My name is Jeff Powers. A few years back, my late father, Barney, and I purchased a set of items at auction related to a man named Thomas McKeever. He was a first cousin of my maternal grandmother and had been killed during the war of independence. Among the items we bought were an Irish volunteer membership card, a letter from a local IRA commandant and an old photograph of Thomas's grave. Before my father died, he researched more about Thomas.

I popped round to see my mother, who was soon, well, flabbergasted. I shall bring back memories now that I had long forgotten, but happily, can you read what Bernie wrote about? Because I'm Tommy, a chemist. And Dunmore County Galway. Methodical caucuses killed, OK, of course, black and Tans, he says. Yeah, can you make us the last? No can do that, can you read? I can know what?

Tarred and feathered. Oh my God.

My father knew Thomas had died violently well and assumed it was this form of punishment and public humiliation, which dates back to pre Renaissance times, hotter, smeared on the body and feathers thrown on that scary.

Did that happen often?

It was towards the end of the war of independence or the thaton war, I think, as was often called between 1919 and 1921, as the authority of the British was undermined in Ireland, political resistance was accompanied by a guerrilla war fought against the crown forces. The response from London was more troops and an auxiliary force known as the black intends to combat the flying columns of the IRA. It's just kind of inexplicable in terms of the context. That's historian Cormac Kookery for a guy who wasn't a prominent or active Republican to be subjected to the death that he did is very unusual.

Thomas McIver's death in Dunmore County Galway happened on the morning of May the 20th, 1921, seven weeks before the War of Independence came to an end. His death has never been fully explained, and there are two versions of what happened immediately afterwards. You know, he wasn't forgotten, but his loss was felt most deeply by the woman he loved.

She never recovered. Deep down, you don't recover from things like that. Thomas was born in 1884 and grew up in the coastal town of Kinsale in County Cork comes his father was man. This is Jimmy Macan. He was stationed in Kinsale, now 103.

Jimmy was just a wee boy when Thomas was killed in 1921.

I was born on the 25th of March 1916.

And reassure me, like me, Jimmy is related to the McIver's. He's recalling Thomas's mother, Mary.

You met her in infancy and unable to remarry dressmaking at a time when none of them are up there.

You can tell Jimmy witnessed the war of independence as a child, although it's almost 100 years ago. He has strong images of those days.

I remember the black and tan and that kind of thing here. He said that burning, burning. Another brother of mine were going to school down near the town, going to school one morning and.

Tange Paschke Patiño to Dublin roar and nourish, and we counted 16 Irish. Actually, I think it must be going away, actually leaving the country.

At the time they were leaving the Athlone barracks just months after Thomas McKeever had been killed, Thomas was well educated and qualified as a chemist. He was in his mid 30s when the War of Independence broke out in 1919. Although his father was a policeman, a member of the RISC, Thomas had joined the Irish volunteers in 1914. In fact, one of the items we bought auction was this ugly inherent registration card. Cobalt blue cover about the size of an old paper driver's license, confirming his Republican sympathies.

My mother remembers Thomas's sisters, but their brother was never mentioned.

I had met two of his sisters, Brady and Babe. One was a nurse and working in the States. And the other babe was a chemist next door to her. And the mother had little shop.

A chemist like Thomas had been. Yeah. And she was married and living there.

I think her husband was a fisherman and they never once mentioned their eldest brother, Thomas.

Never. I never knew the man existed and neither did my mother. And she would have been very close to this family as well. She loved these cousins, always talked about them, but never talked about those.

It was a long time before the family did speak about him.

Could be good. But a year after World War I, because before anything about the other. This is Jimmy Mackan that didn't talk about me that time. I remember her mother saying anything much about her. You? No.

Yesterday, in October 1920, Thomas had moved from Kinsale to Dunmore to start work at Frederick Staffords chemist.

Like much of Ireland at that time, a virulent and hostile climate prevailed in Galway in the summer of 1920.

You see the confiance escalating and increasing the Galway historian Cormac Kookery. But you also begin to see a massive backlash from the ground forces in the winter of 1921.

You want the IRA in many areas sort of collapse. It's whittled down to a hard core and their supporters who are active. Now, this doesn't mean that support for the republic is diminished and that was understood by the ground forces. But at the same time, it meant that the ground forces could travel and behave as they wanted and go away.

