Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
HEARTACHE STILL RAW ONE YEAR ON
IT is a year since mum Clodagh Hawe and her three children were murdered in their home. When shock gave way to grief and anger following the mass killings in Co Cavan, few imagined the situation could get any worse.
But with tomorrow marking the first anniversary, it seems it has.
For killer Alan Hawe left a series of horrific, emotional booby-traps at every turn in the road for the people who loved Clodagh and her boys.
The husband, father, church regular and one-time respected school teacher, executed a meticulous plan that has ensured his legacy of pain would continue long after he took his final breath.
And in the past 12 months Clodagh’s family and friends have travelled this road of deep despair with no let up.
The truth about Alan Hawe has emerged gradually, unveiling him as a conniving, cheating, lying, sick monster.
He planned the deaths of his wife and children meticulously, controlling how they would die, how their bodies would be found, how he would die and where he should be buried.
He presented himself as an anguished soul to be pitied and forgiven.
That might be enough despair for any family to face, but Hawe went much further.
With his family lying dead around him, his thoughts turned to money.
PREPARED
He made sure the home he and his wife had worked to buy, was left to his next of kin as sole beneficiaries.
And he moved all cash and savings to a bank account in his name only, again an act expected to benefit his next of kin.
He even washed both family cars for them before he murdered his family and afterwards set out jewellery, household paperwork, insurance and bank details all neatly filed and prepared.
He did nothing to give any dignity to his wife and children, leaving them where he killed them – their blood on the walls of a once beautiful home.
Clodagh’s family want nothing from the estate, instead they say it should be given to a charity.
Her mother Mary Coll recalled this week what she learned had happened to her daughter and grandsons.
She said: “There was a three-page letter in an envelope in which he outlined why he had done what he had done.
“There was another with blood stains on it that he must have written afterwards.
“He was about to experience a fall from grace, and lose the air of respectability he felt he had in the community.
“He said in the letter that Clodagh didn’t know anything about this, and they were happy together. He also wrote, ‘How could I pretend to be so normal for so long?’”
In the year since he first brutalised his wife, little has moved on for her family, friends and the colleagues she cherished at Oristown national school in Kells, Co Meath, where she taught.
Clodagh is deeply and sorely missed.
The hope that she will walk through the door of her loved ones with the clatter of her children around her, remains intact.
But even after Hawe was exhumed 250 days after he was buried with his victims, he haunts with his ability to control from beyond the grave.
His plan ensured he managed to taint the desperate need for Clodagh’s
ON THE CALCULATING KILLER