By Tara Kaprowy

staff writer



When Paul and Billy Jude O’Hara were put behind bars last week for stealing an elderly woman’s wallet, the London Police Department and Laurel County Sheriff’s Office got a quick lesson on the group called the Irish Travellers. The O’Hara brothers, who allegedly posed as water company workers to gain access to the woman’s home, are part of this secretive, unusual group.

Senior Agent Joe Livingston of the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division has researched the Irish Travellers for the past 25 years.

“These guys are descendants of Irish tinkers,” Livingston said. “They would go around doing tin smithing, doing can work, metal work.”

During the potato famine in the 1800s, many of the travellers immigrated to the United States.

“They arrived in New York and migrated down the Appalachian Trail to Nashville, Tenn., and to Atlanta, Ga.,” Livingston said.

While they eventually developed home bases, they remained travellers, with the men leaving their homes to find door-to-door work in surrounding states.

“A group of them actually sell linoleum rugs,” Livingston said. “They’ll go up in front of a trailer park and sell it by the foot. They have their own little circuit that they run.”

They are also known for barn painting, driveway paving and doing other home repairs.

“A lot of them are legitimate,” Livingston said. “Nobody knows how many are legitimate and how many are crooked. It’s hard — they’re basically a closed society.”

That Catholic society has largely settled in Murphy Village, S.C., named after parish priest Father Joseph Murphy who encouraged the community to buy land and plant permanent roots. There, about 3,000 people, who share about a dozen surnames between them, live in everything from double-wide trailers to McMansions boasting stunning architectural detail. Regardless of the financial status of the owners, nearly every yard has a statue of the Virgin Mary or baby Jesus in it.

While the travellers do commingle with society at large — their children attend public school, for example — the community has its own private traditions. Children generally don’t attend school past the eighth grade. And marriages are arranged, with girls, usually by the age of 13 or 14, married off according to their dowries.

While in the summer the travellers leave Murphy Village to do full-time door-to-door work abroad, over the winter season, Livingston said the traveller men go on “short runs.”

“They go up to Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee,” he said. “If the weather is severe, then they’ll try to stay down toward Florida.”

While the O’Hara brothers come from Murphy Village, Livingston said they are not necessarily the norm.

“We don’t want to paint the whole community as a bunch of con artists,” he said. “This is the criminal element of the Irish Travellers.”

Members of that element are known as “yonks.”

“Normally, they’ll go into the house and look for cash, jewelry and prescription drugs,” he said.

Livingston said their scams can range from the utility impostor con to the raise check scheme.

“They’ll have someone write a check for them for $50,” Livingston said. “Then they’ll say, ‘Oh, I know you have arthritis, let me help you out with that. I’ll fill it in for you.’”

The $50 will become $9,050, with the extra numbers inserted by the traveller.

With the travellers remaining anonymous in the exchange, there is often little that can be done after the fleecing. The only sure-fire way to prevent being conned is not to hire travellers in the first place.

“If a transient contractor from South Carolina comes to your house and offers to do any kind of work, whether painting your house, fixing your roof, sealing your driveway, when they pull out of your driveway, what recourse do you have as a consumer?” Livingston said.

Billy Jude O’Hara remains lodged in the Laurel County Detention Center on $5,000 cash, $25,000 cash and $1,200 cash bonds. He is charged with second-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument and theft by deception—cold checks. Paul O’Hara was wanted in Clermont County and Brown County, both in Ohio, for felony theft. He has been moved to a detention center there.

Police tracked the brothers down last month. After the elderly woman realized her wallet had been stolen, she closed her bank account. Later that day, a woman tried to cash a check on the closed account. The woman helped police find the O’Haras.

Staff writer Tara Kaprowy can be reached by e-mail at tkaprowy@sentinel-echo.com.