IT'S a sensitive and tragic cold-case murder that has become part of the fabric of south Kerry. When five-day-old 'Baby John' washed up on a Kerry beach, his tiny body riddled with 28 stab wounds and his remains placed in a manure sack, nobody could have imagined how long it would take to solve the mystery of who he was. 

For almost 40 years, journalists and police suspected that the little boy must have been the product of incest or rape and speculated that a teenage mum may have given birth to him in secret. While some demanded justice for the child, many others believed the case should have been left to lie, and it was a regular occurrence that outsiders with questions to ask were made to feel distinctly unwelcome. 

So what has it been like for local reporters covering the case and what have they made of the recent developments that turned the spotlight on a well-known married couple, understood to be the parents of the child and who have vehemently denied his murder?

Nicola Tallant speaks with Sinead Kelleher, a journalist and photographer with The Kerryman, about living too close to a story.

Crime World, with Nicola Tallant, is a weekly Iri…