A woman who spent five years on death row in the United States is one of the victims of the fire in Connemara which killed two people.
Sonia “Sunny” Jacobs, who was aged in her 70s, spent almost 17 years in a Florida prison over the murder of two police officers.
She was named locally in Connemara as a victim of the fire, alongside Kevin Kelly, a man aged in his 30s who knew Ms Jacobs.
Ms Jacobs was in a car with her partner Jesse Tafero and her two children, aged 9 years and 10 months, when she became caught up in a fatal shooting incident at an Interstate 95 rest stop in 1976.
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Ms Jacobs and Tafero were sentenced to death, while a third man, Walter Rhodes, who was in the back seat of the car, later confessed to the murder.
Tafero was executed in 1990. Ms Jacobs was put in solidarity confinement for five years in a tiny cell. She coped by practising yoga.
In 1992, an appeals court overturned her 1976 murder conviction and ordered a new trial. She entered into a deal known as the Alford Plea in which Ms Jacobs did not admit guilt, but admitted that the state could and would prove certain incriminating facts against her at trial, according to the journalist and author Ellen McGarrahan whose book about the case, Two Truths and a Lie, was published in 2021.
Ms Jacobs was released from jail in 1992. Her parents, who had been bringing up her two children, were killed in a plane crash while she was in jail.
On a visit to Ireland in 1998, while she was campaigning at an Amnesty International event for the abolition of the death penalty, she met Irishman Peter Pringle.
He had been sentenced to death in Ireland for the murder of gardaí John Morley and Henry Byrne during a bank robbery in Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon, in July 1980. His death sentence, along with that of two other men, was commuted to 40 years in jail.
Mr Pringle was acquitted of the killing at the Court of Appeal in 1995 after the court ruled the original verdict was unsafe and unsound.
The couple married in 2012 and they moved to Connemara. Ms Jacobs once told The Irish Times: “The stone in the west of Ireland makes me feel grounded; it anchors me.” Mr Pringle died in 2023.
In 2008, Ms Jacobs published the bestselling book Stolen Time about her period in jail.
Tuesday’s fire broke out at a cottage near Casla, a village between Indreabhán and An Cheathrú Rua, at about 6am.
Galway County Council chief fire officer Gerry O’Malley said they were alerted to the fire at 6.19am and responded with a crew from Carraroe and Galway city. A water tanker was also mobilised from Carraroe.
A breathing apparatus team entered the building and found Ms Jacobs in the bedroom and brought her out. They then re-entered the building and found Mr Kelly inside.
They removed him and commenced medical first aid until the National Ambulance Service personnel came to assist. Both were pronounced dead at the scene.
Gardaí said a forensic examination of the cottage, of which the two deceased are believed to have been the only occupants, is being carried out.
The bodies were taken to University Hospital Galway mortuary for postmortems and the coroner was notified.
“The results of the postmortems, along with the findings of the technical examination, will determine the course of the Garda investigation,” the Garda statement added.
Three units of the County Galway Fire Service and fire personnel from Galway city attended the scene.
An Garda Síochána is appealing to anyone with information about the incident to contact Clifden Garda station on 095 22500, the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111 or any Garda station.
Speaking to Irish Times journalist Rosita Boland in 2006, Ms Jacobs said she was determined not to become “bitter” after her wrongful conviction. When she was finally released, she said she decided not to look back.
“It was very important, that choice I made to heal, rather than to spend the gift of a new life that I had looking backwards at the wrongs that were done to me. And I was able to share that with my children. It meant I am leaving them a legacy of hope and strength rather than defeat and pain.”
She said at the time: “I pray for peace every day, especially for the children. You see, it’s the children who suffer most from injustice everywhere. My children suffered the most. I didn’t suffer the most, my children did. I had 24-hour-a-day security. My meals were cooked for me. My bed was given at night. But when my parents died, the world was a really cruel place for my children.”
She added: “Being in prison doesn’t prepare you for a lot in the outside world ... So in some ways I had huge disadvantages. But in other ways, I had huge advantages because I knew what was really important in life ... Love. Peace. Kindness. Being true to yourself.”
In an interview in The Guardian in 2013, Mr Pringle said in relation to his wife; “Since I’d been released, I’d never met anyone else who’d been through this kind of trauma. I was deeply touched by her story and I just had to talk to her. There was this spiritual connection there.”
Ms Jacobs’ case featured in many books and films over the years beginning with a television drama In the Blink of an Eye, first broadcast in 1996.
In 2000, her case featured in an off-Broadway play called The Exonerated which was made into a film in 2005. Ms Jacobs was played by the actress Susan Sarandon.
In a 2017 version of the play at Galway’s Town Hall Theatre, she played herself.
Three years later, Irish novelist Evelyn Conlon included her story in her novel Skin of Dreams which was published in 2003. She described Ms Jacobs as a “most extraordinary woman”.
Death Penalty Action co-founder Abe Bonowitz said he first met Ms Jacobs just months after her release from jail.
“In the wake of injustice, Sunny used the remainder of her life to work to keep others from enduring wrongful incarceration, to help those freed from wrongful incarceration to heal, and to work to abolish the death penalty in the United States and worldwide,” he said.
“Even in her old age, Sunny was constantly working to help others. She and her late husband, Irish death row survivor Peter Pringle established The Sunny Center, an organisation focused on supporting the needs of people freed from wrongful incarceration.
“Our last conversations were about how we can better assist such individuals in their latter years – particularly those who, like Sunny, received no compensation or even an official acknowledgment of their innocence.”
