Both of us went back to the kitchen and left her alone for about ten minutes. We laid the bag containing the infant on the floor beside the bed.
When we returned to the room, she was on the bed turned towards the wall. The brown bag had been rolled closed so that the infant was not visible. We opened the grey fertiliser bag – which was an 0-7-30 – wider, and each caught an end of the brown bag and put it into the grey bag. I have on this date been shown a grey fertiliser bag 0-7-30 and a brown shopping bag by Detective Sergeant Dillon and they are similar to the ones we used that morning.
When we had placed the brown bag with the infant into the grey bag, my sister Joanne asked again to be left alone with the infant. We again placed it on the floor and left for about two minutes.
When we returned she was in a similar position facing the wall and the top of the grey bag was tied with a string.
I caught hold of the top of the bag and Michael caught the bottom of the bag. We took it through the kitchen.
My sister Kathleen had the door of the car open as I had already asked her. Kathleen had the keys of the car and she handed me the keys of the car afterwards. I placed the bag on the floor of the car behind the driver’s seat. The car is the property of my Aunt Bridie but both Michael and myself are insured to drive it.
I went back into the house and brought a road map with me. I went back into the kitchen and told my mother and aunt that we were leaving. My sister Kathleen had gone down into Joanne’s room where she was sleeping on a mattress.
I drove the car and my brother accompanied me in the front passenger seat of the car which is a two-door. We brought a shovel with us in case we might get a place to bury it.
We fully intended when we left the house that we would go to the sea with the bag and the further away the better. I drove the car into Tralee, on to Blennerville, out the Dingle Road. At Camp Cross I stopped and took out the map to decide which road we would go. We decided to go by Conor Pass as we thought it would be the quietest.
Going up Conor Pass we stopped for about three minutes and looked at the map to decide which way we would go. We didn’t pick out any place on the map to dispose of the body and we decided to drive on for another bit.
We went on into Dingle and went out the Ventry Road. We stopped this side of Ventry and looked at the map again.
It was then we decided to go to Slea Head.
We drove on until we came to a spot about two miles on the Ventry side of Slea Head. I am familiar with Ventry and Slea Head as I have been there on a number of occasions. When I got to this spot which I thought was the most suitable place I got out of the car and I took out the bag containing the body. I walked around the back of the car with the bag and opened the door for my brother. I asked my brother to keep a watch out and I went in over a stone ditch, walked about twenty yards to the edge of the cliff.
I flung the bag from the cliff and into the sea. I would say there was a drop of about ten feet and I watched the bag drop directly into the water.
I returned to the car, turned the car about on the roadway and drove back the same way as we had come. We arrived back in Abbeydorney about 10 am.
The mother and the sister Kathleen met us outside the door and I told them where I had disposed of the bag and its contents.
Mary Hayes said:
I remember Tuesday night 10 April, 1984 at 7 pm. I knew Joanne my daughter was ill as she was losing a lot of blood around and I knew she was about to have a baby.
At about 2.30 am the following morning 11/4/84 Joanne had a baby in her room.
Bridie, Mike and Kathleen was with her.
After the child was born Mike and Kathleen came down from Joanne’s room to tell me in the kitchen about the birth of the child and they left Bridie alone with Joanne.
About five minutes later Bridie came down to the kitchen to tell me to go down quick and see the child and Joanne, Kathleen and Mike came with me and in the bedroom I saw Joanne lying in her bed and the baby was at the bottom of the bed.
I saw that the baby was dead and its body was marked.
I saw a white toilet brush beside the bed and Joanne used that brush to beat the child.
I then left with Kathleen to call my other son Ned who was in bed above in our other house which is about 100 yards away.
Before I left to go up for Ned, Joanne was crying out aloud and was very upset. I saw her with the toilet brush in her hand.
When I arrived back down with Ned, Joanne had calmed back down.
I said to Joanne ‘You will have to bury the child’ and Mike or Kathleen said we will bury the child on the land.
