Gardaí renew appeal for information over death of 'Kerry Baby'

Gardaí are hoping there will be renewed interest following the State apology to Joanne Hayes, who was wrongly accused of being the Kerry baby’s mother and of murdering him. Picture: Eamonn Farrell/RollingNews.ie

Gardaí in Kerry have renewed their appeal for information relating to the identity and death of Baby John, known also as “the Kerry baby” whose body with almost 30 stab wounds was found at the White Strand, near Caherciveen in the south of the county in April 1984.

Gardaí are hoping that there will be renewed interest following the State apology to Joanne Hayes, who was wrongly accused of being the Kerry baby’s mother and of murdering him.

Suspicion fell on Ms Hayes after the discovery of a dead baby boy who had died of natural causes and was buried on Ms Hayes' farm in Abbeydorney north of Tralee around the same time.

Re-opening the enquiry into Baby John in Caherciveen in January 2018, following the harvesting of a viable DNA sample after three decades, gardai apologised to Ms Hayes.

Ongoing inquiry

At the weekend Superintendent Flor Murphy of Killarney, who is heading up the renewed probe, said the inquiry, headquartered in Caherciveen, and involving a Cold Case review team as well as Kerry Gardai was very much ongoing.

DNA samples from the local population would continue to be taken but so far the dozens of samples, taken and the information provided by the public had not yielded any link.

The gardaí are still determined to establish the full facts surrounding the death of Baby John, Supt Murphy stressed.

“We are appealing still for the mother to come forward,” he said.

A full review of the case notes and material gathered in an intense two-week inquiry by detectives arriving in Caherciveen in 1984 has been carried out. At the time there was speculation the mother was a young teenager and detectives pored over the St John Bosco all girls secondary school roll books and attendance records – but found no-one absent in the week before Easter 1984.

They also interviewed teenage girls individually asking them about their love lives and romances. Extramarital and other hidden affairs were also probed.

While the original investigation, involving the so-called murder squad, a team of detectives from Dublin, and local gardaí in Caherciveen, had been intense, it was truncated abruptly when it was believed a definite suspect had emerged in the north of the county.