November 11

The disappearance of Moss Moore (46), a bachelor farmer from Reamore, north of Tralee, Co. Kerry. During the summer of that year, Moss Moore’s neighbour, Dan Foley, erected a fence on what he considered to be the natural boundary of his land on a bleak Kerry mountainside. Moore, however, was not happy. He accused Foley of encroaching on almost an acre of his ground and demanded that the fence be removed at once. Foley stood firm and they became bitter enemies. The pair proceeded to take legal action against one another and a date to hear the case was set for December at the district court in Tralee. But Moore was troubled. He told the Gardaí that Foley, a burly former IRA man in his sixties, known to have a violent temper, was stalking him and begged them to warn him off. The Gardaí declined. They told him that his row with Foley was a civil matter. After an extensive search, Moore’s body was recovered nine days later from a nearby riverbank, his hands up and his fists clenched to fight off his attacker and his face severely battered. The Garda investigation went nowhere. Foley’s wife declared that her husband had not left their house on the evening of the murder; no forensic evidence was uncovered; and, above all, the locals, though convinced of Foley’s guilt, remained silent. A file was sent to the DPP but no charges were laid against Dan Foley. Moss Moore remains the victim of an unsolved murder, a sordid story that inspired J.B. Keane’s classic The Field, first staged at the Olympia Theatre in November 1965.