I said the child cannot be buried on the land. Ned and Mike went to the back kitchen where they got a turf bag and put the child into the bag. I told Mike and Ned that they would have to bury the child. They left, Mike and Ned, with the child in the bag and drove out of the yard about 5 am.
They, Mike and Ned, returned at about 7 am and said that they had buried the child. I did not ask them where. We all decided not to talk or tell anybody about it.
Joanne’s room was all blood after the birth and when Joanne got up the following day she washed the bed clothes and room.
I have been shown the white toilet brush by Detective Garda Smith and I identified it as the brush Joanne had with her the night the child was born.
I have also been shown a turf bag by Detective Garda Smith and that is similar to the one used by Mike and Ned to take away the baby.
I have been shown a carving knife by Detective Garda Smith and that is the knife we normally carve the meat with.
My husband died on 25/8/1975 and I have brought up my children with the help of my sister Bridie Fuller who has lived with me all her life.
Michael Hayes said:
On the Tuesday night of the week before Easter week myself, Johanna [sic] and Bridie, my aunt, went to bed at about 11.30 pm to three different rooms. Shortly after going to bed I went to sleep. I was awakened at about 2 am to 2.30 am by a person roaring and shouting.
I got up and I heard that the roaring and shouting was coming from Johanna’s room. I went into her room. My aunt was there before me standing near the top of Johanna’s bed. Siobhan [sic] was in a cot beside the side of the bed. There was a new-born baby on the bed beside Johanna and she had her arm around it. The bedspread was wrapped around the baby. The baby was alive and crying.
I got a shock when I saw another baby there again even though I knew she was expecting.
I stayed a few minutes in the room, I didn’t say anything. My aunt was saying something, I don’t know what she said. I left my aunt in the room and went out to the kitchen. My sister Kathleen who had stayed in the same room as Johanna was also in the room. My mother, who had slept in the room with me, had gone into Johanna’s room before me, and she was also in the room.
I had put on my clothes before leaving my bedroom.
My mother, aunt and sister Kathleen were giving out to her for having this child and going out with a married man. They were cross with her.
I was up and down to the room every couple of minutes. I did this a lot of times. My mother, aunt and Kathleen were in the room all this time.
My mother left the room and went to the kitchen.
Kathleen then brought up a toilet brush from the bathroom, to the bedroom. She gave the brush to Johanna. I was standing at the door. Kathleen went into the kitchen and got a kitchen knife from a cabinet in the kitchen inside the back door. It was a pointed knife, it had a rough blade and brown timber handle and she gave it to Johanna who was inside in bed.
The baby was beside Johanna in the bed.
Johanna stabbed the baby on the chest three times. The bedspread was all blood after.
The baby’s face was towards the ceiling and its feet were facing the bottom of the bed.
I stayed standing.
Kathleen was near the bed when Johanna was doing it. Then Johanna got out of bed. I saw her catch hold of the toilet brush in her right hand
and she hit the child on the face and body a number of times. The baby was on the floor at this stage as it had fallen off the bed when Johanna was getting out of bed.
Johanna put the baby up on the bed then. The bedspread was still around the baby.
The baby was dead at this stage.
My mother came into the room. Ned my brother came into the bedroom at this stage. My mother said that we’d bury the body in the field, the rest of us said we’d throw it into the sea.
Myself and Ned went out to the back yard.
We got a blue manure bag similar to the one shown me today by Detective Garda John O’Sullivan. We got a big stone which we dug up, and we put it into the bag. I stayed in the yard and Ned went into the house. I then went up to the back door. The light was on in the back kitchen.
Ned came out to the back kitchen with Kathleen and they had the baby wrapped up in a newspaper and a clear plastic bag and a brown shopping bag similar to the two bags shown to me by Detective Garda O’Sullivan.
I held the manure bag and Ned put the baby’s body which I saw was a baby boy into the manure bag.
