Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Unhinged plot that became a brutal reality
MASS murderer Alan Hawe hatched his plan to wipe out his innocent family in June 2016.
He had initially wanted to present his suicide as an accidental death but feared he would be left with brain injuries and then Clodagh would be free to unravel his dark truth.
In his murder/suicide letter he said: “I thought about making my death look like an accident but what if I ended up retarded and Clodagh having to look after me or worse knowing the truth.”
With his mind set on the murder suicide of an entire family, Hawe:
■ Rearranged furniture in the sitting room
■ Planned his sons would be sleeping when he launched his first attack
■ Sequenced the victims to disable the strongest first
■ Researched how to silence his victims in case they tried to cry out
■ Plotted the element of surprise to give him a murderous advantage over his wife
■ Gathered deadly weapons at the family home
■ Secreted an axe in the kitchen, and
■ Ensured easy access to two knives, one to be used on Clodagh, the other on the children.
Hawe, an obsessive fan of horror writer Stephen King, had his plot sketched out when he went on holiday with his family in July 2016.
Clodgagh’s sister Jacqueline said: “We know now that he had started planning the end. The axe he killed Clodagh with was always kept in the shed so at some stage before he killed Clodagh he’d brought it into the house.
“During the summer he moved the couch so Clodagh would have her back to him as he walked in to the sitting room. He came in behind her and he hit her in the head with the axe and he stabbed her in the back and she put up her hand to defend herself and he basically nearly sawed her hand off. He killed her like he hated her.
“He didn’t need two weapons, he killed her with such brutality, it was evil. He then sat down and he wrote the letter because he had left the axe and the knife on the floor and he wrote the letter and he took up a new knife and he went upstairs.”
In a final letter left in his home
Hawe, who was originally from Windgap, Kilkenny, wrote: “I’ve been planning this for a while.”