Soon after moving to Dinmore, Thomas McKeever fell in love with a local woman, Tess Murray. She was a wonderful woman. Tess went on to marry and have children. After Thomas was killed, she was a teacher. This is Tessa's daughter, Louis. She trained in Curser in Dublin. She had a lovely voice. He was supposed to be have been a good singer, too. Yeah, they used to say duets. You know, he was a little bit older than your mother is, and he was about ten years older.

You mature. He was a well-dressed man. They used to Rosabeth is loved by the church and meet there in the morning. And he'd go to the town, as we used to say, and open up the shop, and she'd get out her bike and she'd go out to balance out the road, to open up the school that she was in.

And he was in the shop during the day. And then afterwards he'd come down to where she lived with her mother and they'd go for a walk after tea. They were very happy with their romance, was serious.

By early 1921, Thomas and Tess were engaged to be married only months after meeting and they went to Dublin to buy the ring.

And this will be a very interesting Louis searches for something in an old envelope there.

It's bizarre to hear their voices and words of grafted truth. And there is great celebration back home when they arrived.

It's a gold band, it's got it for small diamonds I that's Tess's granddaughter, Lui's daughter Tessa, to get S.R.O. and it's a very delicate looking ring, quite small.

Her fingers were obviously quite small, too. How does it make you feel to to have it on your finger? It's very hard to describe my feeling. I feel a kinship with the. At the time THOMASIN tests returned from Dublin with their engagement ring, McQuery says the War of Independence was taking another turn in East Galway, but the spring of 1921 IRA activity increases again.

There's less crime for violence. Now, whether that's a question of increasing discipline or that the crime forces themselves have become intimidated and are afraid to travel even in large numbers, we never know as a result. A curfew was in operation and done more. No civilians were allowed on the streets between eight p.m. and four a.m. We're here and concentrate on more. Thomas was living in lodgings at the scene here, and the left is Lenthall. That's Tessa's son, Brian.

There was the building, supposed to be a guest house as such, and he was staying there. The couple had a routine they followed to ensure that each was safe. During those troubled times, he could wave a hanky out from the window of his room at the back of the house and from the far side of the town across the river, our garden of the baker was high up. My mother would go up there to see and he waved and she thought he was in.

She knew that he was safe.

Thomas and Tess went through this same routine on the evening of the 19th of May 1921.

There was a curfew on at the time and there would be able to make the most of the time that had there might be a bed, maybe a couple of minutes over and above. But she was happy that he was safe that night. Even now, almost a century later, Tess's son Brian finds it hard to describe the events that followed the most, McKeever was taken out in the middle of the night and tied down to the vegetable already and dragged out on the gravel road for about nine and a half and put up against a wall and shot dead before he was shot.

Jim, Nestor's grandfather, was staying at the same boarding house that night, but grandfather must have witnessed it, but he was reluctant to speak about these things. He was in the house at the time, you know, because I'm sure it was a terrible commotion and they unceremoniously dragged him out of bed and there were unemployed people. They usually make plenty of noise and most of the time they were high or high.

An Uncle Thomas wasn't tarred and feathered, as my father believed, but his death is distinguished by the gruesome and spiteful nature of his execution.

Even in a country like over, where there were significant numbers of killings, significant numbers of atrocities, the nature of the death of Thomas McKeever stands out the sheer violence inflicted upon him in his last moments and his last hours, the lack of a clear motive, why he was a target to make the death of Thomas McKeever a case that stands out that horrifies to this day.

There is no disputing that Thomas was abducted and killed that night, but who did it and why?

The first official version of the killing came from a military inquiry held instead of an inquest by the crown forces in Choom on the day after his death. Almost all the official records, newspapers and intelligence reports refer back to this. Historian Patrick O'Rourke says these inquiries were not all they seemed.

These inquiries, it's not like we would have today where you have a civilian judge and you have, you know, members, your peery members of the public coming in. The inquiry is totally held by it's presided over by three British officers, all the witnesses coming in and out, their comrades in arms in the Odyssey. And they're not asked for any taxing questions. So there is any number of things in these British inquiries that are really doubtful. And again, it's like, you know, security forces tend to be very conservative.

And when they're under pressure, they start breaking the rules. Discipline goes out the window and none of them want to be sent down for us. They would all cover up for each other. And certainly that happened to a very large extent in the war of independence. The official version is not the only one, however, and it might not stand up under closer examination. The National Archives in London sent me a copy of the official inquiry. It states that a witness who'd been sleeping in the same room as Thomas in a separate bed was woken at two a.m. to see three men around McIver's bed, one of whom was wearing motor goggles.

