Irish dad killed his 3 kids to 'stop them screaming' after secret was exposed

Irish Daily Mirror

13-05-2025

Nine years ago, a "respected" school vice-principal committed a horrific murder-suicide, taking the lives of his wife and children. The victim's sister has now provided haunting insights into his motives.
Alan Hawe, aged 40, brutally murdered his sons Liam, 13, Niall, 11, and Ryan, 6, by slitting their throats as they lay asleep in August 2016. Before this, he savagely killed his wife, Clodagh, using a hatchet, knife, and his bare hands in their family sitting room at their County Cavan home in Ireland.
Clodagh's sister, Jacqueline Connolly, recently released her memoir 'Deadly Silence. ' In it, she discusses Hawe's pornography addiction and her belief that the threat of this secret being uncovered contributed significantly to his unspeakable act.
Opening up on RTE Radio One, she expressed: "I suppose it would be social death if anybody found out that he had that addiction."
"I couldn't believe it when I was told. You know, to me, Alan was boring. He was socially inept. Holier than thou. He was very much involved in the church and the community, the GAA (Irish football) club," reports the Mirror.
"And the go-to man if anybody wanted anything done, the vice principal of the school. He was very much respected. And so if this was to come out, it was going to bring on a lot of shame."
Connolly shared her conviction that this indeed drove him to commit such monstrous deeds, saying: "Absolutely. The Serious Crime Review Team have revealed the evidence behind all of that. You've placed yourself as a brilliant father, husband and colleague. The shame of what he was looking at, to him, was the end of the world."
Alan Hawe, known as a devout Catholic and vice principal at Castlerahan National School, was seen as an upstanding member of the community. His wife Clodagh worked at Oristown National School in County Meath, where she was praised as a "wonderful, dedicated and caring teacher for pupils".
To the public, Hawe appeared to be a "pillar of the community", but his private life was marred by dark secrets. He frequented Russian dating sites, cross-dressed in his wife's clothes, and had an addiction to pornography.
He even used secret email accounts to view pornographic material, including illegal images of children.
In what became Ireland's most horrific case of murder-suicide, Clodagh was casually drinking tea and looking up family holidays when Hawe savagely took her life.
Jacqueline, Clodagh's sister, recounted the harrowing details: "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 to use 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 knife on the floor. He took up a new knife and went upstairs."
After composing the suicide note, Hawe grabbed another knife and ascended the stairs to slit the throats of his sleeping sons. He left them in their beds before returning downstairs to pen a second note.
Hawe penned a chilling note saying: "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."
Jacqueline gave testimony about the grizzly end her nephews met, stating courageously: "We know he put his knee on Liam's chest and cut through his windpipe to render him silent. Niall was sharing a room with Liam so Niall probably wouldn't have woken up because Liam couldn't scream out but he had defensive wounds on his hands."
She continued, describing the cruel acts: "He did the same to Niall and then he went to Ryan's room. Ryan was the smallest of the three of them. He was very slight and thin for his age but during the inquest we were told that [Hawe] used a sawing action on Ryan and then he just threw a duvet cover over all of them and left the knife that he used on Ryan's pillow. That is evil. That is not depression. That is force brutality and it is control."
In further discussions, it emerged from a state pathologist that Hawe possibly targeted the children's Adam's apples with stabs to prevent their screams.
In the harrowing suicide letter, he expressed being "caught red-handed" and he expressed dread over going back to school as "it was all going to blow up".
Reflecting on the content of his letter, Jacqueline confessed she revisited his words recently and deduced: "I don't see it any way other than he enjoyed what he did."
He had been seeking help for his pornography addiction, and therapy notes uncovered the shocking revelation that the teacher "masturbated somewhere he shouldn't have - possibly school".
Following his tragic end, the school's legal team stated there was no proof he engaged in watching pornography during work hours. Nonetheless, it is thought his decision to brutally murder his family was driven by a terror of his dark secrets being exposed.
In Jacqueline's heart-wrenching memoir, she expresses her conviction that the gardai failed to conduct a proper investigation into their deaths. She is now urging the authorities to release the insights from a secondary probe undertaken by the Serious Crime Review Team.