The Keeley Chronicles – Introduction

Keeley Moss

Nightfall’s descent
Shrouds her intent  

In a halo of sharks
And a skeleton mask

Daylight devours your unguarded hours
This bride of scars

Lost in the glare
All of us stare
The patterns of pain
Scream out your name

Siouxsie and the Banshees – ‘Belladonna’

My name is Keeley Moss. I’m a writer, singer and musician from, and based in, Dublin – the city Inga Maria Hauser was trying to reach on the night she was murdered.

My original intention for this blog was to focus on various True Crime cases that intrigued me or that I felt warranted further investigation. But then I read about the unsolved killing of Inga Maria Hauser in an anthology of unsolved murders. Inga’s case was one of the more obscure ones in the book, afforded only a short chapter towards the end but upon learning about what happened to her I felt so profoundly moved by this one case and so fascinated by the person at the heart of it all that I could not get her and the circumstances of what had happened to her out of my mind in the weeks afterwards. That is something that has now persisted for five years at the time of writing. And shows no sign of abating.

Why I pursued this cause with the degree of passion I feel for it is something that I know intrigues a lot of people and to be quite honest it’s even curious to me. I wasn’t fortunate enough to ever get to meet Inga, and although my home city of Dublin has a connection with her in that it was her next intended destination, I had no links to Inga’s home city of Munich or to anywhere in the Glens of Antrim prior to being drawn to her story. What happened after that is that basically my heart chose to devote itself to her cause. I didn’t consciously plan for that to happen, like falling in love it just happened. My motivation is stirred on an emotional level. In addition I felt and continue to feel a profound connection with her that I can’t quite explain.

Soon this blog and my work on the case began to take up more and more of my time until the lines blurred and it became the entire focus of my life. I created this blog out of love and compassion for this person who had had her entire adult life stolen from her. At the time I genuinely didn’t think anyone would be interested, as no one I mentioned Inga to in my native Dublin had ever heard of her. So I was amazed when this blog went viral on the very first day of publication back in 2016. Over the subsequent years it has been an ongoing journey, one that is continuing to develop all the time.

The Keeley Chronicles features the most detailed account to have emerged of the last week of Inga’s life, a week during which she embarked on the fateful sightseeing trip through Britain and Ireland that had been her dream to accomplish. It also includes the most comprehensive account of the case and the ensuing investigation, and in addition features songs, poetry, interviews, reportage, a definitive chronology of the case, rare and previously-unpublished photos together with otherwise-unavailable archive footage, and a work-in-progress travelogue that details my Interrail trip retracing Inga’s steps through England, Scotland and Ireland in order to research the book I’m writing (which is a separate work from this blog) and to try keep Inga’s memory – and her dream – alive, in any and every possible way. Since 2016 I have tried to help bring Inga’s unsolved case back to the spotlight and keep it there until it is solved. To that end in addition to campaigning publicly I have published a new instalment of this blog each month that has generally focused on a hitherto-unexplored aspect of either the case or of Inga’s life.

It could be said that this blog also incorporates the story of my own still-evolving journey in relation to the case. Again, this is something that I never planned or envisaged – it happened organically. And it’s very much still happening, publicly and privately. It will probably be apparent from even a cursory scan of the contents of this blog the extent to which I’ve fallen foul of the rule that detectives consider the oldest mistake in the book – namely that of not becoming emotionally involved in a case. Perhaps because I am not a detective, or not a conventional one anyway, I was not mindful enough of this before it happened, and well there was no turning back once it had occurred. As intense as that can be to live with on a daily basis, I think it ultimately benefits my writing and fuels my appetite for paying homage to Inga and promoting her memory. I should add that all my work on the case has always been unpaid – it is truly a labour-of-love.

One way in which my work differs from other true crime writers is that I have always wanted to focus as much as possible on Inga’s life and not just her death. She was a real person and not just a murder victim, and from my having studied her drawings and writings and having spoken in depth and at length with people who knew her it is apparent that she was an absolutely wonderful human being – charismatic, innately kind, witty, intensely creative and very intelligent. It is my and others’ belief that had her journey through life not been so viciously curtailed, she would have gone on to achieve great things. It rankles with me that she was forever denied that opportunity, and at such a young age. So one of my main ambitions has been to try create and maintain a space for her in the modern world that she sadly never got to see or take part in, and to showcase as much as I can the human being at the centre of the story, who prior to this blog taking off had so often been overlooked and lost in the many macabre media reports of her harrowing death published since 1988, reports which are reductive by nature and generally do not portray the person behind the pain.

The Keeley Chronicles took on a life of its own from that very first day when I published Part 1 after having spent the previous four months researching, writing and editing what became the first instalment. By 2016 there had been no new media reports in relation to Inga’s case for almost five years. At that point the case was considered ‘dead’ and day-to-day responsibility for the case had been assigned to a relatively low-ranking detective constable. In my native Republic of Ireland, the case was largely unknown. Truth be told, when I started The Keeley Chronicles I had not expected any more than a handful of people to read it and therefore I was astonished when I discovered it had gone viral on the first day. Ever since then Inga’s cause has become my life’s purpose and I feel an abiding duty to her to be her advocate alongside my co-horts in the campaign for justice for Inga, who are Inga’s family’s legal representative Claire McKeegan of the highly-respected Human Rights law firm Phoenix Law and Cllr. Helena Dallat-O’Driscoll, the Causeway Coast & Glens Councillor for Bann DEA, daughter of the late and dearly-missed John Dallat MLA.

If my efforts can help to provide an outlet by which the police’s investigation can be advanced that would be especially welcome but my primary aim has always been to create and maintain a space for Inga in the modern world, particularly the online world, a world she was denied the chance to participate in, and for this blog to make a positive and helpful contribution to her case.

All my work is dedicated with love to Inga’s memory.

Inga Maria Hauser

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Inga Maria Hauser
May 28th 1969 – April 6th 1988. Never forgotten.

© Keeley Moss 2016-2021

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form without the permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Acknowledgement

‘Belladonna’ written by Severin/Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Published by Dreamhouse/Chappell/APB Music Co. Ltd ©1984