Alan Hawe

IE — Ballyjamesduff. On August 16, 2016, Alan Hawe, a school deputy principal, brutally murdered his wife, Clodagh, with an axe and a knife as she sat on the sofa. She suffered wounds to her head, neck and back, as well as injuries to her hand as she tried to protect her head.

Hawe then wrote a murder-suicide letter at his kitchen table and sealed it in an envelope, before proceeding upstairs to kill his three sleeping sons. According to deputy state pathologist, Michael Curtis, Hawe murdered his wife first and then his sons by order of age so that they would not be able to alert anyone else in the house.

Alan Hawe (left), a man with a secret cross-dressing habit and porn addiction, slaughtered his entire family before committing suicide. “He killed her like he hated her,” Clodagh’s sister, Jacqueline Connolly, said.

Liam, 14, Niall, 11 and Ryan, 6, were fatally stabbed in their throats. Liam also sustained initial wounds to his forearm and hands, which the pathologist described as defensive injuries. Niall also had defensive wounds on his right hand. At the inquest into the murders, Dr. Curtis stated “I would find it very difficult to believe it was a coincidence that each of the boys’ injuries were at their Adam’s apples rendering all three of them unable to make a sound.”

After butchering his sons, Hawe returned downstairs, and wrote a second note on the exterior of the sealed envelope. He began this second note by stating: “All the good stuff we did I was really into it. But I think there was some sort of psychosis that made me enjoy that yet in the next moment I was the complete opposite. I’m sorry for how I murdered them all but I simply had no other way.”

Hawe also left a note on the back door of the house, which said “Please do not enter, please call the Gards.” He then hanged himself in the hall. Mary Coll, Clodagh’s mother, discovered the note on the door when she went to their home to check on them, after they had failed to show at her house.

In murder-suicide letter, Hawe twice urged family members to contact his counsellor to get the additional information he could not write about. Family members have since discovered he had been dressing up in his wife’s underwear and clothes, accessing online porn on a school computer and phone, and browsing Russian dating sites. However, details about what additional information the counsellor had have not been revealed to the family.

Clodagh Hawe (right) with her three sons (left to right) Niall, Ryan and Liam.