After a five-year marriage marked by verbal and physical abuse and extramarital affairs, twenty-six-year-old June Maloney, a nurse at Rochester, New York’s Genesee Hospital, had had enough. She left her husband Joe, a thirty-two-year-old dynamite contractor, in April 1967. The couple agreed to an informal separation in which June assumed custody of their two children, five-year-old Joey and eighteen-month-old Patricia. Joe moved out of their home but was allowed to visit as he wished.

On June 2, eight weeks later, Joe hosted a party for Joey’s fifth birthday. As June mingled with friends, Joe, acting as the party’s bartender, gave her a drink.

When June returned home that evening, she told a friend she was not feeling well and was going to bed early. Her condition worsened the following day, and by June 4, she had lapsed into a coma. June Maloney never regained consciousness and died the following day. An autopsy showed she had been poisoned.

In addition to orange juice and vodka, the screwdriver Joe had served June at the party contained a lethal dose of the chemical methyl alcohol, a clear, odorless, colorless, and tasteless liquid.

A family friend was missing a portion of metyl alcohol from his lab; Joe Maloney had recently attempted to acquire the poison.

Joe And June Maloney

Neal Dunkleberg, the Maloney’s friend and neighbor, was an amateur chemist who had a small chemical lab set up in his home’s basement.

In May 1967, Joe paid Neal an unannounced visit and asked to see his lab. Joe had never expressed any interest in Neal’s work before, but Neal was all too happy to show Joe his lab, of which he was proud.

As Joe looked around the lab, he casually asked Neal about various poisons. In a playful manner, Joe said he wanted to silence a dog that was knocking over his garbage cans and keeping him awake at night with its barking. Neal, believing Joe was joking, recommended methyl alcohol, also known as wood alcohol, because it was once primarily produced by the destructive distillation of wood. Neal showed Joe a bottle of the poison.

When Joe asked if he could have a sample, Neal realized Joe had not been kidding and became concerned. He refused to give him the poison and soon changed the locks on the door to the lab. Neal also ordered his family not to let Joe into his lab under any circumstances.

Neal was correct in his belief that Joe Maloney’s efforts to acquire the poison were because he was poised to kill. A canine, however, was not Maloney’s prey.

Neal Dunkleberg

Maloney Family Friend

Two weeks later, while Neal and his family were vacationing, his sister was house sitting their home. Neal had neglected to tell her about not allowing Joe into his lab.

Joe came to the home and asked Neal’s sister, who knew and liked him, if he could enter the lab. Although she expressed reluctance in granting him access, he sweet talked her into gaining entrance. He assured her he would be in the lab only briefly and what he needed was harmless.

Joe Maloney told the truth on the first part as he was in the lab for only a minute, but the latter half was baloney. The portion of poison he had taken was small but deadly.

Joe Gains Entrance

Joey’s birthday party was the following week at Joe’s home.  As the guests mingled, Joe served as the party’s bartender. Serval people recalled him serving a drink to June.

Joe Maloney’s Home

Site Of The Party

After the autopsy showed June had died from a lethal ingestion of methyl alcohol, Neal remembered it was the same poison about which his neighbor had recently inquired. The clear, odorless, colorless and tasteless liquid also called wood alcohol resembles ordinary alcohol but is highly poisonous. It is most commonly used as a solvent and antifreeze.

Joe Maloney had another purpose for the poison.

The Type Of Poison Taken From Neal’s Lab . . .

After Neal’s sister told him she had allowed Joe into the lab, Neal inventoried its contents and determined a small dose of the fatal poison was missing. The portion matched that found in June Maloney’s system, and a jar containing wood alcohol was found in the basement of her estranged husband’s home.

. . . And Used To Kill June

Joe Maloney was arrested for the murder of his estranged wife. Against his attorney’s advice, he pleaded insanity and asked to be committed to the Rochester State Mental Hospital for psychiatric evaluation. The court granted his request, unaware that Maloney had once worked at the hospital and was familiar with its layout.

Less than two weeks later, on September 25, Maloney escaped from the hospital during a party sponsored by the Red Cross. He had crafted a key from an electric razor and used it to unlock the door.