I got a piece of binder twine off a bale of hay in the shed and I tied the top of the bag down about half ways. Ned put it into the boot of our Ford Fiesta car and I sat in the front passenger seat. We didn’t know where we would go at that time.
It was about 4.30 am Wednesday morning we drove into Tralee. We went down by the Dingle bridge outside Tralee. We stopped after passing the bridge and Ned took out a map.
We decided to drive down to Dingle.
We went over the mountain road. We went through one village on the way and when we got into Dingle we turned right and we continued straight on until we came to a bridge about a mile from the town. We continued straight on for about seven or eight miles.
We were near the sea then and Ned took the bag with the body in it and he crossed over a field and I saw him throwing the bag containing the baby’s body into the sea.
The sun was just rising in the sky then.
I had no watch on me and I don’t know what time [it was].
We came back to Tralee by the same road. We got petrol in Tralee at Horan’s garage. We drove home then. I had my breakfast and milked the cows and went to the creamery.
We tried to keep it all quiet and it looks like we didn’t succeed.
Joanne Hayes said:
My mother and all the lads at home were upset about the first baby, but they accepted it and they decided to help me rear it. They were all very upset when I became pregnant again and I was thoroughly and absolutely ashamed of myself and I tried to hide it. I wore tight clothes and I tried not to let it show.
On the 12–13 April 1984, I was at home in the farmhouse in my own room. The baby, Yvonne, was in the cot. Sometime during the night I started to go into labour and a baby boy was born. I was in my own bed, in my own room, in the old farmhouse.
My Auntie Bridie Fuller was present at the birth and delivered the baby.
Michael, my brother, was in the house at the time.
The baby was alive and crying and my Auntie Bridie placed him at the end of the bed.
She left the room to make a pot of tea and I got up and went to the toilet. On the way back to the bedroom I picked up the white bath brush and I went to the cabinet in the kitchen and picked up the carving knife with the brown timber handle.
These are the items I have been shown here today by Detectives Garda Smith and Coote.
I went back to the bedroom and I hit the baby on the head with the bath brush. I had to kill him because of the shame it was going to bring on the family and because Jeremiah Locke would not run away with me and live with me.
The baby cried when I hit it and I stabbed it with the carving knife on the chest and all over the body. I turned the baby over and I also stabbed him in the back. The baby stopped crying after I stabbed it.
There was blood everywhere on the bed and there was also blood on the floor. I then threw the knife on the floor.
My mother, Auntie Bridie, Kathleen my sister and my two brothers Ned and Mike ran into the bedroom.
I was crying and so was my mother, my sister Kathleen and my Auntie Bridie.
I told them I would have to get rid of the body of the baby and then my two brothers said they would bury it.
I told them they would have to take away the baby from the farmyard and they said they would.
Everyone was panicking at this stage.
The boys then brought in a white plastic bag and they put the baby into it and then they put this bag into a turf bag similar to the one Detectives Smith and Coote showed me earlier on this evening at the station.
The boys then left in our own car with the baby. I heard the car leaving the farmyard.
I was feeling sick and depressed and upset. Soon afterwards the afterbirth came and I put it into a brown bucket beside the bed. I then changed the sheets and I put the bloody sheets on the floor until the following day.
I then took my baby Yvonne into my bed and Bridie remained on in the house.
All the others left and went to our cottage about a hundred yards away.
I got up around 5 am and I took the brown bucket with the afterbirth in it and I went out the front and I put the afterbirth into the old hay beside the well. I went back up to the house and I went to bed again.
I woke up again at about 7.30 am and my brother Michael was back in the house again. I started to clear up my bedroom after that. I gathered up all the sheets that had blood on them, and the brown-handled carving knife and the white bath brush.
I washed the knife and the brush and put them back in their proper places. I then washed the sheets. Since the night that I killed my baby there was never any talk about it in the house. When the body of the baby was found at Cahirciveen I knew deep down it was my baby.
