Kerry murder mystery: Michael Gaine’s killing and the haunted life of suspect Michael Kelley

Six months after the murder of Kerry farmer Michael Gaine, questions remain over the investigation and the only suspect’s freedom

Michael Gaine was remembered at his funeral as 'soft and loving, caring and affectionate, kind and considerate' man who was unafraid to show his emotions.

The appearance of Ireland’s best known self-declared murder suspect at the door of a Kerry legal practice hardly raises an eyebrow anymore.

As Michael Kelley peered cautiously out from the darkened entrance of Pat Mann’s Ashe Street practice in Tralee on Tuesday, passersby barely gave him a double take.

After brief hesitation, and a quick look up and down the street, the 53-year-old stepped into the bright sunlit street and walked quickly away.

Free to come and go as he pleases after being released without charge by gardaí investigating Kerry farmer Michael Gaine’s murder in March, he’s become tired of his celebrity-style status.

His early inclination to give interviews, to joke while his photo was being taken, and to busk with his large flute cheerfully on the streets of Tralee have waned.

If such public activities appeared insensitive, given his friend of more than three years had been murdered and dismembered, they certainly seemed all the more baffling given Mr Kelley’s claims that “an organised crime network” is after him.

Michael Kelley's backstory

This, he has said in interviews, was because he had been investigating them before he left the US and arrived in Ireland in 2017.

The former US soldier has also said in an interview that he never killed anybody when he served in the US Army and became a conscientious objector after he saw news footage of the infamous “Highway of Death” on a road linking Kuwait and Iraq, where up to 1,000 retreating soldiers were killed over 48 hours in February 1991.

On arrival here on a one-way ticket bought for him by his father Patrick, he applied for asylum, saying he faced persecution in the US, but his application was unsuccessful.

This led to him being served with a Deportation Notice, which was then followed by a Deportation Order in around the end of April or beginning of May this year.

In the early years here, he lived rough and survived with the help of survivalist skills he had learned in the army.

He stayed in a variety of locations in and around Killarney National Park, including a disused shed in a small village near Kenmare and later in a tent in Scully’s Wood near Kenmare Bay.

Mr Gaine stumbled across Mr Kelley when the Kenmare farmer and a pal were out shooting deer one day in 2022.

Michael Kelley claims that 'an organised crime network' is after him. File photo: Dominick Walsh © Eye Focus Ltd

Feeling sorry for him, he offered him the use of the old family farmhouse on his land at Carrig East, near Moll’s Gap, in exchange for doing odd jobs around the farm.

As well as going hunting with Mr Gaine, Mr Kelley fed his farm animals - mostly sheep, but also a small number of cattle. As a trained mechanic, he also worked on Mr Gaine’s vehicles and farm machinery.

On Friday, March 21, the day after Mr Gaine went missing, Mr Kelley was seen fixing the brakes on one of the farmer’s jeeps that was due to have its NCT done.

Although Mr Gaine, who paid and fed Mr Kelley, used to drive him to local supermarkets from time to time, he was rarely ever seen beyond the bounds of the farm.

His closest and only regular human contact was Mr Gaine, whose relationship he described later in an RTÉ interview as being a “transactional” one. He said he wouldn’t have described the two men as being great friends, but they “got on”.

Before his arrest on May 18, he told RTÉ: “We are both farmers. We are getting along because we are grown men and have work to do. 

We were brothers of the land, around the same age, with similar interests, and I liked that sense of brotherhood.

In the weeks that followed, he gave a number of interviews and offered various theories on how Mr Gaine was killed and how the body was disposed of.

But his fondness for the limelight dimmed as more personal details of his life emerged, including his failed custody battle with his former partner, Alicia Snow, the mother of his two daughters, have been made public.

In 2009, a court found — among other things — that his “ability to determine fact from fiction is questionable” and that his testimony was “untrustworthy”.

Added to this, about a month after those very details first emerged in May, the fact that a garda detective then flew over to speak to Ms Snow could also not have been particularly welcome.

Michael Gaine's background

By contrast, the details to emerge about Mr Gaine have been nothing but complimentary. He was a popular, sociable and respected pillar of the local agricultural community.

He would be regularly seen feeding his sheep along the road, or mingling with fellow farmers at the nearby Kenmare Co Op Mart.

Hardworking and successful, having made a good go at running the farm he inherited from his uncle John in 1995, he was also well-known in the local rally circuit.

His friend and fellow rally enthusiast Tommy Randles described him fondly as “a cool character” who never got too excited and as “a deep thinker who would steady things”.

In an emotional video appeal for his return, his wife Janice also described him as her “best friend”.

