A horrific case dubbed ‘Ireland’s most violent murder’ continues to baffle police more than 20 years on.
Irene White, 43, was murdered on April 6, 2005, at her home ‘Ice House’ in Dundalk, County Louth after she had received several death threats on the phone.
The mother-of-three was brutally stabbed 34 times in her kitchen in broad daylight and her elderly mother Maureen McBride made the grim discovery. The devastated mother died from a broken heart just months after her daughter’s murder.
During the investigation, gardaí found diaries Irene kept, including one which outlined her concerns about threats made to her life.
For eight years there was no significant breakthrough in the case, until an anonymous phone call from Australia in 2013 resulted in two people being convicted.
The tip led to the conviction of two men, Anthony Lambe and Niall Power, both of whom claimed they were acting under orders of a third man referred to as ‘mastermind’.
Former student and security worker Anthony, 43, is serving a life sentence for Irene’s murder after confessing to her killing and pleading guilty in 2018. His boss Niall, 53, who was a business partner of Irene’s estranged husband, Alan White, is also serving a life term after admitting he was the ‘middle man’ in the conspiracy, claiming he was acting on the orders of someone else who has never been convicted.
But the Gardaí have always suspected that both men were acting on the direction of a third man, who has never been brought to justice – meaning the final mystery of the case has never been solved.
Irene White (pictured), 43, was murdered 20 years ago on April 6, 2005, she was found stabbed to death in her own home after receiving death threats – but no one knows why she was killed to this day
Niall’s car was spotted on CCTV near the Ice House on the morning of the murder.
Despite giving a number of detailed statements to gardaí, he never disclosed that he had passed the murder scene almost an hour before Irene’s body was discovered.
When questioned by police about his Ford Fiesta work van with a distinctive orange stripe, spotted on the CCTV footage on the day of the murder, Niall told police that it ‘proves nothing’.
Bizarrely, Niall had planned to travel to a security conference that morning with Irene’s estranged husband Alan, but he abruptly cancelled his plans.
The case was recently discussed on the Indo Daily podcast, where host Tabitha Monahan was joined by Pat Marry, former Garda detective and co-author of the new book The Ice House Murder: The Killing of Irene White, to recall the details of the case.
Pat said: ‘The cold case unit received three anonymous calls from a lady in Australia who confided in them that a guy called Anthony Lambe had confessed to her that he had killed Irene White.
‘Why he killed her, how he killed her and everything to do with it, she was at the time living in Ireland and he used to call into her every Christmas, she thought he was having her on but then he went onto show how he killed her and she got a bit of a fright.
‘She couldn’t wait to get him out of the house and she remembers watching the lights of his car go out the driveway and she was delighted that he was gone.’
During the investigation gardaí found diaries Irene kept, including one which outlined her concerns about threats made to her life (pictured: Irene and husband Alan)
The mother-of-three had been stabbed 34 times in her kitchen at her home (pictured), known as Ice House in Dundalk, Co Louth, in broad daylight and her elderly mother Maureen McBride made the grim discovery
For eight years there was no significant breakthrough in the case, until an anonymous phone call from Australia in 2013 resulted in two people being convicted. Irene is pictured
Irene White, pictured in February 2005, just weeks before she was brutally murdered in her home
The woman told her parents about the man’s admissions a year later and her father had remarked that a lot of what was mentioned by Anthony wasn’t public knowledge.
At first her parents told her to go to the gardaí, but they later advised her not to tell anyone about the confession because of fears for her safety.
Therefore, when she did decide to ring the police eight years after the confession, the anonymous caller decided to keep her identity a secret from police.
It turned out that gardaí were very familiar with Anthony, who had previously come into the inquiry in the initial stages after his boss Niall, claimed he met him in Dundalk on the day of the murder to pay him an advance on his wages.
Niall claimed he met Anthony at Dundalk college within two hours of the murder taking place, to collect €400 in cash as a wages advance.
Gardaí later established that the cash handover, which was actually €2,000, was for the murder of Irene.
Over the course of several months, gardaí had also taken three statements from Anthony Lambe but there was never anything to indicate that he was involved in the murder.
However three days after the initial anonymous call, the woman called the detective back claiming she had some further information.
Former student and security worker Anthony Lambe, 43, is serving a life sentence for Irene’s murder after confessing to her killing and pleading guilty in 2018
She claimed that after Anthony’s initial confession he had again called at her house drunk in the late hours of the night while her parents were in bed.
He had told her that he ‘knocked on the back door of Irene White’s house’ before re-enacting to her how he had attacked the housewife.
The anonymous caller said she had asked Anthony what he had done with the weapon, to which he replied: ‘They should have found it.’
