremely lucrative prostitute,” Bracken goes on to say.
So where did this well-regarded author of so many crime investigations learn her trade and what sort of personality is she?
One of her former lecturers, Jan Redmond, fondly remembers teaching Bracken as a first-year HND Print Journalism student in 2000.
“She was a very good student – she was always in,” says Redmond.
“Ali looked very young and the boys where always teasing her that she looked about 14 and wouldn’t be able to buy drinks in the pub,” Redmond reminisced with a smile.
Interestingly, Bracken’s interest in crime wasn’t readily apparent during her early college days.
“She was not remotely into crime back then; she was more into mainstream news,” Redmond remembers.
Another former tutor has similar positive memories of Bracken.
Ballyfermot Media Law lecturer Jan Colwell described Bracken as a “great student” and commended her for being “very resourceful”.
“She didn’t let go of ideas and always pushed forward in class. I could tell she had potential to be a journalist” Colwell says.
Again, Bracken’s foray into crime correspondence wasn’t readily apparent to Jan Redmond at the time.
“She didn’t show much favouritism for a particular area. She did her MJH course and went on to do the degree [BA (Hons) Media Production Management].
“I don’t remember that she was [interested in crime reporting] so I was very surprised to see the book,” says Colwell.
When asked if she heard much about Bracken following her graduation, Colwell said that she remembered seeing a “byline in the Irish Times [very soon afterwards], so she went straight out to work.”
Another person impressed with Ali Bracken is Gill & Macmillan’s PR & Media advisor Teresa Daly.
When asked what Bracken was like to work with, Daly commented: “She was great and I can tell that she is highly respected by her colleagues in the media, many of whom know her through her reporting in the Tribune.”
Passport to Murder was released by Gill & Macmillan on 29 October 2010 and is available at a 20% discount from the website (www.gillmacmillan.ie).
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