Published a short time after Mr Gaine’s disappearance was reclassified at the end of April from being a missing persons case to a homicide investigation, she also said he “loved his home, loved his farm, he loved animals”.

She added: “He had lots of friends. He was a very popular guy. His disappearance is totally out of character and we knew that from day one.”

Michael Gaine's funeral makes its way through Kenmare town in June. File picture: Dan Linehan

At his funeral in June, he was remembered as “soft and loving, caring and affectionate, kind and considerate” man who was unafraid to show his emotions.

In a tribute read on behalf of the family by his cousin Eoghan Clarke, he was also described as “brave, fearless and strong.” He also said he “loved life, always made the most of it, and truly lived every single moment”.

Speaking across from where Mr Gaine’s ashes lay cradled in a sheepskin-lined basket that had earlier been carried into Holy Cross Church, Kenmare, his cousin also said the much-loved farmer “always had the iconic twinkle in his eye - the ‘I’m delighted to see you’, ‘I’m in great form’ and ‘Let’s go and enjoy ourselves’ glint in his eye”.

The day of his disappearance

On the day he disappeared, he had a cup of tea with Flor O’Brien after buying bags of sheep nuts at Dan McCarthy’s service station and food store in Kenmare at around 7.30am.

He later bought phone credit in Centra, Kenmare at 9.48am.

The now infamous CCTV image of him at the store on the morning of March 20 shows him wearing his distinctive orange cap, the sleeves of his black fleece are rolled up, and he is clutching something with both his hands as he walks away towards the main entrance of the shop.

The infamous CCTV image of Michael Gaine.

We now know he was there to buy phone credit and a lunch roll. Before he left, he told staff - who were used to seeing him at around that time of day - “I’ll see you later.”

A short while later, he walked out into the car park, and got into the nine-year-old bronze Toyota Rav4 that Janice bought in 2015.

He then drove out onto the Killarney Road and headed past the entrance to the path that leads up to the house he shared with Janice in Carhoomeengar East.

We know he didn’t visit her on his way back to the farm because in the video appeal she appeared in alongside his sister Noreen O’Regan, Noreen said her brother “went to the farm on March 20 and it was his routine to check his animals”. She added: “He never returned home.”

It takes around six minutes to drive from Centra to his farm at Carrig East, so he would have got there around 10am.

It is not known if any of his movements to and from Kenmare were picked up by local gardaí involved in a major garda operation that morning.

They had that day put up checkpoints along a number of roads in and out of the town. As well as roadside searches, detectives targeting the sale and supply of illegal drugs also searched a number of private houses.

Michael Gaine was a popular, sociable and respected pillar of the local agricultural community.

The well-planned “day of action”, as gardaí later described it, led to the seizure of €20,000 of cannabis herb.

Gardaí would later confirm to the Irish Examiner they did assess if there was any link between Mr Gaine’s disappearance and the drugs seizure but could not find one. On April 4, gardaí stated: “Currently, our assessment shows no links.”

Mr Kelley has said in an interview with RTÉ that he last saw Mr Gaine “around 10am” on Thursday, March 20.

He said they met each other in the farmyard, and Mr Gaine told him he was going to meet somebody later that day. Friends have said they also heard Mr Gaine was due to go up to the North to meet a man about a tractor.

Mr Kelley has said that after Mr Gaine gave him a list of chores he wanted done that day, he returned to the old farmhouse to make a pot of coffee, and that was the last time he saw him alive.

He said Mr Gaine was “as normal as ever” and that he was doing his own chores, including giving his cattle silage and his sheep nuts.

Mr Kelley is reported to have told RTÉ: “He didn’t come back that night. He said he would be back. Then they came looking for him at about 10am the following morning.”

Homicide investigation

Although initially mounted as a missing person’s investigation, it wouldn’t change to a suspected homicide investigation until April 29.

This was when gardaí formally announced it was reclassified as a homicide investigation, and that a formal criminal investigation had commenced. This was, they said, “based on the entirety of the information available to the investigation”.

The following day, they stated his disappearance was “completely out of character and entirely at odds” with his “normal pattern of behaviour” - as had been “established by the investigation to date”.

Up to that point, searches had been conducted in and around the farm by officers and garda divers, as well as a variety of state agencies, including 50 members of the Defence Forces.

Gardaí had also undertaken nearly 230 formal enquiries, taken nearly 100 witness statements and recovered approximately 1,500 hours of CCTV/dash-cam footage.

The farm wasn’t formally declared a crime scene until the evening of May 16 when slurry from the bigger of two slurry tanks on Mr Gaine’s farm was being spread on one of his fields.

