Disbelief in quiet village at violent deaths of ‘pillars of community’

ON a sunny day when the spectre of violent death visited the tranquil farming countryside of north Kerry, signs of new life were, ironically, everywhere to be seen.

The boreen leading to the Hanrahan home resounded with birdsong and newly born lambs frolicked in a field within sight of the 1970s-style bungalow in which the bodies of father and son, Mike and Denis Hanrahan, lay. The Hanrahan home is one of a cluster of houses in a cul-de-sac and sits highest of them all on rising ground.

And, as numbed locals tried to come to terms with the horrific loss of two well-respected men, the word “disbelief” kept coming up in conversations.