>*Michael Kelley, an enigmatic man from Waldo County, is charged with killing the owner of a farm where he was working. As the case heads to trial, he says he’s being framed.*

>In interviews with the Portland Press Herald, several of Kelley’s family members and childhood friends spoke of a conflicted man who grew violent and conspiratorial over time, isolating himself from those closest to him until he put an ocean of distance between the place he grew up and the place he wanted to call home.

>“He got worse over the years. It spiraled,” his sister, JaneA Kelley said in a Zoom interview. “You can’t reason with someone in that state.”

>Eventually, Kelley found his way to the small town of Kenmare in southwest Ireland, where he met a sheep farmer named Michael Gaine in 2022.

>Gaine, 56, owned a 1,000-acre farm where he kept herds of sheep, cows and other livestock. He offered Kelley room and board in a farmhouse on his property in exchange for labor. Kelley agreed.

>He quietly worked there for about three years before Gaine went missing in early 2025.

[Read the full story on the Press Herald.](https://www.pressherald.com/2026/06/17/heres-how-a-maine-man-ended-up-on-trial-in-ireland-for-murder/)

Here’s how a Maine man ended up on trial in Ireland for murder