The Kerry Babies Case

"I was aware that an investigation had been ongoing for a week or two prior to my involvement…. It would seem an enormous fluke that something like that didn't come to light"

Well it's unlikely to be a fluke, and that is what he is saying really. In this, and other similar cases (Sophie TduP), in my opinion a local Garda (or maybe multiple) who first comes on the scene is able to frame/scope the whole subsequent investigation with some simple decisions. It doesn't even need to be intentional. It could be a simple as one Garda mentioning a suspect, and another Garda, who knows them personally saying "don't even go there, they're definitely not involved", and then the first Garda crossing them off the list. Sure it can also protecting one of their own, or a friend/powerful person, but equally possible they know the perpetrator and just think it is not possible for them to do it. This in addition gives them a strong incentive to never consider them again, because they don't want to get in trouble in the future either.

By the time the proper investigative team get involved they are being directed to look in a certain way, or at certain suspects, and the real perpetrators are not even considered, so there is no hope of finding them until a cold case team starts to look at it. It's why these days protocols and processes are much more strictly enforced.

It says a lot that you and @csirl and @choseusernam can’t distinguish between having a Garda in the family and perverting the course of justice (or, in this case, creating one of the biggest and most enduring scandals in the history the State).

The lie, obviously, would be @csirl’s claim that there’ll be no prosecution because there was a Garda in the family.

In reality as opposed to conspiracyland, if there is no prosecution it’s because there is a serious gap in our legal system, most basically that the right to silence has been taken to absurd limits where parents can sit schtum for 40 years after their child is stabbed to death and his body washes up and the wrong family is accused and the State institutes a tribunal and the Tribunal is a nightmare and books are written and defamation claims are paid and DNA proves they are the parents and still they say nothing but get their solicitor to moan about the search while the media who feasted for decades on the fiasco (and demanded that Tribunal in the first place) ask not a single question.

But you think it’s because he Da was a Garda😰

Ok I see you added to your comment. I don't know if you were directing it at me but I have said nothing of the sort.

In this current day, with the cold case review identifying and arresting the parents, and pushing a prosecution, it would seem the guards are acting with high integrity here.

Was it not the case that the deceased father of the mother was a garda but so was her brother at the time, now also deceased, just for clarity!

“Weird” is putting it mildly. Their baby was brutally murdered but they said nothing to no one for 40+ years, even after their arrest and identification.

There is a valid question to be answered by the Gardai - When every baby born in Kerry was traced in 1984, how did the Gardai miss this baby who was born so near the spot where Baby John was washed ashore?

I don’t believe the conspiracy theory that the Gardai pinned the murder on an innocent family in order to protect the daughter/ sister/ cousin of a Garda. That lunacy would have destroyed everyone involved. But everyone who knew of Baby John’s birth had an obligation to come forward in April 1984 when the whole country was in uproar over his murder and the Gardai were knocking on doors all over the county. A questionnaire was delivered to every house from the White Strand to Cahirciveen and the adjacent areas but no one knew anything about Baby John.

Will we ever get the truth?

Not sure, definitely in Cork in early 80s, possibly in a couple of North Kerry areas later but don't know when.

The lie I objected to was the claim by @csirl that no charges would be brought because of the family’s Garda connections. Whatever about the fiasco 40+ years ago, it is simply false to claim that the Garda file sent to the DPP was doctored to prevent a prosecution (the only conceivable way the family’s Garda connections could block a prosecution).

That claim is false and a distraction from the real issue - what charge can be brought if there is no evidence that the parents had any involvement in the murder?

It was mainly the detectives thinking that the two babies were related that meant no real trawl was done. They felt rather than knew that they had the guilty party. That's why the death of baby John wasn't rightly and independently investigated.

I’m not putting words in your mouth, you said there wouldn’t be any charges because the family has Garda connections. How could that be true unless the Garda file was doctored?

The Gardai did a massive tracing exercise in April 1984 checking every baby whose birth was registered in Kerry that year and appealing for anyone who had given birth to come forward. The Gardai had accounted for all these babies when a couple of Gardaí went back again to Tralee General Hospital and discovered that a doctor who examined Joanne Hayes found that she had been pregnant but there was no trace of her baby. And thus began a fiasco in a murder investigation that may never be concluded.

Almost certainly, therefore, the pregnancy and birth of Baby John were carefully concealed but, nonetheless, the Garda should account for their failure to trace Baby John in 1984. Did the mother not attend any doctor during pregnancy or shortly afterwards?

Some posters here, like commentators in the media and in academia, claim that the stigma of birth out of wedlock was so great that mothers would do terrible things. What anachronistic nonsense! Do they imagine that Ireland in the 1980s was like Ireland in the 1950s? In 1984 thousands of births "out of wedlock" were recorded and Lone Parent Allowance was paid to the mothers. The media and academia don't mention the inconvenient truth that Joanne Hayes was a single mother with a two-year old daughter and she had not suffered as a consequence - in fact, she continued to work for Kerry Co. Council in the local leisure centre.

The former head of the Garda cold case unit comments today:

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-41822909.html

snip

Remember, Ann Lovett died alone trying to hide the birth of her baby in 1984, the same year we are talking about here. There most certainly was a stigma around 'single mothers' in the 1980's, probably more so outside of the cities. Certainly growing up at that time in Dublin 'single mothers' were not uncommon but were still unusual enough.