How the Kerry Babies case and tribunal unfolded

THE Kerry Babies scandal – which rocked conservative 1980’s Ireland to its very foundations - began with the discovery of two dead newborn babies found in the spring of 1984.

The first body found was that of a baby boy with multiple stab wounds found on the White Strand in Cahersiveen on April 14, 1984. It is the discovery of this child’s remains that the new cold case investigation is focussed on.

Weeks later, on May 2, the body of a second baby boy was found on the family farm of 25-year-old Joanne Hayes in Abbeydorney.

A major investigation was launched following the discovery in Cahersiveen with gardaí drawing up a list of local women suspected of being pregnant or who had recently left the area.

Local gardaí, and detectives from Dublin, at first suspected the Cahersiveen baby belonged to Ms Hayes.

On May 1 Joanne Hayes and some members of her immediate family were brought in for extensive interrogation and signed statements admitting involvement in the case of the Cahersiveen baby.

At the time the family made the statements the body of Ms Hayes’s baby had not yet been discovered. When it was, just a day later, the garda case against the family was thrown into disarray.

On May 28 it emerged that the blood group of the Cahersiveen baby was different to that of Ms Hayes, the married man, Jeremiah Locke, with whom she was having an affair and the baby found at the Hayes’ farm.

Despite the blood group evidence the investigating detectives stuck to their complex and subsequently controversial “heteropaternal superfecundation” theory, which attempted to prove the babies were twins by different fathers.

On October 10, the murder charge against Joanne Hayes, and all other charges against members of her family, were dropped at Tralee District Court.

Though Joanne Hayes and her family made confessions in relation to Cahersiveen baby, they later withdrew their confessions and admitted instead that Hayes’s baby had been born on the family farm, had died shortly after birth and had been wrapped in a plastic bag and buried in secret.

After details of the case were published there was enormous public disquiet. Then Minister for Justice Michael Noonan moved to establish a judicial enquiry to investigate garda handling of the case.

The Kerry Babies Tribunal, headed by Justice Kevin Lynch, opened in Tralee on January 7 1985 and would go on to sit for 82 days.

Justice Lynch found that Joanne Hayes killed the baby on the farm by choking it to stop it crying. This finding was made in spite of state pathologist Dr John Harbison being unable to determine the cause of the baby’s death. Justice Lynch also rejected claims by the Hayes family that they had been assaulted by gardaí, or that the confessions were obtained through coercion.

While the tribunal report generally exonerated the gardaí, its findings included a rebuke for some gardaí who were accused of “gilding the lily” or undertaking “the elevation of honest beliefs or suspicions into positive facts”.

The Murder Squad was disbanded soon after and a Garda Complaints Commission established. The identities of the Cahersiveen baby or his killer have never been established.