DUBLIN Police say a veteran Irish Republican Army member at the center of allegations against Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams has been found dead at her home.
Dolours Price had alleged that Adams was her IRA commander in Belfast in the early 1970s and was involved in ordering several Catholic civilians to be abducted, executed and buried in secret.
The Northern Ireland police have been seeking her tape-recorded interviews from an audio archive in Boston College, a case expected to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The 61-year-old Price was imprisoned in 1973 for being part of the IRA's first car-bomb attack on London. She received early parole in 1980.
Ireland's police force said in a statement Thursday she was found dead at her home in Malahide north of Dublin.
IRA killer's confessions on tape
As CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips reported in September, Price carried the IRA bombing campaign to the heart of London.
Living in Dublin, she was trying to carve out her own version of history and settle some scores. She told her story -- along with other former IRA and British Loyalist fighters -- to researchers from Boston College, on the promise that the interview tapes would be held in the BC archives until the interviewees had died.
Northern Ireland's police, though, want the tapes now and an American court has ruled they can have them. But, the Supreme Court may yet decide on the matter.
The bomb Price set in London's main criminal courthouse killed a man and injured hundreds, and served time for it, Phillips reported. But the reason the police want to get their hands on her Boston College taped testimony is because of another crime she's admitted: The kidnap and murder of a mother of 10 children, Jean McConville. McConville was accused by the IRA of being an informer and one of the so-called "disappeared."
She, among many others, was driven across the border to the Irish Republic and shot. The IRA later revealed where some of the bodies were buried.
Price admitted she drove McConville across the border - and she knew what might happen.
"I was aware that that would possibly be her end, yes," Price said.
Irishwoman at center of IRA tapes story found dead
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Irishwoman at center of IRA tapes story found dead