They were dressed in civilian clothes and one of them carried a flashlight. They said, Come on, get up. McKeever wanted to know why, but they simply pulled off his bedclothes, that witness has never been fully identified and some of that last sentence has been scribbled out and rephrased. The witnesses then supposed to have told the inquiry that Thomas was taken out of the house and he heard shots fired about 15 minutes afterwards and did not see McGyver again until he discovered his dead body lying on the roadside about 830 AM.

The inquiry then states how it was the police, the RISC, who found Thomas's body, which was lying on its side with the hands crossed on the road at Cleanin, a piece of cardboard with the words convicted spy traders beware. Executed by order of Iori was tied to the body. The witness and the police both agreed that the deceased had no enemies in the area. Medical evidence was given to the effect that the deceased had 10 separate bullet wounds distributed over the jaw right eyebrow.

And in the region of the Loyn, the skull was fractured.

On the left side, the court of inquiry found that Thomas was willfully murdered by some person or persons unknown, a statement that claims he was shot as a spy by the IRA.

But locals in Dunmore tell a very different version of events.

This is Castle Castle firing. What's the name of the village of the. He was shot.

I'm at the location where Thomas's body was found less than a mile outside town.

And with Tessa's son, Brian Raud goes to Cairo from the then on to Ballandean and Roger Clemens, there's a memorial marking the spot with the stone right at the side of the road where he was shot, where his body was left to the people of the director. Why do you think of the respective names? And this is the place where Tessa's dream of a life with Thomas came to an end. Did you ever walk around long here with your mother?

No, no, no, no. I don't think I ever saw my mother coming through when my father was born and raised. Just up there for those trees are also with me.

At the place he was killed is Mary O'Dowd. Just stopped until a couple hundred yards. Locals I've spoken to say his body could not have been found by the authorities the next day.

And he heard the truck coming out and he heard the shouting because it simply wasn't there. My father was very nosy. I think now I think back. But anyway, he was 19 at the time. He came along all inside the wall there. There was no houses here and it came as far as here. And he had harbored life and he changed and he saw him. He was stripped to the waist and he was taken up and he had a he had a black on him with a string around it saying I'm a traitor.

My father knew just the Black and Tans because it was a lorry. And he said there must have been drunk because they were shouting and roaring, but he was tied to the Murray face down on the road. How does he know that the way he see his face, his head was all disfigured. And you say the lorry confirmed that it would have been dead.

So a person, the lorry person, he continued down there and he went to Joe Tracy, which was his friend over the road, and the two of them stole the body. The ropes were whatever tied in with was thrown there. And would anybody could anybody else have been driving a lorry? No, because I wasn't sure in those years there was no lorries out here, no cars, and more like one or two.

Mary explains the huge risk her father, Sam Spiegel, took during that night under curfew when he discovered the body and moved it the night it happened.

They carried him as he was. I don't know how they carried him. There was a meal here at that stage man's meal. They brought him up here and they put him into it and no garlic burden.

So if the body had been removed that night by Mary's father, how could an inquiry have been held into his death?

But he was dead. And early that morning, the news reached Tess.

These images that Miss Tessa's daughter Louise, morning after he was killed, coming out from us. She knew that something had happened and she was Martin Green that lived off the rails. And he came over to sympathise with her and tell her that he was dead and that he had been killed during the night.

Mr Green and Buttercup on the terrace would say, no. I said, you hear the news that the speaker was hanged, drawn and quartered.

Dunmore was rife with rumor about how Thomas was killed. And at the moment, Tess heard the news of her fiance's death. An extraordinary thing happened. When she got the news, she lost her hearing straightaway. Just to shock the situation, at first, he was very loathe to talk and think about that. Yeah, yeah. The effect of this news on Tassie's hearing would remain with her for the rest of her life.

The days after Thomas's death were confusing not only who killed him, but where did the body go? Was there a funeral are just a secret burial in those intriguing daylight hours. We can't be sure who was informed and what decisions were made. They couldn't openly bring the body to the church, but it seems they managed to give Thomas a Christian burial despite the risks the following night that Dr. Grief and they came back and brought him.

They continued on from here across the river. Yeah. And they brought him an issue to galvanize. And they made four holes. And the sheets are galvanized and tied in with ropes. One of them one on one side and through the ropes across. But they brought him to the graveyard and the broken bones, the other across the town, they would have carried him. Therefore, there would be two or three months.