He also remarked that a ‘job had to be done’ and called the mother-of-three ‘a bad b****’.
At the time of the murder Anthony was in a lot of debt and, owing to a severe drug addiction, he saw the murder as a great opportunity to pay off his debt.
Pat explained: ‘At one stage Niall Power took Anthony up the Carindale Hotel and said Irene does classes in there and he gave him a knife and said “when she comes out you kill her”, and he threw the knife away and said “no I’m not doing this”.
‘So that was the first failed attempt but he kept at him, Anthony was told “you know the plan, and if somebody else does it you are going to be a loose end, and god knows what’s going to happen to you”.
‘He was afraid then, he thought “if I don’t do it I’m going to be killed”.
Pat revealed that when Anthony was brought into custody he was ‘extremely remorseful’ and he ‘cried his eyes out’.
Meanwhile his boss Niall Power, 53, who was a business partner of Irene’s estranged husband, Alan White, is also serving a life term after admitting he was the ‘middle man’ in the conspiracy, claiming he was acting on the orders of someone else who has never been convicted
He added: ‘When he got it off his chest, and told what he needed to tell, he got up and hugged one of the detectives and said thanks for everything.’
‘He regretted what he had done and understood the pain and hurt he had caused. Not only that but he had wrote a letter to the lady in Australia to say he was sorry for bringing her into it.’
Police were due to arrest Niall next and had planned to pick him up at his home the following day, when he presented himself at the gardaí station.
Pat recalled: ‘He said ‘I’m here I want to tell you about my part in this’, I said “are you sure you want to be here” and he said “yeah if I’m not coming here I was going to the river”.
‘He was was offered a solicitor and offered to ring anyone he wanted and he didn’t want any of that, he said he wanted to tell his part.
‘He made a statement saying yes he had got Anthony Lambe to kill Irene White, she had to be taken out and he was doing it under the instructions of someone else, that was it.’
Niall claimed in his gardaí interviews that Alan had asked him to ‘sort out’ his wife in the months before the murder.
Irene’s husband, Alan, was arrested in the early stages of the investigation for withholding information but he was released without charge as there wasn’t evidence of his involvement.
Alan attended the court for Anthony’s 2018 sentencing and afterwards claimed he was ‘shocked’ to learn someone else had ordered his wife’s murder.
He said: ‘I was shocked about all the information. I’m sure the Gardai are working on it. I was in shock. It’s quite difficult to hear what goes on in court. But still, we got the result. This day has taken a long time to come. We were waiting for this stage to come.’
Speaking in Pat’s book The Ice House Murder, which he co-wrote with Irish Independent journalist Robin Schiller, Alan said he had been ‘numb’ when he heard that his former business partner pleaded guilty to murdering his estranged wife.
He said: ‘You’re trying to gather information, much like yourselves, and you get bits and pieces.
Husband Alan White at the funeral of his wife Irene White leaving the cathedral in Dundalk
‘Some fits into what you were thinking, and some is just outrageous, and you just dismiss it, but the amount of energy it takes, trying to process this. It is head-wrecking, like.’
He also claimed it was ‘mad’ that Niall claimed that he was the mastermind behind the killing, adding: ‘I don’t know what he’s thinking, saying this.’
The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in Ireland evaluated if there was a third ‘mastermind’ in the murder but they said it would be very hard to prove.
However gardaí have always suspected that both men were acting on the direction of a third man, who has never been brought to justice.
In 2022, once the DPP’s decision had been made, investigators then informed Irene’s brother-in-law Kenneth Delcassian, who vowed to continue his wife Anne’s quest for justice after she passed away from cancer.
Speaking to the Irish Sun, Kenneth said: ‘I am absolutely vibrating with rage at this decision – there is no justice for Irene.
‘We are gobsmacked by this decision and we will certainly explore all avenues with regard to an appeal.
‘I firmly believe the evidence was in front of them and yet they have made this decision not to prosecute.’
Irene’s sister Anne (left) compiled an explosive file before her death into the killing which revealed her suspicions that the ‘mastermind’ worked for the police
Irene’s sister Anne compiled an explosive file before her death into the killing which revealed her suspicions that the ‘mastermind’ worked for the police.
In 2019, a source told the Sun on Sunday: ‘This man walks around without a care in the world and remains so brazen despite everyone suspecting him of his involvement in the murder of a completely innocent woman.
‘The suspicion that he has been working for the Gardai has been around for a very long time because he was suspected of being involved in crime but kept getting away with things.
‘It would come as no surprise to people living along the border that he was informing on other criminals because the only thing he cares about is himself and money.’
The court was previously told that Niall intends to appeal his conviction, despite his guilty plea, on the grounds that he was ‘suffering a mental breakdown’ at the time.
