An overlooked Kerry scandal that had echoes of earlier shotgun killing
On September 2, 1982, Thomas O’Shea of Ardkeragh, Waterville was charged with the attempted murder of his son. He claimed he armed himself with a loaded shotgun in self-defence. The gun was broken-open, he said, until his son kicked the barrel. It snapped shut and discharged, blowing off the top of one of his son’s fingers and wounding him in the side.
The case went to trial in October 1982, in the midst of a series of scandals that had led to a second general election that year. Hence it went virtually unnoticed in the media, even though 38 years earlier the accused was acquitted of the shotgun murder of the man who had been essentially his foster father.
The evidence in the 1944 case read likes an Abbey Theatre play. Some called O’Shea “the immaculate farmer,” because he often wore a camel hair crombie coat with beige gloves.
Michael O’Sullivan, the victim, was nicknamed “Cá bhfuil sé.” According to John B. Keane, O’Sullivan got the nickname as a result of buying a cow from a woman at a fair in Sneem. He went off with the cow without paying for it, and the woman went into every pub in town, crying “Cá bhfuil sé (Where is he)?”
O’Sullivan got his comeuppance on the evening of January 12, 1943, when he was shot dead with a shotgun at the door of his cowshed near Waterville, Co Kerry. The murdered man’s wife, Ellen, had been more than an aunt to Thomas O’Shea — or Tomáseen — as he was known locally. Her sister, his mother, had died shortly after his birth, and Ellen took over his rearing. Thus, she and her husband were essentially his foster parents.
Things turned somewhat sour in July 1941 after Tomáseen got his girlfriend pregnant. Much of the trouble surrounding this shotgun murder would seem to have been sparked by “a shotgun wedding.”
He wished to marry his girl friend. He tried to get a job with Fords in Cork. But his aunt—who planned for him to inherit her 40 acre farm— wished to prevent him leaving, so she wrote to a contact in Cork scuppering her nephew’s plans. Incensed, Tomáseen threatened to “break her face.”
She and her husband moved out of their home for a couple of nights and stayed with her first cousin, John Brennan, who lived about 200 yards away. O’Sullivan complained at the Garda station in Waterville that Tomåseen had threatened them with a knife. “The matter must be settled,” he said.
Garda Sgt Richard O’Shea met the O’Sullivans and Tomáseen at Brennan’s next day. “For the past few days myself and my wife have been threatened by O’Shea with knives, Cá bfhuil sé said. “We had to run out of the house and sleep here.”
“The whole cause of the trouble is a letter written by my aunt to a man named O’Mahoney in Cork to prevent me from getting a job there,” Tomáseen explained.
“I did not write it,” his aunt said.
“You did,” he insisted.
“I think you’re a bit of a brat,” Sgt O’Shea interjected. “Wouldn’t you accept the woman’s word?”
The sergeant explained that Tomáseen had no legal right to stay in the O’Sullivan house so they could compel him to leave if they wished. But his aunt did not want that.
After three hours Sgt. O’Shea left, saying they would have to straighten things between themselves. That night O’Sullivan was back at the Garda station complaining, and Tomáseen arrived shortly afterwards.
“The best thing I can do is to send you away to a mental hospital,” the sergeant told Tomáseen. “What is wrong with you anyway? Are you in trouble with any girl?”
Tomåseen admitted that his girlfriend was four months pregnant, and he was planning to marry her. After staying the night at the barracks he returned to Ardkeragh with Garda James Clancy in the morning.
Clancy told the O’Sullivans that Tomáseen was sorry for all the trouble he had caused. Cá bhfuil sé insisted, however, that he would not sleep under the same roof as O’Shea again. “One or other of us will have to leave,” he said. “Mrs O’Sullivan can keep him if she likes and I will leave.” He then put on his coat and walked out of the house.
“Come on,” O’Shea said, beckoning Garda Clancy to leave with him. As her husband was outside pumping his bicycle, Ellen walked down the avenue with her nephew. Both were crying.
“Are you leaving me after all this time?” she asked. Cá bhfuil sé suddenly relented, “Come back,” he said. O’Shea could stay on condition he behaved himself.
Tomáseen married his girlfriend within a fortnight, with his cousin John Brennan as best man. His aunt wondered aloud how she could raise her head in Waterville.
The newly-weds lived with the O’Sullivans. The two couples ate in separate rooms for the first four months, but a form of normality then developed. On the night of the murder the four of them had tea together. Tomáseen and his wife then went to Brennan’s to play cards, and they thus provided each other with an alibi.
A brother and sister of O’Sullivan were openly suspicious during the ensuing obsequies.
“Now that he is out of the way I hope you are quite happy,” James O’Sullivan —the victim’s brother — said to the widow.
“I didn’t want him out of the way,” Ellen replied. “He was my companion.”
At the funeral the victim’s sister suggested that Tomáseen was responsible and that Brennan was involved. The Garda presence around the house was painfully obvious, as they returned from the funeral.
“It’s a sad house we coming home to,” the widow remarked. “We’ll all be arrested.”
For 75 days an average of 25 gardaí searched the area for the murder weapon, but never found it. They kept Tomáseen, his wife, and aunt under constant surveillance for over seven months. One garda even hid under the bed of O’Shea and his wife in the hope of getting information.
Superintendent J. O’Shea of Caherciveen denied ordering anyone to hide under the bed, but he endorsed it. “Would you approve of it?” he was later asked in court.
“Under the circumstances I would,” he replied. “I approved of it when I heard of it.”
The two men were tried separately at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin. O’Shea’s trial, which began on October 30, 1944, lasted for 11 days.
The case was totally circumstantial, with no hard evidence linking him to the crime. Over a hundred witnesses testified, including 36 gardaí.
In his summation to the jury Judge Martin Maguire was critical of O’Shea for not taking the witness stand in his own defence. “There was much that the man could have explained— very much,” the judge said. The jury acquitted him.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