I don't know. Tessa's son Brian says the only other people at the burial in those early hours were tests.

And the local priest, Dean McCann, remember her telling me this is a long time after the only ones that went to the funeral herself and the priest, because I remember dad said he can go to bed at all at night because they worked overnight and he went straight into work the next morning because he was a trainee baker. He could have been shot. The children could have been shot if they found out who did it. I used to have nightmares about it when he used to tell us what more young to think the thing that was.

Wouldn't they tied him face down to the road? Such was the confusion at that time that newspaper reports had suggested the body was taken to conceal. The Dunmore Parish Register contains details in Latin of the burial, but that entry wasn't made until the 22nd of May Cougar's Corpus de SAC as Tisbury began the process of grieving her loss.

The question remains, why had Thomas been singled out for such a gruesome death?

Jimmy Mackan five years old when Thomas was murdered, provides some insight into those last few hours.

Earlier in the day back in Canada, combing through the town where we were measured to be in must be in Ontario from where nearby he was shouting at the blackened time to get out of the country. National political map Harimoto No, no, no.

Thomas was reported to have been a member of the Galaga around this time and a keen Irish language enthusiast who was an ardent patriot and he won't be showing he could have done that in our country.

The historian Patrick O'Rorke understands how Thomas could have become a target. You have to remember that the majority of the British forces and in particular guys like the black and tan and exhilarates were involved in a lot of these revenge killings would have been true. The First World War were shell shocked. Their nerves were already at them, but they were used from that conflict of knowing where the enemy was. The enemy had a uniform, but or even going down to the local pub for a drink and try and relax.

You know, they were worried. Is the pub door going to open any second and will be assassinated? Tess's family had a Republican background.

My mother herself, before she met Thomas McKeever, she had a brother. He was the first person that was just outside the GPO.

Could that have been why Thomas was singled out?

It's clear that McKeever is is is a Republican. And there has been an allegation that the spy label that was placed on McIver's body was one that had been used by the IRA themselves and the shooting of a genuine suspected spy or an informer, Thomas Hanon, or else that it was a label with the same wording. And what that would have been doing, if that is true, is the British sending a message to those in the know when the IRA who deal with intelligence matters, saying, you shot one of ours, we've got one of yours back and it's sending a kind of coded message just to those people who would be involved and.

Another theory is that Thomas's death could have been a form of punishment against tests. I remember hearing that there was some black and tan at the time that it is I and my mother.

But I would say that was only to test not only had to live with the loss of her sweetheart, Thomas, she also had to live with the Black and Tans passing her door.

She had to sleep under the window. Directly underneath the window because they are firing shots and through the window, the plane heads, as well as a grief test, struggled with their hearing for the rest of her life.

She was quite deaf after that.

She was wearing hearing aids and they were all called big things at the time. She used to go to Dublin to get them fixed and be sure to use the hearing.

Is that time or time it should be the batteries. So almost like car batteries on her bosom. If you had to get out from Dublin, I remember my father had gone up to Dublin to get the batteries, that's the name of the shop for Jasper, when you were the one thing that people were used that time, which he had to have it for school, you know.

Kind of trauma like this really induce a profound loss of hearing. Could it be a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder? Dr. Matthew McCauley is a specialist in PTSD.

It is unusual and in my clinical experience, it would be rather rare to see this. I was fascinated, actually, to hear this case, and it raised a number of interesting possible explanations of what might have occurred. Most people who are exposed to situations that bring them into contact with death or harm or witnessing that in others will experience some symptoms of what we entitled post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. These symptoms can include shock, confusion, fear and anxiety.

Of course, also we could say physiological symptoms. For many individuals, this will result in a number of days, assuming that there is no form of acoustic trauma and the individual or an infection, we might consider a psychological explanation for the symptoms this lady perhaps may have internalized and associated at the time of the event. The circumstances that she subsequently encountered may have led her to experience a block and a hurdle and her ability to process the grief. So it does seem possible that Tessa's hearing difficulties could have been a reaction to the loss of her fiancee in 1922, the Black and Tans finally left Ireland, but tests remain traumatized.

She never forgot. She was always in her mind as well. This was such a horrible thing to happen to anyone, you know. It shouldn't have happened. This is Tessa's daughter, Louis, an absolute tragedy, and the boy he died doesn't bear thinking of. Protests did move on with her life after Thomas, she married Louis and Brian's father, Sean, married and had eight children. Tess married Sean less than a year after Thomas's death, but she wouldn't accept another engagement ring.

