Gerry O’Carroll, former murder squad garda involved in Kerry Babies case, dies after short illness

Retired garda and former member of the unit known as the murder squad Gerry O’Carroll has died in his native Co Kerry.

A former detective inspector, Mr O’Carroll, a native of Listowel, was involved in dozens of investigations into serious crime during his career, many of them high profile.

He was also part of the 1984 inquiry into what became known as the Kerry Babies case. For decades, he persisted in his stance that Joanne Hayes from Abbeydorney was the mother of two babies, including “Baby John” who was found dead on White Strand, outside Cahersiveen, in April 1984.

[ Q&A: What is the ‘Kerry babies’ case? ]

Following DNA evidence he finally accepted she could not have been the mother.

London Letter: Mayoral races could determine if Rishi Sunak sinks or swims

---

Laura Kennedy: It’s hard to put my finger on what’s different about the atmosphere in this gym

---

Losses narrow at country’s most expensive day school

---

Hot school meals: A close look at the ingredients list is not pretty. This is industrial food

---

Mr O’Carroll, who was in his early 80s, was living in Listowel at the time of his death. He was also a writer and frequently contributed to broadcast discussions. He died on Tuesday in University Hospital Kerry Tralee after a short illness.

He is survived by his wife Kathleen, sons Conor, Philip and Brian, and daughters Margaret and Eleanor. A cremation service will take place on Saturday at Mount Jerome Crematorium, Dublin.

Mr O’Carroll last August spoke to The Irish Times following the conviction of Noel Long for the murder of Nora Sheehan over 40 years earlier. Long (74), of Maulbawn, Passage West, Co Cork, was convicted of murdering Ms Sheehan (54) between June 6th and June 12th, 1981.

Her body was found by forestry workers at the Viewing Point, Shippool Woods, in Cork, six days after she went missing. The 42-year period between the killing and conviction is the longest in the history of the State in a murder case and for any Garda cold case review.

Long, in a hearing that took place before the trial proper began, claimed he was beaten during Garda questioning and his head forced into a large jar he was told contained body parts. Mr O’Carroll, who was part of the murder squad that investigated the killing at the time, dismissed the allegations as “extraordinary”, “nonsense” and “beyond comprehension”.

“I was only a wet day in the murder squad at the time, I’d only just been transferred there,” he said. “And that was before there was any allegations, I mean afterwards there was allegations of the heavy gang. But Noel Long wasn’t even arrested at the time, he was free to go.”

Mr O’Carroll also dismissed suggestions – put forward by Long’s defence counsel, Michael Delaney – of a “so-called heavy gang within the murder squad”, which was in operation at the time. However, two years ago he accepted he went to every means to secure convictions for murders.

In 2022, RTÉ broadcast its Crimes and Confessions series, which focused on miscarriages of justice after alleged Garda intimidation and forced confessions through violence. Mr O’Carroll set out a conversation he said he had with the then Garda Commissioner at the scene of the murder in October 1976 of Garda Michael Clerkin by the IRA.

The commissioner exhorted Mr O’Carroll and his colleagues to use “every means at your disposal ... do whatever you have to do ... to stop it [terrorism] and bring the people that do outrage like this to justice”, according to Mr O’Carroll.

“I certainly took his words literally,” said Mr O’Carroll, but denied the existence of a “heavy gang” who specialised in extracting confessions in the 1970s and 1980s.

Mr O’Carroll also previously said he recited the rosary with John Shaw, an act that brought about his confession to murdering two women in the 1970s.

English national Shaw (77) is Ireland’s longest-serving inmate and has been in prison since 1976, when both he and another English man, Geoffrey Evans, were arrested for the abduction, rape, torture and murder of Elizabeth Plunkett (22) in Wicklow and Mary Duffy (24) in Mayo that year.

Shaw and Evans were both given life sentences at the Central Criminal Court in 1978. Evans died in 2012.

Mr O’Carroll said: “When I interviewed him [Shaw] I felt this man is very disturbed ... and I said, ‘John, we’ll say a prayer together’, that was all ... It wasn’t the full rosary now, but I said we’ll say the Hail Mary ... And the next thing he saw what I’d like to put as the error of his ways and he broke down and wept and he said, ‘Yes, I’ve done terrible things and I’ve killed Mary Duffy and I killed Elizabeth Plunkett’.”

• Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
• Find The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
• Our In The News podcast is now published daily – Find the latest episode here