People

Give me a crash course in . . . the Kerry babies case development

The 1984 case of the killing of an unidentified newborn is back in the news

The grave of Baby John in Cahirsiveen in Co Kerry. Photograph: Domnick Walsh

Brian Hutton
Sat Sep 18 2021 - 06:00

The Kerry babies case is in the news again?

Yes. On Tuesday, gardaí exhumed from Holy Cross Cemetery in Cahersiveen the remains of ‘Baby John’, the five-day-old boy at the centre of the unsolved killing. The baby’s remains were taken to a morgue for examination before being re-interred some hours later.

Why were they examining the remains?

Supt Flor Murphy, who heads the cold case review that began in January 2018, said it “was very necessary, very important as part of this ongoing investigation”. He was hopeful the examination would “advance matters”.

How so?

Well, Garda sources told The Irish Times during the week that although they had taken a DNA sample during a postmortem examination in 1984, it was very small and they needed a larger sample to make the most of advances in DNA technology over the past 37 years.

It really was a long time ago. Remind me what happened.

On April 14th, 1984, Baby John was found dead on White Strand, outside Cahersiveen. The newborn had been stabbed 28 times and his neck was broken. Gardaí in Dublin were sent to investigate. On arriving, they learned that a single mother, Joanne Hayes, who lived 80km away in Abbeydorney, had been in hospital apparently after a lengthy pregnancy but there was no sign of a baby.

READ MORE

She and her family were summoned to Tralee Garda station. Graphic confessions of Ms Hayes having murdered baby John were written up by gardaí, including how she killed him with a kitchen knife and bashed his head with a bath brush.

The confessions were all later withdrawn. Ms Hayes told gardaí she had, in fact, given birth to a baby boy – she named him Shane – who was stillborn or died days later and was buried on the family farm around the same time as the discovery of the baby on the beach.

Did gardaí find Shane’s remains?

Eventually, they did. Then they claimed Ms Hayes had had twins. But tests showed the two babies had different blood types.

So that was the end of that “lead”?

No. In a bizarre further twist, investigators came up with a theory of “superfecundation” – that the “twins” were conceived by two different men, explaining the two different blood groups.

After withdrawing their statements, the Hayes family made a series of allegations against gardaí, including intimidation and inappropriate conduct. Charges against them were then withdrawn in October 1984.

Wasn’t there a tribunal of inquiry at the time?

More like a medieval witch hunt, according to some. It was supposed to investigate how Ms Hayes was charged with murder and her family with concealment. What transpired was Ms Hayes, then 25, was publicly cross-examined over five days on the stand. She was asked thousands of questions, many of them about her sex life.

The tribunal mostly exonerated gardaí and found Ms Hayes was not the mother of the baby on the beach. But it made other claims against Ms Hayes and her family, which the family said were untrue, not supported by any evidence and purely speculative.

That is horrendous.

It only took the State 35 years to officially apologise. Last year, it awarded substantial compensation to Ms Hayes and her family, but only after the family had launched legal proceedings in the High Court to declare all findings of wrongdoing made against them by the tribunal as unfounded and incorrect.

Have Baby John’s parents ever been identified?

No. Neither the parents nor the killer of the baby have ever been identified. During the week Supt Murphy said Baby John’s mother was the “key to unlocking this mystery”. He appealed for her to come forward, along with others in Kerry, who he believes have information.

High CourtJoanne HayesKerry Babies