Forensics digging near the cattle shed on the farm of Michael Gaine. File picture: Dan Linehan

A section of machinery in the slurry spreader jammed and what appeared to be human remains were found. It later emerged that his body had been chopped up and put into the slatted slurry pit.

This had been missed as - at the time it was first searched - the case was being treated as a missing person’s case.

Believing he might have accidentally fallen into the slurry tank after being overcome by fumes, they had been searching with poles prodded through the slatted surface of the tank for an intact body.

Michael Kelley was arrested on suspicion of Mr Gaine’s murder on the afternoon of May 18 and detained under the provisions of Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act 1984 at a Garda Station in Kerry Division.

But, the following day, he was released without charge from the provisions of Section 4 Criminal Justice Act 1984, and - noticeably - no file was sent to the DPP.

Digging taking place on the farm of Michael Gaine in June. Picture: Dan Linehan

Because a chainsaw was found at the farm, there was speculation for a while that he had been cut up with a chainsaw.

However, it has since emerged that two different types of knives were used to dismember his body, one of which is known to have had - because of the impression it left on some of the found remains - a serrated edge.

Mr Kelley has moved from the small town centre gated apartment complex in Tralee where he was living after he left Mr Gaine’s farm. Home is now a ground floor flat in a small apartment complex off a small laneway.

He doesn’t appear to visit the two small local pubs nearby, and he also appears to have stopped busking. Requests for interviews are now increasingly met with a firm refusal, and while he is seen around, he is keeping a far lower profile.

The Irish Examiner understands that detectives have not gone back to interview Mr Kelley since he was released in May.

'Bafflement'

About an hour’s drive away in Kenmare, there remains a deep sense of hurt and anguish in the farming community, as well as a sense of what one farmer described as “bafflement” about the investigation.

With nobody in custody for the murder of Mr Gaine, and no arrests likely any time soon, there is a feeling the investigation has been handled badly from the start.

Why it took so long to move from a missing person’s case to a murder investigation is one question. There are others, including why has there been such a visible garda presence at the farm for so long?

The fact that there has been a garda vehicle parked there 24 hours-a-day for just under six months up until last week is unprecedented.

“It’s a fright to God,” said one farmer getting sheep ready for Friday’s Kenmare Mart meeting. “The whole thing is diabolical and it’s hard not to think about his poor family, his sisters and his wife.

It is bad enough thinking about how he must have died and how gardaí found his body, but to know that his murderer has not been brought to justice must be terrible for them.

The ghoulish behaviour of some passersby has raised issues as they have been known to stop and take selfies of themselves and their friends at the farm from the roadside.

But, to date, it is understood there has been only one incident where anybody has actually come onto the land since Mr Gaine’s murder.

A man later told gardaí he went onsite because he was working with a local mystic who claimed to have had a vision about splatters of blood on rocks at the back of the farm.

But as well as the farm being overlooked by two cottages, CCTV cameras have also been erected around the farm, including one at a locked gate at the entrance.

His widow Janice herself keeps a low profile, and other than her forays into Kenmare to the local supermarkets, she is rarely seen.

Janice Gaine and Noreen O'Regan in their appeal for information. File photo: Garda.ie

In terms of any updates, gardaí themselves are very tight-lipped. The Irish Examiner posed a series of questions on Tuesday, but the response back was an unequivocal "no comment".

They even declined to comment on whether they planned to mount any public appeals to mark the six months that have passed since Mr Gaine was murdered.

As well as bewilderment among residents about the apparent lack of progress in the investigation, it is itself being examined by Garda HQ.

At the beginning of June, the then Garda Commissioner Drew Harris confirmed officers were conducting a “peer review” into the handling of the investigation into Mr Gaine’s murder.

He told reporters at the time that this was because he believed “there is learning for us around those who would commit a crime and then attempt to dispose of the body, and often are successful in disposing of the body”.

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Speaking in the Garda Training College in Templemore, Co Tipperary, he said the force was aware of a pattern emerging around this type of crime in recent years.

As a result, he said, it was all the more important that detectives adopted what he described as “an investigative mindset” when investigating what initially is reported or seen as a missing person’s case.

Asked about the review this week, a garda spokesperson said: “An Garda Síochána does not comment on, confirm, or deny any queries relating to specific operational details of ongoing criminal investigations.”

Added to that, Mr Kelley has himself lodged a complaint with Fiosrú, the Office of the Police Ombudsman, about the way he was treated by gardaí.

According to a source, his complaint - which was lodged in May - centred around interviews that took place between him and investigating gardaí.