MAY CAMPBELL remembers, her neighbour Danny Fanning doing the foxtrot at a party in her home on New Year's Eve. He was so energetic that she had to give up, she recalled yesterday. On Tuesday night, as her neighbour and his family were enduring a terrifying ordeal, Ms Campbell was in her home watching a video.
"It's awful to think that a man was murdered as we sat here. We were laughing at the film as it was going on. He was a wonderful man, so full of life. It's shocking. I moved here from England to get away from this sort of thing," said Ms Campbell.
Her daughter Linda first noticed something was wrong when she saw cars parked outside their home. "Someone walked up and asked directions. He told me he was a garda although I noticed he was not wearing a uniform. It's ironic but I worried afterwards that he could have been a robber and I had given him directions," she said.
Danny Fanning was a wealthy cattle dealer. His home in Stephenstown, near the small village of Rosegreen, Co Tipperary, is surrounded by some of the country's richest farmland and just a few miles from some of Ireland's biggest stud farms.
As snow blanketed the county yesterday, it was difficult to believe a man had been murdered only hours previously. Mr Fanning's wife Biddy, and their daughter Rosaleen (24), were not at the large country house yesterday.
Gardai surrounded the house yesterday, combing nearby fields and conducting house to house inquiries, their job made almost impossible by the driving snow.
The body of Mr Fanning, a father of eight, lay inside the kitchen of the house, where he had been shot after 8 p.m. on Tuesday. The State pathologist, Dr John Harbison, arrived after 1 p.m. He was followed by Garda ballistic and forensic experts, members of the Special Crime Squad from Garda headquarters in Dublin and local gardai. Two hours later, the body of Mr Fanning was removed to Our Lady's Hospital in Cashel, where Dr Harbison conducted the post mortem.
Many local people awoke yesterday to hear of the murder, some living less than a mile from the Fanning home. A neighbour, Mr Billy Doyle, said he found it impossible to believe such a crime could have been committed so near to his home. "I got such a shock. I've lived here for 50 years. It is a quiet part of the country and nothing like this has ever happened here before. It's incredible," he said.
One of the first people on the scene on Tuesday night was local curate Father Tadhg Furlong. He said the entire community was shocked by the murder. It had been "a terrible ordeal for the Fanning family". He said the raiders were very aggressive, they shouted a lot and were particularly aggressive towards Mr Fannin.
Mr Fanning was born near Ballytrasna in mid Tipperary but moved to Rosegreen in the 1950s, where he set up his livestock business. He began with 120 acres, a figure he since doubled.
A pioneer, he was responsible for re energising the local Rosegreen GAA Club, training youngsters behind his Stephenstown home.