Sonia ‘Sunny’ Jacobs was 76 when she died on Tuesday morning in a house fire in Connemara.
Her tragic death made headlines far beyond Galway and Ireland because Jacobs had led a truly remarkable life. It included a death row sentence for the murder of two policemen in Florida in 1976.
She spent 17 years in a US jail, five in solitary confinement, before a deal with prosecutors saw her released in 1995.
Another person died in the fire in the remote cottage, her carer a young man called Kevin Kelly from Moycullen.
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Her life – before and after that highway shooting – has been chronicled in books, a play and a film as Jacobs became a campaigner against the death penalty.
In an extraordinary twist of fate, a coincidence that could barely have been imagined, she ended up married to a man whose experience mirrored hers.
Peter Pringle had also been handed the death sentence over his part in the murder of two policemen: gardaí John Morley and Henry Byrne during a bank robbery in Co Roscommon in 1980.
After serving 15 years in jail, Pringle was acquitted of the killings in 1995 when the Court of Appeal ruled the original verdict was unsafe and unsound.
The two former prisoners met in Ireland at an Amnesty event – Jacobs was a tireless campaigner for the rest of her life – and married in 2011 before settling in Connemara.
Irish Times reporter Ronan McGreevy has been in Connemara where Jacobs found peace and sanctuary and where she died. He tells In the News her story.
Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by John Casey.
