A former partner of the American man questioned about the murder of Kerry farmer Michael Gaine expressed serious concern about his mental wellbeing and increasing paranoia after the 9/11 attacks in the US.
American woman Alicia Snow was involved in a relationship with Michael Kelley in the late 1990s and early 2000s and has two children with him.
Ms Snow told The Irish Times that Mr Kelley (53) suddenly became “very unstable” and increasingly paranoid after the September 11th, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks and began stockpiling supplies during their time together in Maine.
She described the change in him as “a total reversal to me”. Within three months, Ms Snow and her children moved out of the home they shared near the town of Swanville. They later separated and became estranged.
Mr Kelley, who moved to Kerry from the northeastern US state of Maine about seven years ago, was arrested on May 18th last by gardaí investigating the murder of Mr Gaine (56) before being released without charge.
Mr Gaine’s dismembered body was found the previous day in slurry spread on fields and in a slurry tank at his isolated farmyard 6km from Kenmare. He was last seen alive in a local shop in the town on March 20th.
Mr Kelley lived and worked on Mr Gaine’s farm. He has denied any role in his murder, claiming he is being framed by organised criminals.
Gardaí investigating the murder of Mr Gaine travelled to Maine last weekend to interview Ms Snow and to search for any clues to explain what might have happened to the farmer.
Ms Snow described her former partner as “hardworking” and “responsible” during their time living together on his mother’s farm in Swanville. Mr Kelley worked as a farmhand on a nearby farm among a variety of other jobs, including as a cook and a butcher in a local shop.
She said her then partner’s increasing paranoia after the 2001 attacks “surprised the hell out of me”.
Ms Snow, who is a qualified nurse, said Mr Kelley could be very sweet and was notably loyal but that he went through “bouts of intense paranoia”.
Others who knew him in Waldo County, where he lived in Maine, recalled his interest in conspiracy theories, including his fears about the Ku Klux Klan, the white supremacist group, and other groups of interest to conspiracy theorists.
Mr Kelley previously claimed to The Irish Times that he fled to and applied for asylum in Ireland as he feared he was being targeted by the KKK.
Ms Snow last spoke to Mr Kelley about 10 years ago when he came to her door saying a group called the Heaven and Earth Society were pursuing him.
The Irish Times put her concerns about Mr Kelley to him in an interview this week in Tralee, where he is now living.
Asked about his former partner’s belief that he may struggle with mental illness, Mr Kelley said he would leave people to make up their own minds.
“People need to judge for themselves; they need to judge from their own observations,” he said.
Asked about what those in Waldo County had said about his beliefs in conspiracy theories, Mr Kelley said people should decide for themselves.
“People need to judge for themselves – that’s the blanket answer for all these things people are saying about me,” he said.
Following the couple’s separation, Mr Kelley and Ms Snow were involved in a legal dispute over rights of access to their children.
A US judge concluded that Mr Kelley made “false accusations” claiming Ms Snow was “a witch” and “practises witchcraft on their children”. The judge also found that Mr Kelley’s ability to determine fact from fiction was “questionable”.
In his interview with this newspaper, Mr Kelley gave more detail about how he came to work on Mr Gaine’s farm.
He declined to answer any questions about the Garda investigation into the murder or his relationship with Mr Gaine as he said it might affect the investigation.
He said Mr Gaine offered him board and lodging at the old Gaine family farmhouse in return for doing farm work.
The American said he began working for Mr Gaine after he approached a number of farmers in the Kenmare area on New Year’s Day 2022 looking for farm work, having spent more than a year living in a camp at Scully’s Wood near Dromquinna outside Kenmare.
He said he moved to Kerry after he applied for asylum in Dublin and was transferred to Killarney where he lived with other men in accommodation provided by the State’s International Protection Accommodation Service.
He later left there and camped in Killarney National Park before he was ordered to leave by National Parks and Wildlife Service rangers.
Mr Kelley did a variety of casual jobs in Co Kerry, harvesting seaweed in Kenmare Bay for a man from Glenbeigh and cutting grass at an adventure centre at Blackwater.
Before moving to Mr Gaine’s old farmhouse, Mr Kelley set up a camp at Scully’s Wood and bought a solar panel and battery to charge his headlamp and mobile phone. He spent much of the Covid pandemic living in the wood before deciding on New Year’s Day 2022 to look for farm work.
He said he convinced Mr Gaine to give him a job after he repaired Mr Gaine’s quad bike and he moved into the old farmhouse.
Mr Gaine paid him €100 a week to help with the farm work, including repairing machinery, bringing fodder to cattle and fetching sheep from the mountain. He brought him into Kenmare once a week to buy supplies.
Mr Kelley said the money was “more than enough for me to live on and I was actually able to save money”.
The old farmhouse had no electricity but it had a stove. He described it as “a serious upgrade on living in the woods”.
