Kerry murder-suicide: 'Jamie lay there as if he was just asleep'

The 65-year-old farmer had been asked to check the bungalow by locals who were concerned they hadn’t seen Eileen O’Sullivan, 56, her partner Maurice ‘Mossie’ O’Sullivan, 63, or the couple’s 24-year-old son Jamie.

“The dog was in the doorway,” Mr O’Mahony recalled in an interview with the Irish Examiner at his farmhouse.

“He was growling and I was then getting a bit suspicious.

“It was like he was sort of protecting what was in there.” 

A short while earlier, Mr O’Mahony had been mowing his front lawn when he was asked to check up on the O’Sullivans, friends of his for more than 50 years.

Two female neighbours approached him over his stone wall and told him they thought something was wrong because the front door to the O’Sullivan’s bungalow was open, and had been for a while.

He brushed it off, suggesting they had gone away and simply left the door open.

But when they said all three cars were in the drive, he decided to get in his jeep and check it out.

“There must be some simple explanation for this,” he recalled.

“I didn't think about it. I expected to see Mossie going down the boreen.

“I drove over and parked where I always park.” 

Mr O’Mahony knocked on the door and called inside but there was no answer. Indeed, there was no sound from inside the house at all.

Brushing Henry, the terrier, aside gently, he eased himself inside.

“I looked into the kitchen. There was no one in the kitchen. I called out a few times.

“I just shouted hello. There was no radio, no nothing.” 

His mind was now racing.

“Going through my mind was, ‘is there something wrong here? Is there something wrong here?'

He paused briefly before he added: “I hadn’t a right feeling.” 

Slowly passing other rooms in the bungalow and peering into them, he eventually came to the first bedroom.

“The first room . . . Eileen was in there,” he said, his voice faltering and his head hanging into his left hand as he wiped his eyes.

“I found Eileen in her bedroom. She was on the bed. She was dead.

“It didn't look right. It didn't look right. She was on the bed.

“The covers weren’t over her. I called her name.

“I put my hand on her leg and it was cold and I walked away.” 

As he was about to leave Eileen’s room, one of the two neighbours who had alerted him appeared at the front door and pointed to Jamie’s room, telling him whose room it was.

“I just went into Jamie's room then and I knew, he was gone as well,” he said.

“Jamie looked to be lying there as if he was just asleep.

“Of course he wasn’t asleep because there was too much other evidence there.

“It didn’t look like there was a struggle.

“I knew things were really wrong then so I came out and said things aren't good here.” 

“I knew Jamie from when he was a child . . . and he's dead and there is blood and things like that, you just don't know what to do.

“Then you turn around and you come out.” 

He immediately phoned gardaí about what he had just found and he told them Mossie O’Sullivan was missing.

The Garda told him not to look for Mossie and to stay outside until gardaí got there.

A short time after gardaí arrived, Mr O’Sullivan’s body was found on land belonging to a UK-based neighbour whose house he was looking after.

“Someone was going to find them," Mr O'Mahony said.

“It just happened to be me. Thankfully it wasn’t a child.” 

Like everybody else in what is a close-knit farming community, he has no idea why Mr O’Sullivan would kill his family.

"It will take a smarter man than me to answer that,” he said.

“I wouldn't have a clue. I have spoken to the neighbours and they all say the same thing: of all people, you couldn't expect Mossie to do this and he was mad about Jamie.” 

He said when Jamie had started his apprenticeship at the famous container crane company, Liebherr in Killarney, his son would show him what he was working on.

And Mossie would then duly show it to Mr O’Mahony.

“He was very proud of him,” he said.

The last time he spoke to Mr O’Sullivan was Sunday evening.

He phoned him around 7.30pm to ask him again if he wanted to buy his collection of rare breed ewes.

Although Mr O’Sullivan sold Mr O’Mahony lambs every year, he had for the past few years been telling him he was thinking of giving up breeding because it was becoming too much for him.

“I used to buy sheep off him every year, so there was nothing unusual about the fact he sold me sheep recently,” he said.

“But the only thing that was unusual is that he had been saying for a year or two, he was thinking of getting out of breeding ewes because he is not able for them.

“And then he said to me when I bought the lambs, would I be interested in them.

“He rang me Sunday night and said ‘would you buy them’ and I said ‘I will’.

“And he said ‘fine, we’ll sort things out, and I’ll talk to you so’.

“He sounded fine. He was his normal self. The conversation lasted about half an hour.

“That’s the last time I spoke to him.

“I met him going down the road on Monday in passing. He was coming from the village and I was heading down. He flashed his lights. Typical Mossie.” 

He believes he may have been coming from either Lixnaw or from Ballinclogher, where he had sheep on a brother’s land.

Mr O’Sullivan had a number of rams, about 20 ewes – which he always hung onto – he would normally sell around 20 lambs a year.

“This year he decided to sell the ewes, but he had been threatening that with a few years,” Mr O’Mahony said.

“This was nothing new. This wasn’t a shot out of the blue because he said ‘I am not able for them’.

“You see he was pulling his leg a bit. He was walking a bit lame.” 

When reviewing everything over the past days, weeks, months and even years, it is still impossible to come up with an explanation for what happened at the O’Sullivan household on Monday.

“It is easy in hindsight. People are like that – people want to have a reason for everything but there seems to be no reason for this.

“You hear these things happen from time to time and they say, ‘oh sure, this is because that happened, or that is because this happened but like, I couldn’t come up with a reason.

“It will take a smarter man than me to come up with a reason.

“I don’t know – you couldn’t figure it out.

“We are at a complete loss.” 

Again he shakes his head in disbelief at what has happened.

“You just couldn't figure it out,” he said.

“It's not my job figuring things out like that, I'm only a farmer.

“But you definitely wouldn't expect Mossie to do anything like that.

“I know everyone says this kind of thing but definitely you just wouldn't expect it.” 

Given that nobody seems to have any idea why Mossie O’Sullivan could want to kill his own family, there remains a question about whether or not he could have done it on an impulse, for whatever reason.

Asked if O’Sullivan was an impulsive man, Mr O’Mahony shakes his head emphatically.

“Mossie was the type that would sit down and figure everything out and everything would be done proper,” he said.

“He would take time doing everything and there would be no rushing, no excitement and there would always be tomorrow.”