Vanished without a trace: What happened to Kerry’s missing farmer Michael Gaine?

As well as getting phone credit, he bought a lunch roll and a bottled drink at the supermarket he had visited almost every day.

“He was his usual chatty, happy-go-lucky self,” said someone who met him that day.

“He was always in Centra around about the same time every day, as far as I could tell.”

As the wealthy 56-year-old sheep farmer stepped away from the till and headed for the exit, little did anybody who knew him expect the instore CCTV to record his last known movements in the town.

Standing 5ft 10in with a stocky build, brown grey hair, and a bushy beard, he was wearing his distinctive orange woolly hat, black fleece, blue jeans, and black boots.

His sleeves were rolled up, he was clutching something with his hands as he walked away towards the main entrance.

A short while later he walked out into the car park, got into the nine-year-old bronze Toyota Rav4 jeep his wife Janice bought in 2015, and drove onto the Killarney Rd towards Molls Gap.

Where exactly he went after leaving Centra remains as much of a mystery as does his current whereabouts.

It is not yet publicly known if he popped into the house he shared with his wife Janice in Carhoomeengar East, a short distance from Kenmare before heading straight to his family’s old farmhouse.

Less than 1km from Molls Gap, it lies in the glaciated heart of a mixed mountainous realm of rocks and grassy bogland into which he was born and bred.

Searches by hundreds of volunteers in the initial stages of his disappearance failed to find anything of evidential value.

All of his usual haunts have been visited by detectives, and questions asked.

One of those haunts is the small filling station owned by his friend and neighbour, Independent councillor Dan McCarthy.

“I was at the mart on that Thursday, so I wouldn’t have seen him in the shop, if he was there,” said Dan. 

“But I’d say five days out of seven he would be there to get ration for his animals and if he wanted a cup of tea, we’d have a cup of tea.”

A creature of habit, another place where Mike would be regularly was the Kenmare Co Op Mart, which Dan manages.

If he didn’t have anything to buy or sell, he would still be there on mart days.

He would be seen talking to other farmers in the small canteen or in their huddles behind the thick iron bars of the ring side.

As he’d catch up on news at that ring, he’d be keeping “a quiet eye” on what was fetching what on mart days, as animals bellowed and whined in the ring and pens behind it.

This would also be as the loud, fast monotonous drill of the auctioneer’s voice reverberated around the concrete hall, speedily calling out prices per animal in increments of €10 or €100.

Dan referenced Mike’s frequent appearance on mart days when he paid an emotional tribute to him on Thursday.

His tribute — and an appeal for anybody with any kind of information about Mike’s possible whereabouts — came before half the farmer’s small cattle herd was sold off.

Dan was visibly shaken after he made his appeal.

Afterwards, he said: “Selling Mike’s stock was one of the hardest jobs I have had to do since I took over the mart 21 years ago.

To sell your neighbour’s cattle when he is not around to see them being sold is very sad. It hit every bone in my body.

“I can feel the pain that the family is going through. I looked down from the rostrum and could see some of his friends and neighbours crying as they stood around the ring side.”

He said that, after the sale was done, these same friends went into the canteen for a cup of tea and some sandwiches and went back out to keep searching.

Ask anybody in the close-knit community and they’ll just shake their head in wonder.

But as time goes on, there is a growing acceptance that Mike is no longer alive.

There is also a growing feeling now that there may have been foul play, and that this is not — as many initially thought — a personal tragedy.

On the day before he vanished, he looked at two pairs of walking boots in a local shop, one for around €99 and the other for around €46.

In picking the cheaper ones, he was overheard saying he would go for the cheaper ones because “I don’t have far to go”, or words to that effect.

This led to speculation that his last actions involved walking a few kilometres to a local quarry at Moll’s Gap or to a lake a little further away down the road.

Apart from the fact that a Garda Water Unit team, soldiers, Kerry Mountain Rescue, Civil Defence, and a small army of local volunteers have failed to find any sign of him in and around the quarry or lake, there is also the issue of his knees.

One local farmer said: “If there was a delivery at the gate to the farm and the gate was closed and the package was left there, he wouldn’t walk up to get it if he could avoid it.

“He’d tear up to the gate in his quad bike. He was not a huge fan of walking anywhere. He had issues with his knees, and he had an issue with a hip too. The knees had been plaguing him in recent years.”

Although his quad bike was “out of action” at the time he vanished, according to a friend, he would often be seen on it feeding his sheep along the road or off the many tracks crossing his sprawling land.

Mother's death

Some have suggested that, at the time he disappeared, he had been upset about his mother’s death. She died in February.

Up to a few years ago, Sheila had helped Mike run his farm, which he had taken over from his uncle John.

Mike grew up with his two sisters at his parents’ house on Railway Rd, Kenmare.

He owns that property jointly with wife Janice.

As far as the farm and lands in Carrig East, near Moll’s Gap, is concerned, he and other members of his family were given them as a gift by his uncle John in March 1995.

Other land nearby was also gifted by John to another member of his family in 1987.

This is understood to be the two properties across the road from the entrance to Mike’s farm.

According to local farmers and friends, Mike and Sheila worked side by side for decades and she was seen pretty much as the “matriarch” who ran “everything”.

As well as having around 30-40 head of cattle, they had hundreds of sheep, possibly as many as around 600 at one point.

His own father, Jimmy, had also helped out on the farm.

However, Mike’s distraught wife Janice, who is a former school vice principal, is not known to have been very involved with the farm.

When herself and Mike went to Australia for about eight months in around 2000, it was Sheila who ran things while they were abroad.

