Mary Branley remembers the shock on the faces of the young people from the LGBTQ community in Sligo at a vigil outside Sligo Town Hall in the wake of the murders of Aidan Moffitt and Michael Snee. “They were horrified that this could happen to someone in the tribe,” the writer said. “They were horrified that such hate existed, to that violent extent.” Branley recalls the reaction to a four-day spree of violence last year that shocked the north-western town, days after Yousef Palani (23) was jailed this week for life for the murder of the two gay men. In April 2022 Palani used a dating app to track the two men he killed and a third man, Anthony Burke, he seriously assaulted. He stabbed Moffitt and Snee to death in their homes and mutilated their bodies.