Maloney was determined to have hid in a vacant house in Rochester for two days. Two months later, it was learned he had cashed $1,600 in bogus checks throughout Monroe County. Efforts to locate him were unsuccessful.

On September 11, 1967, Joe Maloney was convicted, in absentia, of the first-degree murder of his wife, June, and sentenced to life in prison. After his lawyers made public appeals in the newspapers for him to turn himself in, he contacted them, and arrangements were made for his surrender. Maloney, however, failed to arrive on the arranged date.

Ten months later, a motorist reported seeing Maloney driving in suburban Rochester.

Convicted But Not Caught

The dynamite contractor turned killer stayed off the radar for the following four years until a serendipitous event over three thousand miles away picked up his trail.

Maloney Goes Into Hiding

In 1972, police officers in Dublin, Ireland, investigated a burglary at the home of Michael O’Shea. The “Guards,” as they are known in Ireland, checked the home for the burglar’s fingerprints and asked to take O’Shea’s prints for elimination purposes. With reluctance, O’Shea allowed to them to do so. Per custom, the prints were sent to INTERPOL.

Dublin police soon received surprising news: some of the fingerprints matched those of an American wanted for murder. Michael O’Shea was Joe Maloney. International law, however, prevented the Irish authorities from arresting him because Ireland and the United States did not have an extradition agreement.

For twelve years, at the request of the Rochester police and the FBI, Irish authorities kept Maloney under surveillance, but there was little else they could do because he had committed no crime in Ireland.

During this time, Maloney, under the alias O’Shea, held a series of jobs including working as a farmer and laborer. He had also married, fathered two more children, and was involved in several business ventures.

Living In Ireland

As “Michael O’Shea”

It appeared Joe Maloney’s seventeen-year flight from justice was nearing an end in December 1984, as the Irish Parliament passed an extradition treaty with the United States. The treaty allowed for the arrest of Americans living in Ireland who had been charged with crimes in the United States.

On January 7, 1985, Irish authorities arrested Joe Maloney. He was held without bail at Mount Joy Prison outside Dublin. While in jail, Maloney refused to answer any questions.

An Irish judge approved Maloney’s extradition to the United States in April. Maloney filed an appeal and the time it bought him proved fortuitous.

On June 26, 1986, the Irish-American Extradition Treaty was voided because of a legal technicality. An Irish Court of Appeals ruled Maloney’s extradition to the United States was still warranted because it had been ordered while the treaty was valid. The Irish Supreme Court, however, overruled the lower court and ordered Maloney released.

On July 24, a joyful Joe Maloney walked out of Mount Joy Prison and disappeared again, likely forever. He remains at large fifty-seven years after poisoning his wife and nearly thirty-eight years after being freed in Ireland.

The Luck Of the Irish

Joseph Michael Maloney has been convicted of murdering his wife June. When last seen in 1986, he was six-feet-two-inches tall and weighed approximately one-hundred-seventy pounds. He had blue eyes and red hair, which is likely gray now. Maloney also had a scar over his right eyebrow. He was an explosives expert and a licensed pilot.

Maloney, of Irish heritage, remarried and fathered two more children while living in Ireland. He may be traveling with his second wife, Sheila O’Shea (nee Chandler), assuming he has not poisoned her as well. I could not find a picture of her.

After gaining his release in Ireland, the FBI believes Maloney left the country and may have lived in Canada for several years. It has been speculated the Irish Republican Army (IRA) may be helping him hide because of his knowledge of explosives.

The lack of substantive leads in nearly thirty years, however, lead many investigators to believe Maloney has died. If he is still alive, he would be eighty-nine-years-old.

If you have any information on the whereabouts of Joseph Maloney or the location of his remains, please contact the Rochester, New York, Police Department at 585-428-9800 or the Buffalo FBI Field Office at (716) 856-7800. If you are submitting a tip from outside the United States, you may contact your law enforcement agencies or INTERPOL.

Where Have You Gone Joe Maloney?

 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/103164133/june-maloney

SOURCES:

• Associated Press
• Chicago Tribune
• Democrat and Chronicle Rochester, New York
• Los Angeles Times
• Tulsa World
• Unsolved Mysteries
• UPI