On the night of August 29th, 2016, one of the most devastating cases of murder-suicide occurred in Ireland.
Alan Hawe butchered his wife, Clodagh, and their three young sons, Liam, Niall and Ryan, before taking his own life. The ensuing shock waves reverberated through the Cavan townland of Castlerahan, where Hawe had been vice-principal of the local national school, and echoed throughout the entire country.
Jacqueline Connolly reveals the circumstances leading up to that dreadful night when she lost her sister and three nephews, and the family’s struggle for answers in its aftermath. She unveils a litany of failures with the initial Garda investigation, arguing that they “closed ranks around uncomfortable truths” and the battle she and her mother went through to secure a review by the Garda serious crime review team.
Alan Hawe left behind a five-page “murder letter”, written while the mutilated body of his dead wife lay nearby, alleging via a host of “pseudo-altruistic” claims that he had spared his family from some great shame; he had been caught “red-handed” and it was all going to “blow up”.
Connolly admits to never taking to pillar-of-the-community Hawe, but believed that he and Clodagh were happy together in their “all-consuming marriage”. Only after their death did she realise the cracks in that perfect veneer, with the revelation that the “cold, twisted and manipulative” Hawe exercised coercive control over her sister, that he was seeing a counsellor about a pornography addiction, and that Clodagh was considering leaving him. She confesses to not realising “the depths of his darkness”, which ultimately led to a murder “as premeditated and cold as a professional assassination”.
Connolly uses the book to call for a “better, kinder” inquest process, one that doesn’t result in families receiving difficult information in the full glare of the public eye, while the Garda review included strong recommendations on how future investigations into murder-suicides should be conducted.
Connolly’s life has been marred by such considerable tragedy – she also lost her brother and husband to suicide – that it seems incredible that she has been able to write this harrowing, heart-rending memoir. That it is so utterly compelling, even as she narrates some deeply distressing events, is a testament to her resilience and grace under the most catastrophic circumstances.