I was going to call him Shane.
I am awful sorry for what happened, may God forgive me.
Kathleen Hayes said:
Joanne was in her bedroom with Yvonne. My Aunt Bridie was also in bed. I went to Joanne’s room and she asked me to change Yvonne’s nappy and get her ready for bed. Joanne was standing beside the bed and Yvonne was down on the bed.
I asked my brother Mike who was standing at the door of Joanne’s bedroom to hold the baby for a few minutes while I was getting her clothes in the kitchen. When I returned with the baby’s clothes, Mike went to bed. The bedroom is next to Joanne’s.
My mother went to bed almost immediately after Mike, and Joanne went out the front door. She told me ‘I am better off out in the fresh air. I’m walking around all night.’
I knew she was pregnant but I thought she was about seven months pregnant.
When I had finished getting Yvonne ready for bed I put her into Joanne’s bed. I then went out the front door at about 12.30 am on Friday 13 April 1984.
I called Joanne. The light outside the front door was on. I could not see her, but she answered my call. She said ‘I am all right. I’ll be in, in a minute.’
She came in at about 1.15 am, and at this time I was lying inside on Joanne’s bed with Yvonne.
I heard Joanne in the kitchen and then I heard her going to the bathroom and locking the door of the bathroom. After about a quarter of an hour she came out of the bathroom.
I had gone from the bedroom to the kitchen and I was talking to Joanne for a minute in the kitchen. She went to bed before me.
When she had left the kitchen I saw drops of blood on the kitchen floor near the hot press.
I then went to Joanne’s bedroom. She said to me ‘I had a heavy period’ and asked me for some towels. I told her I had none.
It was about 1.45 am at this time.
I lay down on the mattress on the floor and Joanne was in bed and Yvonne was inside [sic] her in the bed.
At about 2 am on 13/4/84 Joanne called me and asked me if I was asleep. I answered her.
She said ‘I think I am having a baby.’
I got up and I
called my Aunt Bridie who came up to Joanne’s bedroom. Bridie then called Mom. My brother Mike who is sleeping in the same room as Mom also got up. I took Yvonne from Joanne’s bed and put her into her cot. She was asleep when I put her into her cot.
Joanne was having labour pains and Aunt Bridie went to assist Joanne in having the baby. My mother and brother Mike were present in the room when the baby was born.
The baby was crying after birth.
It was a baby boy.
Joanne was upset when the baby was born and she was crying.
I said the baby was ‘a fine little lad’.
My Aunt Bridie cut the umbilical cord with a scissors. She placed the baby at the end of the bed on the bed clothes. I went to the kitchen and got a basin of luke-warm water and gave it to my Aunt Bridie. She washed the baby and washed Joanne. There was blood on the sheets on the bed.
My mother, my brother Mike was also present when the baby was born.
My mother was upset and she said ‘One of his children was enough to have,’ meaning Jeremiah Locke.
I took the basin of water down to the kitchen and when I returned Aunt Bridie was gone to her room and my mother and Mike were in the room with Joanne and the new baby.
Joanne was crying and was crouched over the baby in the bed in a kneeling position and she was choking the baby with her two hands.
She was shaking all over when she was doing this and the baby was screeching while she was choking it. No-one tried to stop her from doing this to the baby.
Joanne asked me to go down to the kitchen to get the carving knife from the drawer in the cabinet. I got the knife for her and I handed her the knife.
Joanne then stabbed the baby with the point of the carving knife in the chest about six or seven times. She was in a temper when she was stabbing the baby.
I have been shown a carving knife ‘Prestige’ make by Detective Garda Smith and I now identify the knife as being the knife that I handed to my sister Joanne when she stabbed the baby in the bedroom on Friday morning 13 April 1984 at approximately 2.45 am.
My mother, my brother Mike and my Aunt Bridie and myself were present in the room when Joanne was stabbing the baby with the carving knife.
A Woman to Blame Page 8