Family’s fresh appeal over brutal murder – five years on

THE daughter of a man who was brutally murdered in his own home five years ago has issued an emotional appeal to the public to help track down her father’s killers.

The badly beaten body of James Cahillane, 58, was found in his burnt-out home at Ardraw, Beaufort, Co. Kerry, in the early hours of April 19, 2012. He had been violently assaulted and his three-bedroom bungalow, on a quiet rural road, had been deliberately set alight.

Speaking on the fifth anniversary of his death, his daughter Lisa said that the fact that nobody has been before the courts for the murder means she and her brother Gary have had no sense of closure.

‘It has shadowed our grief,’ she said at a case review press conference in Killarney Garda Station.

Lisa asked anybody with any information to come forward and said she fears that if the culprit is not caught, somebody else could suffer.

‘It’s a small community and it makes it difficult. You worry it could happen again,’ she said.

A post mortem found that Mr Cahillane had died of head injuries and that criminality was involved.

During the course of the investigation into his death, two people, a man in his 20s and a woman in her 50s, were arrested and a file submitted to the DPP – but a prosecution was not initiated.

Superintendent Flor Murphy of Killarney Garda Station confirmed that the two people arrested are still persons of interest in the investigation. ‘People might have been reluctant in the past but friendships, loyalties and associations might have changed,’ he said.