{"id":383089,"date":"2026-04-05T11:27:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T11:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/383089\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T11:27:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T11:27:11","slug":"gardai-submit-file-to-dpp-after-extensive-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/383089\/","title":{"rendered":"Garda\u00ed submit file to DPP after &#8216;extensive investigation&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Garda\u00ed have submitted an investigation file into the death of a newborn baby boy in Co Kerry in 1984 to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP.)<\/p>\n<p>The infant was discovered on the beach at White Strand, Caherciveen on April 14 1984 with 28 stab wounds.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">He was named as <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishexaminer.com\/maintopics\/kerry-babies_topic-2434307.html\"> Baby John <\/a> by the local undertaker at the time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">25-year-old Joanne Hayes from Abbeydorney was arrested in connection with the death.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">She and her family were accused of concealing the birth of a child.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Ms Hayes came under suspicion as she had been admitted as a patient at Tralee General Hospital on the day Baby John&#8217;s body was found.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">She had recently been pregnant but because there was no sign of her baby, leading detectives to wrongly believe she was Baby John&#8217;s mother.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Following statements made by her in Garda custody, she was charged with the murder of the Caherciveen baby.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The charge was later dropped after the baby she had given birth to had been found on the farm at the spot she had previously pinpointed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">She would receive a state apology in 2018 by then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The parents and murderer of Baby John were never identified.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">In a statement issued on Sunday, garda\u00ed said its Kerry division have completed what they say was an \u201cextensive investigation\u201d into the discovery of Baby John\u2019s body.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">A spokesperson said: \u201cAn Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na can confirm that an investigation file has been submitted to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cAn Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na has no further comment at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Garda\u00ed have submitted an investigation file into the death of a newborn baby boy in Co Kerry in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383090,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,49002,43],"class_list":["post-383089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kerry-babies","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}