Grandma wouldn't accept an engagement ring from your father.

That's Tessa's granddaughter, Tessa. That's right. Yes. So she only ever had that engagement ring, which she didn't wear.

It would be unlucky to to have another engagement ring and so wouldn't accept one from your dad. That's right.

He wants to give her one. But occasionally she was aware that was was your your father was he a rival for your your mother's affections? He was.

He fell for her and she just passed by him. So the minute my father heard about his untimely death, he got on his bike and they came from William Wilhelmsen to the horse school to sympathize with her.

And after that, he took over, he was her confidence. We got married later on and I'm a product of this alliance and they were very much in love and.

Tests and Schoneman were teachers, and one of their pupils was Jim Néstor, the grandson of the man who was there on the night Thomas was abducted.

You told me in the late 40s, early 50s, she was a relaid you kind of laid back and, you know, and a great teacher, I might add, which was very good in the classroom, which is great when, you know, there was a bond hearing aid. We could notice that in the year. We absorbed all classes on and at the end she was at the blackboard, the people down at the back, you know, the usual thing kids do at school and all the rest.

But she didn't really know why. She'd only call out the person who was speaking. So we loved her, quite honestly, as a teacher. And Sean was adorable together. He'd lose the Ragano one time, but in a fairly harmlessly you know, we never heard Mrs. Mahat raise her voice at all. She was very musical and she could sing yourself, you know, and I could hear from you. Her students were aware of the tragic loss Tessa suffered.

I certainly knew when we were in school it was common knowledge, you know, that there were sweethearts and engaged and that she suffered this awful loss, you know. But when we heard the story were appalled by it, while the story of Thomas McIver's murder was known, it was something the tests didn't speak about for a very long time.

She would never talk about until after my father died in 1955 in the garden of their family home overlooked Glencoe house, the spot where Thomas and tests had waved to each other in their courting days and from where Thomas was taken.

When we were kids, we all had do and we had so protested cabbage, the parsnips, carrots or the bloody garden. But there were steps up to it, which is about 10 foot above the back of the house.

But you never found her looking, standing there, looking across? No, I never saw that. I think it was, yeah.

Her feelings about his death were clearly unresolved, and to this day, the murder of Thomas McKeever remains a perplexing case. Was he shot as a spy, mistaken for someone else, or was it because he had Republican sympathies? The information from the authorities at the time was at the very least, unreliable. The British carried out an official inquest, historian, Podgorica work. Supposedly his body was examined as part of this inquest in the local oracy barracks, or bear in mind with the British inquiries that their main purpose is to whitewash themselves and exonerate themselves.

I mean, years before Widgery or the Savile inquiries into Bloody Sunday, the British army was already very good at covering up its tracks.

But if the body had been removed immediately after his murder, it would suggest the only way the military knew the details of his death were if they had carried it out themselves.

There seems to be no possibility that he was killed by anyone, both the British.

Remember, the news of Thomas's death was accompanied by the suggestion that he was a spy. And that was the official word from the military inquiry.

He was killed as a reprisal and to pretend that he was handing over information to the British when he lost.

Again, this whole tactic of putting a false spy label on is is done to cause confusion. In many cases, the British forces had free range. There was very little likelihood that they will be brought to account by obviously the authorities who were also the British forces, their own comrades, if they were involved in in killings. Matthew Dowd, whose father had hidden the body in the night of the killing, rejects the notion that Thomas was a spy. And you say that your father believes he wasn't a spy?

Oh, no, no, no, no way.

How can you be certain? Well, I only know what I was told, but Daddy said he wasn't a spy. He didn't give any reason. No, he didn't. No, he didn't. And I don't believe he was in. I never knew the man that knew him very well because daddy was a baker and Dunmore and he was a chemist.

And more likely explanation is that Thomas was shot for his political affiliations. Patrik work suggests this would have made him a target.

So what would happen typically is the IRA will come into an area. They would launch an ambush or attack on British forces. They would disappear. And the British not being able to strike back at them directly would often try and pick on IRA men who would not have been involved, but who were kind of lower down to the importance in the IRA, or they would pick Sinn Fein supporters or the families of IRA members, and sometimes they would arrest them and then shoot them dead and claim or he tried to jump off the back of our lorry and escape.

