Murdered: The Baby on the Beach
In the rural Ireland of 1984, the murder of an unidentified infant begins a series of events, which eventually shine an
international spotlight on prejudice, ignorance and police corruption.
It’s April 1984 at a White Strand beach in Cahirciveen, county Kerry, the wildest and most western part of Ireland’s Atlantic
coast. After a newborn baby boy is found dead with twenty-four stab wounds, the local police (Gardai) begin a major enquiry.
Within hours, Joanne Hayes from the town of Abbeydorney approximately 50 miles away, who was known to have been
pregnant, is arrested along with members of her family. Under severe duress from detectives, the family confess to the
murder of the baby, and it’s disposal off Slea Head, a peninsula away from Cahirciveen. They later withdraw their confessions
when it becomes known that Joanne’s baby had been born on the family farm, had died shortly after birth, and had been
wrapped in a plastic bag and buried on the farm in secret.
Despite tests which show that the baby whose body was found on the farm had the same blood type, O, as Hayes and its
(married) father, Jeremiah Locke, and that the Abbeydorney baby had bloodtype A, Gardai propose the bizarre theory that
Joanne gave birth to both infants through a extraordinarily rare occurrence called heteropaternal superfecundation, where she
had become pregnant by two separate men simultaneously. They also claim that she murdered both of the babies.
What follows is a tragi-comic series of events during which Hayes is arrested for murder.
The entire story shines an uncomfortable spotlight on the treatment of women in Irish society against a backdrop of church
control, police corruption and heated national debates on abortion, contraception and divorce.