Senior Constable Margaret (Maggie) Doyle
With many thanks to SA Ranger for submitting this character profile.

If you were to ask anyone to name a popular character from Blue Heelers, you would almost certainly get a response similar to 'Maggie'. The Senior Constable was played by the wonderfully outstanding Lisa McCune, who won the Gold Logie 4 times in a row for her role in Blue Heelers, and undoubtedly, because of her, pushed Blue Heelers to it's best.

Maggie was there from the start, episode one "A Woman's Place". From this episode on she proved to be a popular character with not only the rest of the cast, but the public. Her character had a lot of history in it, with her father (Pat) being a retired cop, and one of her brothers (Mick) being a detective. Her other brother (Robbie), was a junkie that came back to town. After Maggie tried in vain to get her brother off drugs, she failed. He ended up protecting Maggie, and even threw himself in front of her when someone fired a gun at her. He died protecting his sister.

She had an on again, off again relationship with Mount Thomas' detective, Patrick (PJ) Hasham. This relationship was hidden to most of the Heeler's, and caused problems when Senior Constable Ben Stewart arrived in town, and had all eyes on Maggie.

Towards the end of 1999, PJ proposed to Maggie, and she of course accepted. The wedding was all arranged, however, Maggie came into possession of a computer disk containing confidential information of known criminals. Trying to clear up the case by herself, instead of passing the disk onto IA (Internal Affairs), she was shot several times in an abandoned warehouse. PJ was first on the scene, but Maggie died in his arms.

PJ was then arrested for the murder of Margaret Doyle, due to circumstantial evidence that had been collaborated, and a false statement made by a criminal (that PJ had put away for a previous crime) that put PJ in the wrong picture. Once PJ and Ben teamed up to prove PJ's innocence, he was released and worked on the case of Maggie's murder along with Maggie's dad Pat. These two became good friends, and ended up finding the truth about Maggie's death. Her surviving brother Mick had killed her to protect the information on the disk. Once PJ confronted Mick about it, Mick pulled a gun on him and was about to shoot PJ, when Pat turned up and shot Mick dead. All three Doyle children were now dead, murdered.

Maggie is a greatly missed character from the show, and still lives strong in many Blue Heelers fan's memories.

SA Ranger is a guest columnist for the Mount Thomas Gazette. You too can write for us, by clicking here!