So shot while trying to escape was a very common British explanation to cut them off the hook. But in some cases, as well, the British forces would actually abduct suspected Republicans or sympathisers and they would shoot them and dumped their body way out in the countryside or occasionally even hide these bodies, bury them in bugs. And when they were questioned about it, then the British would simply say, or we have no involvement in this. And quite often they would try and hint that, well, we know there's a feud going on in the IRA.

So maybe the Republicans shot him.

Almost immediately after the murder, a local IRA commander wrote a letter to the parish priest, Dean McCann.

Tommy Mannion gave five pounds for him to be said for him. But there was nobody.

There was nobody I know because he was buried at that stage.

Another of the items my father and I purchased at auction was a report written by Tommy Mannion confirming all of this. Olina Harun headquarters number four Brigade 2nd Western Division report on the murder of Thomas McKeever. His untimely end was deeply regretted and done more, it being well known there that he was murdered by ground forces. He was well known by the local IRA and was one of their most ardent supporters. I, as brigade commandant of that area at the time, endeavoured to have a statement of the real circumstances of his death published to the press.

But at that time it was impossible. However, five pound was sent to Dean McKinnon to have mass celebrated for assault by the local IRA and a letter which was read off the order stating that he was shot by Crown forces. This contribution towards the mass would seem to confirm if there was any doubt that Thomas was a Republican supporter and was noticed by the Republicans themselves, new look, this guy was one of ours.

We didn't shoot him. The only logical conclusion, you know, clearly he's been picked up and this is the British trying to mess with us. They wanted to intimidate and scare the local population that they'd get a little bit Tommy Mangin and all these people like, you know, the more the more atrocities committed by the Black and Tans, by the crown forces, the more the people turned against them.

You know, if the British forces were the only possible suspects in this murder, is it possible to know who the perpetrators were?

There are a number of names known to the locals in Dunmore Robinson as one and those two others, Dobson. And Roy and Robinson was a small little fella, and he was the most dangerous of them all, know how fat he was or how small he was. I do not know or the others must be right there. But that was. Who told you that, Daddy? Dobson and right there in the guise of this was a story talked about when I was a young fellow, you know, there are the names that come back to me, you know, they are indeed.

I put this information to historian project work while I've looked through the RNC register, which lists all the men from Britain and from Ireland who joined the Black and Tans because the word Irish Black and Tans as well. And the only one who seems to fit the right time period, the right county is a guy called Robert Roy. Now he's a Protestant from England and he joined the ROTC or the Black and Tans in September of 1920. And he was stationed in Galway and he remained with the force right up until the truce was came into effect and the ROTC was disbanded.

Now, the problem is we can't seem to get much more details on Robert Roy, not the name matches, but it may not be the same person. It's a busy road, there's always a busy road. This is a man well done, more children in death to and tests remain close. We were at the cemetery in more just about a mile. The chimps had done more. And this is a cemetery where Thomas is buried and a mother is buried just over a mile up to the bridge where he was shot.

For them to have buried the body here, that would have been a huge effort on their part for her to even imagine it, because there were only two young people.

Thomas's family came from Kinsale and put a headstone up some time after he died. But for years, the grave remained unnoticed and unattended until Brind went looking for us. When did you first see the grave or how did you come upon it? Two years ago. The first time I saw it was headstone down there, the one here left to the left to see the place where it has found other. When we go down to it here, it's made of marble.

By the looks of things, it looks like it's very, very white. That is marble.

I'm at the location of the photograph, the final item that my late father and I bought at auction and loving memory of Thomas McKeever, who was shot by these forces, 20 of them in 1921, is 37 years RHP rejected by his mother, sisters and brothers. So naturally, my father and my mother was buried up here almost directly down from our sister Threatcon, about 30 years on the direct line through explaining. That's amazing. Yeah, it's quite a large cemetery.

There must be 67 acres, and yet they're within less than a stone's throw from each other. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when you were here in 1974 for your mother's burial, you didn't know that he was buried here at all? No, no, no, no. I remember hearing at the time that he was buried here temporarily, and I just thought that he was very concerned that there was little talk about anything he didn't discuss.

Well, that's it. I think that afterwards they were quite shamed in doing more, that such a thing had happened, they felt because it shouldn't have happened. That's the feeling that we we had that this man who was engaged to try it was taken out and shot. My own father died in October 2006. He would have been pleased that the items were purchased at auction to shed some light on this dark story of Thomas and Tess and their undying love.

I think she felt a deeply negative and lonely life.

The whole future was theirs.