School secretary has led a deeply private life since she was thrust into the spotlight 34 years ago

BOTH she and her life are once again under the spotlight.

But in more than three decades since she was wrongly accused of murdering a baby whose body was discovered on a beach in Cahersiveen, school secretary Joanne Hayes has led a private life cosseted by a very protective community.

Solicitor Pat Mann has reiterated the Hayes family’s plea for privacy, describing them as “wonderful people” who have enjoyed huge support, affection and love from the people of their native Abbeydorney, which continues to this day.

Interviewed

Ms Hayes’s final major appearance in the media was back in 1985, when she was interviewed by Gay Byrne on ‘The Late Late Show’.

The same year she told her version of events in the book ‘My Story’, co-written by John Barrett and published by the Brandon Press.

Two years later, three gardaí who were named in the book began a libel action, that was eventually settled out of court, resulting in a settlement for the gardaí and an apology by the publishers.

Speaking this week, Mr Mann described the family as being “major contributors to their community”, who should now just be left to their privacy.

Ms Hayes’s daughter Yvonne is now 34 and no longer lives in Co Kerry.

Joanne’s former lover, Jeremiah Locke, is now aged 62 and lives outside Tralee.

At the time of the Kerry Babies controversy in 1984, he lived in Monavally, Tralee, and was employed as a groundsman by the VEC.

He was married and the

couple had two children, a son and a daughter, who was also born in April 1984, around the same time a baby boy was born to Ms Hayes but died shortly afterwards.

Part of his job was looking after the Tralee Sports Complex, cutting the grass and maintaining the garden.

It was here he met Joanne Hayes, who was working in the office of the facility at the time.

Sensitivities around the Kerry Babies are high in the local area after the press conference in Cahersiveen last Tuesday, in which a new investigation into the death of Baby John, the infant found dead on White Strand on April 14, 1984, was launched.

At the press conference, Supt Flor Murphy reiterated the apology that had been offered to Ms Hayes earlier that day, both in writing and verbally in a follow-up phone call by the Acting Commissioner, Dónall Ó Cualáin.

Sensitivities

An editorial read out by the local radio station conveys the sensitivities that still surround the case in Kerry, even though almost 34 years have elapsed.

“The emotions and memories stirred by the words ‘the Kerry Babies’ is something that cannot be understood in any other county, in any other place,” said presenter Jerry O’Sullivan, who spoke of the “rawness” that was still felt and “the instinct to leave it all alone”.

But he noted the focus should now return back to where it belonged, on Baby John, and the investigation to solve the murder mystery that has baffled and intrigued in equal measure for almost 34 years.