Murder in Manhattan

By Jimmy O'Connell

On October 15th 1961 a dead body was found in Central Park, New York. It was the body of a white male in his mid-twenties. The police report stated that there were some bruises in the kidney area and massive trauma to the head.

It was believed to have been a robbery and the death was due to a combination of massive bruising and head trauma. The only identifying information came from a letter found on an inside pocket. It was a letter from what was supposed to have been his mother, a Mrs Kenny from Killdrought, Co Mayo. The contents of the letter revealed only the name of the family and the village, and gratitude expressed for dollars sent to help the purchase of a milking cow.

However, the level of investigation and follow-up was hampered by the high crime rate in New York and the obvious difficulties of regular communication between New York and a tiny village in Mayo.

A Dublin detective was tasked to act as liaison. His report concluded with some facts but nothing that would help solve the crime. When interviewed the local people of Killdrought could only say that the man was Thomas Kenny, who had emigrated to America in the late fifties. He had a brother, but there was confusion as to his whereabouts. Some said he was a farm labourer in Sligo, others that, no, it was Donegal, address unknown.

The body of Thomas Kenny was buried in a pauper’s grave in Manhattan. No one attended other than the funeral director and an Irish policeman who found the body and attended out of a sense of duty to a fellow countryman.

Forty years later, Eileen O’Hara, a single nurse, who had worked in the NHS in Birmingham, was now back living in retirement in Killdrought. According to a neighbour who had known the Kenny family, the murdered man’s brother was the same brother, who had been a farm labourer, and had just been admitted to the Belview Nursing Home in Killdrought. And according to this neighbour, a staff member of the nursing home was asked to make contact with Eileen O’Hara, requesting her to pay him a visit.

The neighbour claimed that this same Eileen had at one time been a girlfriend of the murdered man and had lost contact over the years but that someone in the village had helped them to find one another.

It is not clear if the neighbour was in attendance at that reunion, but it is said that the brother made a confession. That it was he who murdered his brother in Manhattan forty years earlier. It is said that on hearing the confession, Eileen grasped his hand, smiled, and thanked him.

Inklings Writing Group meets on Tuesdays at 11am and on Wednesdays at 7.30pm in the Annebrook House Hotel. Mullingar. Aspiring and fun writers welcome.