“They were devoted to each other,” said a family friend.

“She was a real rock to him as he ran the farm. Her death in February hit him and his sisters hard. It is still very raw.”

There have been suggestions locally that Mike might have been prone to not returning home the odd night, but friends have dismissed this.

“In the distant past, Mike might go awol [absent without leave] for a few days,” one farmer said.

“But round here that just means someone was too legless after a match or a funeral or some celebration, and what of it?

“That did used to happen but very, very rarely and thankfully, that isn’t against the law.”

Another suggestion has been that he went up North to buy a tractor, which may have been on the cards at some stage.

This is because Mike quite often bought tractors, especially if the ones he had broke down and he couldn’t get it fixed.

A fan of classic cars, as well as tractors, they were his toys that would be buy from time to time, said a friend.

“He was not a great one for repairing the ones he had. Even if he could, he would go off it and get interested in another one.

“I think he had at least four tractors, maybe a fifth before he disappeared.”

To add to the mystery, his wallet and his mobile phone appear to have been left in his jeep, which was still at his farm house when gardaí arrived.

Shortly after he went missing on March 20, questions about the welfare of his animals started to be raised.

While the couple do not have any children, his nephews — who are in their 20s — could have looked after them.

But according to friends, it was felt that, under the current circumstances, it would be better if the herd could be minded elsewhere or sold off.

Although an American he let live rent-free in a derelict property on his farm about six years ago still lives at the farm, it is not known how the man felt about the prospect of looking after the cattle.

Understood to be a former US marine who served in Afghanistan or Iraq, he had been living rough on land in and around Ladies View, not far from Kenmare and Killarney.

Mike, in what people say is a great example of his “kind-hearted soul”, let him live rent-free in a derelict cottage near his old farm house at the farm.

He has been living there for about six years and rarely leaves the farm.

While not known to spend time working with Mike’s animals, the American has worked on Mike’s tractors and cars and has a reputation locally as being “something of a mechanic”.

The day after Mike went missing, friends say the American was fixing the brakes on one of the farmer’s jeeps that was due to have its NCT done.

The American is understood to have helped gardaí as much as he could and has said he is, like so many others, baffled by Mike’s disappearance.

Friends say that while Mike’s sheep scattered around the 1,000-acre estate can be left to their own devices, the cattle need more hands-on care and attention.

For a start, Mike did not grow his own silage and had to buy it in, adding to the cost of looking after them.

Added to that, the cattle needed to be regularly checked for any illnesses.

On Thursday, around 13 were sold off in Kenmare, of which eight — which were sold over two lots — made more than €12,000.

The rest of his herd was removed from the farm last week and are being looked after by a family friend.

He is believed to be based in Co Meath and was a friend of Mike’s father Jimmy and uncle John, who he has taken over the farm from.

The family friend is understood to be the same man who has sold the Gaine family “thousands” of sheep over the past four or five
decades, according to a local farmer.

While people do not believe Mike is suddenly going to “turn up out of nowhere”, as one local farmer put it, they increasingly doubt his disappearance is the result of a personal tragedy.

Instead, the general feeling locally is — in the absence of any new information — that there may well have been some foul play.

In his appeal for information before he auctioned off some of Mike’s cattle, he pretty much alluded to this.

Addressing farmers thronging around the ringside, he said he and the rest of the community will keep looking for Mike “because someone knows something about what happened to Mike”.

Afterwards, he was asked by the Irish Examiner if anybody suspects foul play.

“Someone does know something, and they do know the whereabouts of where Michael is.

“If he was alive, he would be here today, and he would go into the canteen and there would be plenty of banter.

“Hopefully he will come back alive. But as time goes on it is getting harder to see that [being the case].”

The stark possibility of his not being found alive is understood to have been discussed with the family last week.

Members of the Garda Water Unit arrived in Kenmare last Wednesday week to see if they could locate Mike’s body, and they are understood to have met a member of his family to discuss their work.

“While families struggle to cope with the disappearance of a loved one in any circumstances, a very important factor for families is them being able to recover their body,” said a source familiar with underwater searches by Garda divers.

“It doesn’t give them closure, because few families ever get closure.

“But it is a huge emotional thing to at least know where they are and that they were able to give them a proper burial.

“It is a great comfort to families in tragic situations like this.”

The divers, who had driven down from their base in Tullamore, searched for water in an old disused quarry up the road from Mike’s old farm house on Thursday morning.

They also then spent two hours going back and forth along the shore of the nearby Barfinnihy Lake but found nothing of any evidential value.

Another area that was expected to be searched was the Looscaunagh Lake about an hour’s walk from Mike’s old farm house.

It is near Ladies View, so named after a visit there by Queen Victoria’s ladies-in-waiting during the English monarch’s 1861 visit to Ireland.

Dan, who was visibly upset by the end of his appeal for information at Thursday’s auction said: “There is a terrible sense of doom and gloom in the town and area about this. It is hanging over all of us.

“It is so unlike Mike to just head off without telling somebody. I have heard the suggestion that he went up North to buy a tractor but if he did, he would have either been seen by now or he would have contacted his family to assure them that he is OK.

“Aside from that, somebody would have seen him by now, stopping to get diesel or eating in a cafe.

“Somebody somewhere would have seen him by now, and they haven’t.”

He added: “All we want is to bring him back to his family, whatever the outcome. They just want him back.

“There is no one saying anything, it’s just everyone is numb and is completely stunned as to what has happened.

“Everyone is waiting to see what the next move is.”