KANTURK KILLERS TAUNTED MUM AS SHE FLED
AS TERRIFIED Anne O’Sullivan fled her home barefoot early last Monday morning, a cruel parting remark from her murderous husband and son left her in no doubt that they spared her life because they wanted her to suffer.
Moments earlier husband Tadg and youngest son Diarmuid had shot dead her devoted eldest son Mark, with two legally held .22 rifles, in his bedroom.
She had run into the hallway as the first of seven shots were fired, and she watched in horror as her cherished son stumbled from his bed while five of seven shots struck.
‘They wanted to kill Mark with her there. The thinking is Diarmuid wanted to kill her too but the father wanted to make her suffer,’ said a source familiar with the investigation. ‘He
was most interested in making her suffer than anything else at that moment in time. It is very perverse stuff.
‘He knew it would be more cruel and callous to leave her to suffer the trauma of losing her entire family in the most unthinkable of circumstances.’
The source outlined the appalling details of the calculated murder-suicide scheme.
‘Anne was in her nightdress, she was barefoot. These were two grown men armed with guns, if they wanted her dead she would be dead now,’ said the insider.
It is understood a ‘major row’ took place at the farm in the townland of Assolas, near Castlemagner Kenturk, Co. Cork, a number of weeks before, over the bitter land dispute, at which point Mrs O’Sullivan and Mark left the house.
However, they were seemingly ‘coaxed’ back to the farm last Sunday night, with talk of an olive branch and of ‘resolving the issue’.
‘Approaches were made to get them back to the farm, this was a considered and calculated plan to kill Mark, with the overall aim of making Anne suffer as she battles a serious illness. It’s unthinkable stuff.’
As Mark died on his bedroom floor, his distressed mother fled the farm in a desperate search for help – but Tadg and
‘If they wanted her dead she would be dead now’
Diarmuid caught up with her. They took her phone and told her they were then going to kill themselves.
And as she mustered as much strength as she could in her ill health and struggled to seek help for her dying son, they made their way to the field at the rear of the house to complete their suicide pact.
Father and son fired one final shot each, killing themselves. There was a line of sight from the rear of the house to where the bodies lay in the distance, in a field named ‘The Fort’. A 12-page detailed note, strapped to Diarmuid’s thigh with Clingfilm, is understood to hold the key to the two men’s thinking in the days leading up to the grotesque killings.
A page and a half of those 12 pages were written by Tadg. A source said the letter is ‘well-scripted and well-written’.
It showed that what happened was premeditated and planned and it was executed by the father and son in partnership. ‘It was most likely led by the younger lad, but the father was obviously in on it. It was sadistic to the point that they wanted to hurt her.
‘It definitely was a murder-suicide pact from the start and shows a family divided over land.’
Mrs O’Sullivan and Mark were lured back to the family farm, from the home of a neighbour and family friend, last Sunday night. They had been staying there following a dispute. Anne was also recovering from surgery she had in a hospital in Dublin for a serious illness.
Less than 12 hours later, just after 6.30am, Mark was dead in his bedroom. At around 7am the gardaí were called after a distressed Anne finally arrived at a neighbour’s door.
A Garda statement then requested a media blackout on the incident.
By 7.25am uniformed and plainclothes gardaí arrived at the farm,
where they met a neighbour who told them he had clearly heard two shot from the back of the house.
The matter was then declared a critical firearms incident, a cordon was placed around the farm and a trained negotiator tried in vain to make contact with Tadg and Diarmuid. Armed gardaí arrived, the Coast Guard helicopter airlifted a team of paramedics to the grounds of Castlemagner GAA club, and two doctors also travelled to the scene.
An informed source told the Irish Mail on Sunday that the controversial shooting of John Carthy by gardaí, at Abbeylara, Co. Longford, 20 years ago was running through the minds of all gardaí there. And
they were determined to do everything they could to resolve the issue without further bloodshed.
They only decided to enter after hours of a trained negotiator receiving no response. The Armed Support Unit was then airlifted to the scene and they led the way into the farmhouse, followed by the local Emergency Response Unit.
The body of Mark was discovered
in his bedroom and the bodies of Tadg and Diarmuid were spotted by the Garda Air Support Unit helicopter, lying close together in a field to the rear of the house.
The field is known locally as ‘The Fort’ as a fairy fort is nearby.
It is understood that an appointment between a Dublin solicitor and Anne O’Sullivan was a ‘trigger’ that led to the murder-suicide.
She went to the ‘non-local’ solicitor while attending her medical appointment in recent weeks, to draw up her will, following the long-running dispute over the large farm that she had inherited from her father.
She had decided not to divide it up,
and instead leave it all to Mark.
‘She didn’t want to split the farm, and Mark was the eldest son and was sharp and educated and when she was away in Dublin she had an appointment with a solicitor, a non-local solicitor, to make her will and that triggered it,’ said the source.
‘The family thinking is Mark was training to be a solicitor and had the upper legal hand on wills and stuff.’ Tadg felt ‘oppressed’ in his marriage and, although the MoS understands he had been given a ‘stay’ in the house, in the event of his wife passing, he felt he had been cut out of his wife’s inheritance.
Diarmuid had become ‘resentful
‘Anne didn’t want the farm to be split’
and bitter’ about his older brother being left the family farm and it appears he was the driving force behind the sadistic plan.
‘There is definitely a mental health aspect with the son and a lot of bitterness. With the father, she owned the house, she owned the land, she was the nurse and he felt Mark, the eldest son getting it, cut him out too, even though he got a stay on the house.
‘This has all been going on for a period of time, but the recent Dublin meeting was the catalyst for what happened this week.’
The bitter family divide in life was tragically demonstrated also in death. Separate funeral services were held on Friday and Saturday: one for the murderers, and one for the murdered.
Tadg and Diarmuid were buried on Friday, following a funeral Mass for family members at St Mary’s Church in Castlemagner, at 2.30pm, with the burial afterwards at St Brigid’s Cemetery in Castlemagner. Mark was buried at an undisclosed location, following a funeral Mass for family members at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Kanturk.
At that Mass yesterday Fr Toby Bluitt repeated much of what he had said on Friday.
He spoke of a ‘darkness’ that has ‘enveloped’ the O’Sullivan family and the local community over the previous week.
‘The normally tranquil local area, blanketed at this time of year with a myriad of colourful autumn leaves, became a hive of activity and the autumn light was, for a time, a very distant memory.
‘The shock, the numbness, the devastation, was impossible to imagine and the unfolding news of the loss
of three lives was incomprehensible.’ Fr Bluitt described Mark as ‘highly thought of’ young man who was preparing for his final exams.
‘Mark attended school in Ballyhass and Kanturk, like his younger brother Diarmuid, and also socialised in Castlemagner.
‘He studied law at the University of Limerick, graduating in 2017. He was a trainee solicitor preparing to complete his final exams.
‘UL paid tribute to him this week and underlined the shock felt within the UL community where Mark was highly thought of.
‘One would imagine that life was full of possibilities for him.’
The priest said the death of Mark
and his father and brother should not be ‘minimised’ by trying to find ‘easy answers because there are no answers, but there are some things that we do know in the midst of our grief’.
‘We know that this was not God’s will, that the Lord’s prayer teaches us “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. God’s will is not always done on earth as the tragedy of this week reminds us.’
Fr Bluitt added that this was not a ‘wake-up call, nor did it happen so that we can learn something’.
He said: ‘So today, we come in our grief, our pain, our anger and our confusion.’
‘We come in our grief, anger... and confusion’