Sanjeev Chada bought a punnet of strawberries in Tesco in Carlow on the evening he drove his two sons Eoghan (10) and Ruairí (five) to Co Mayo and later murdered them.
The inquest into the deaths of the two boys heard Det Sergeant James F Carroll was tasked with identifying the location where the boys had died, after their bodies were found in the boot of Chada's car when he crashed it near Westport on July 29th last year.
In his deposition, Det Sgt Carroll said he was told at a case conference in Westport Garda station at 9am on July 30th that Chada indicated he had murdered the boys on a laneway close to an Abbey about 10km from Castlebar.
Initially, Det Sgt Carroll went to Balintubber Stores in Balintubber accompanied by his colleague Det Garda Michael Moran.
They asked if there was CCTV footage covering the road for Sunday night, July 28th, and Monday 29th, the day Eoghan and Ruairí were found dead.
“We were informed by Yvonne Corrigan, the manageress, that there was CCTV footage covering that period of time,” he said. “We made arrangements to have the CCTV footage downloaded.”
Det Sgt Carroll then spoke to Fr Frank Fahey, parish priest of Balintubber Abbey, who confirmed there were CCTV cameras recording footage inside the Abbey, but none outside.
The gardaí called to a house at the end of that laneway in the townland of Skehanagh Lower, Ballintubber.
They spoke to John Hynes, who informed them he hadn’t seen any unusual activity in the laneway on the Sunday night.
But Mr Hynes told the gardaí his wife Deirdre had found a punnet of strawberries just outside their gate at the end of the laneway when she was going to work on the Monday morning.
Det Sgt Carroll said he saw a punnet of strawberries on the right hand side of the laneway approaching the main road.
“There was also a tissue-like material on one of the branches of a tree.”
He confirmed that Chada had bought a punnet of strawberries on the Sunday evening at Tesco in Carlow, near his home in Ballinkillen, before he drove to Ballintubber.
Other CCTV footage from the Centra Kilkelly service station on the Knock Road, Kilkelly, Co Mayo, showed some of Chada’s movements on that day.
When the Garda investigators viewed the video, they saw a Ford Focus pull in at one of the petrol pumps. The driver was Sanjeev Chada, who paid for €15 worth of petrol and “either a cup of coffee or a cup of tea”.
Gardaí then went to “an area of interest” of the investigation at Barcull, Kilkelly. This had come to their attention while they retraced the route taken by Chada on the morning of July 29th, after they downloaded it from his satnav.
“At a location just off the main Charlestown to Galway road, I saw a black glove and what appeared to be a soiled babywipe material,” Det Sgt Carroll said.
The inquest heard the bodies of Eoghan and Ruairí were identified at the mortuary at 12.33 and 12.34 am respectively on July 30th by their uncle Brian Murphy.
They had been the subject of a Garda child rescue alert before they were tragically found dead in the boot of their father’s car, lying on their sides facing each other.