“The pressure of writing about his own people in a small country place, and they could walk into the pub. The writing of John B Keane’s masterpiece took its toll, too, on the playwright – the emotional strain of immersing himself in the headspace of a murderer while he hammered away on his typewriter above his pub in Listowel and, of course, having to pick at a story that was close to real-life events on his doorstep. What’s it all about?”Ī clipping from the Cork Examiner in 1958 reporting the death of Kerry farmer Maurice Moore. Walk down a mile of any road in rural Ireland and there’ll be something terrible happened over land. "It’s not fair to say that it only happens in Reamore and a small part of Kerry," says Keane. There had even been a previous murder over land about a mile away, and Moss Moore's brother had found the body. Keane says there had been rows going on it the area for many years before the killing. “When you meet him, he’s such a nice man." “When I interviewed him about seven or eight years ago, he was a bit antagonistic towards me until I explained to him that I wasn't sure whether his uncle did it or not,” says Keane. He now owns the disputed half acre of land his uncle and Moore squabbled over, and is one of the contributors to the documentary. To this day, Foley’s nephew, John Foley – who brought a court injunction, which failed, trying to stop The Field movie from screening 30 years ago – claims his uncle is innocent of the murder. Four years after Moore’s murder, Foley dropped dead on the roadway beside his house. The local community passed their own judgement. When a file was prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions, the DPP decided it wasn’t strong enough to bring a conviction. The gardaí had no evidence, however, to pin the murder on him. An impromptu wake was held at his house, which scuppered any chance of harvesting useful evidence.Īt first, Foley – who had scratch marks on his face, which he claimed he got from the horns of a bull – refused to go into garda barracks for questioning, but cycled a few days later into Listowel for interrogation. The corpse was only 35 yards from Moore’s house. Nine days after disappearing, Moore’s body was found under a ledge in a stream overgrown with rushes. Graffiti was daubed at the local creamery calling for a boycott of him. Cameras were such a novelty at the time that you can see local gardaí grinning giddily in the pictures. Photojournalists took snaps of the search parties. Locals reported to the gardaí that Moore had been murdered, not missing.Ī search ensued. On Thursday, November 6, 1958, Moore disappeared after a night playing cards in a neighbour’s house. Ominously, before their case was to be heard in a Tralee courtroom in December 1958, Foley said to a neighbour there would only be one man around for the case. Moore took a court action so the fence would be moved back indefinitely.īilly Keane at the site of the dispute for The Real Field documentary. Moore felt the fence was encroaching on his land so he moved it. They met daily at the local creamery and played cards with each other – usually Forty-Fives – at night-time.ĭan Foley worried his cattle were wandering away from his house towards the bog so he put down a boundary fence along the sliver of land between his land and Moore’s. As farmers with small holdings in a tight-knit community, they worked together cutting turf and saving hay. Moore was 12 years younger, a bachelor living alone with two dogs for company Foley lived with his wife and her brother. It has always nagged away at me.”ĭan Foley and Moss Moore were neighbours and friends in Reamore, which is about 15 miles from Listowel. There’s elements of a whodunnit in the documentary, but it’s the tragedy that takes over. There was so many people affected by it, especially the Foleys. The consequences of what happened up there in Reamore went way beyond just the murder. “It always bothered me about it – the fact that Dan Foley had such a terrible end. “I was always interested in the murder case because I felt there was so many loose ends. “People still talk about it,” says Billy Keane, eldest son of John B Keane and narrator of the documentary.
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