A PIECE of blue binder twine, used to secure black plastic sacking for bales of silage, enabled gardai to find the body of a Kerry farmer in a disused well last week.
Last Sunday and Monday, teams searched Mr Patrick Daly's, 105 acre farm at Kilcummin," near Killarney.
Although they looked in the well, which lies opposite the two storey house where Mr Daly lived alone, they then disregarded it. When the search resumed on "Tuesday the piece of blue binder twine produced the breakthrough.
Mr Daly's body had been dumped head first into the shaft of the 20ft well. It was then covered with many layers of black plastic on top of which stones had been placed.
The stones were covered by the murderer or murderers with a coating of sand which had been evenly rigged, giving the well a false bottom.
At 3.30 pm on Tuesday, gardai again looked at the well which had been secured by a concrete cap stone on top of which a rusted barrel had been placed. This time, when the sand was disturbed, the blue binder twine was exposed.
When the materials" covering the plastic were removed, Mr Daly's body was discovered.
A post mortem showed that he had been savagely beaten and had sustained massive injuries to the head, skull, back, rib cage, shoulders and arms.
A blunt instrument like an iron bar was used in the attack, gardai said, and the possibility that more than one person was involved in the murder has not been discounted.
Gardai continue to search the farm for the murder weapon and have removed several implements for examination.
So far, nobody has been questioned about the murder, which, has caused deep anxiety in the mainly elderly parish community.
Gardai are also understood to be investigating the claim by one resident, Mr Jack Finnegan (80), that his dog and two others owned by the murder victim disappeared last summer and that there had been "bad blood" in the area as a result.