Years of intrigue and jealousy over ownership of the Daly farm ended in a killing , report Diarmaid MacDermott and Niamh Nolan.
The killing of elderly Kerry farmer Paddy Daly by his brother Sean on the family farm seven years ago was the culmination of years of family intrigue and jealousy which mirrored, according to prosecuting counsel, Mr Denis Vaughan Buckley, the script of John B. Keane's The Field.
Paddy was hit with an iron bar by his brother Sean, and Eugene Daly then threw his uncle's body down a 22 foot deep well and covered it with stones and plastic sheeting.
Sean Daly, who killed his brother in January, 1996, died himself in 2000. Two previous trials involving his son Eugene were aborted, once in April 1998 when a jury failed to reach a verdict and again in February 2001 when the judge discharged the jury after alleged interference.
The Dalys had worked a substantial farm near Killarney, Co Kerry, for over 100 years when passions aroused by family disputes finally erupted and led to the killing of Paddy Daly. Sean and Paddy Daly's father had returned from the US to farm the 105-acre holding on good land at Dooneen, Kilcummin, five miles from Killarney.
Sean, the elder of the two Daly brothers, would have expected to inherit the farm but on the death of his mother it was discovered she had left the land to Paddy. The Dalys' mother did not get on with Sean's wife, Mary, the jury heard. Paddy - a "confirmed bachelor" - moved into the family house, while Sean and his wife and their two sons, Jim and Eugene, and daughters Margaret and Eileen, moved into a smaller house with no running water or bathroom in the 1960s.
Sean continued to work the farm and the two brothers came to an arrangement whereby they shared the profits. However, the arrangement did not always go smoothly and there were disputes over the running of the farm and issues such as whether a second bull should be bought when they already had one bull.
Matters came to a head when Sean received a solicitor's letter in January, 1996 telling him to stay away from Paddy's house.
The court heard that Eugene Daly was asked during an interview with gardaí how did "things come to this". He replied: "Just years and years of troubles over money and the land. Dad was afraid Paddy would sell and the land would be lost. It got out of hand."
Det Supt John O'Mahony said Daly made a statement at Killarney Garda station on February 8th, 1996, in which he said "there was bad blood between Paddy and ourselves".
"Dad said if he didn't agree with us he (Sean Daly) would finish him off," the accused said. He said he understood this meant his father would "kill him, waste him, rub him out". Asked if he agreed with this, Daly replied: "Yes, I know it's total madness."
Det Supt O'Mahony said that Eugene Daly told gardaí that he and his father went into Paddy's house and his father said to Paddy that he didn't like the way Paddy was "going on" and there would be trouble if he didn't stop fighting. His uncle told them to "get lost" and leave him alone and his father said: "I'll fix you." Daly said his father was in a temper. He saw his father picking up a brown bar from the tool room and he went up to Paddy who was facing away from him.
"Dad hit Paddy on the back of the head with the bar. Paddy slumped to the ground. Dad then hit him a few times when he was on the ground," Eugene said.
Asked if anything had been said, Eugene said: "Paddy just said 'What', startled like, just before he got the first belt. He lay in a heap on the grass. There was blood trickling from his head.
"I went over to Paddy. I kicked him a number of times just to make sure he was dead," the accused added.
Daly was asked when he knew his uncle was dead and he replied: "I presumed when I was dragging him and there was no noise out of him."
He said that his father then told him to tidy up and he dragged his uncle's body down to the well by the shoulders. "I lifted up the cover of the well and let him fall in head first."
Daly said that he then filled the well with plastic and stones and put sand on top a few minutes after he put his uncle in it. He said he knew there was water at the bottom and added: "I heard a splash when I dropped him in." Insp Michael Donovan told the jury that he met the accused on February 9th. Eugene Daly told him that he had killed his uncle Paddy's dog and tried "to scare him" by painting slogans on the walls of his home, before finally plotting with his father to kill him.
"Dad and I thought about this a good while back. We'd have a better time and more money if Paddy wasn't around," he said.
"In the car we decided to get Paddy on his own and do a job on him," he said. "We had discussed where we'd get rid of him . . . we'd worked it out that we'd end Paddy and we did."
"We thought, who would blame his brother and nephew?" he continued. The accused said his uncle had threatened to take him and his father to court and called them a "bad lot" after speculating that Daly and his father were responsible for killing his dog.
"He kept on fighting about money and things," he said. On the day he was killed Mr Daly and his father confronted Paddy in his kitchen. "It started in the kitchen, after a while Paddy got hit by Dad with a bar, a long brown bar, about four feet long," he said. "He was trying to get away from us, we were angry, we were terrible looking," he continued.
"Paddy was afraid of us, he fell and Dad hit him a few more times on the top of the head. I had steel-toe-capped boots on, I was kicking him in the ribs and chest, I was kicking him to do Dad a favour," he continued."I just kicked him for a sick kind of thrill," he added.
"It felt great to get rid of Paddy . . . I threw Paddy in the well head first," he said. Afterwards, he cleaned up the scene and washed blood from the iron bar, which he also disposed of."I didn't think we'd get away with it, cos no-one gets away with that sort of stuff. It's better this way to tell the truth, it was a melodrama," he added.The Daly farm is now dilapidated with no one living in the former substantial house. Mrs Mary Daly and her children still live in the smaller house on the land which brought so much grief to one Kerry family.