holding knife
© CC BY 2.0 / István Berta
A school teacher slaughtered his wife and three children after he had been caught "red-handed" while watching pornography and performing an act of lewdness.

Alan Hawe brutally murdered his sons, thirteen-year-old Liam, Niall, aged eleven, and six-year-old Ryan having cut their throats so that they could not call for help. Later he killed his wife Clodagh, aged 39, with an axe before committing suicide at their house in County Cavan, Ireland.

According to the Irish Sun, the 40-year-old man feared "falling from grace" after he had been busted watching porn and fondling himself at the school where he worked as a deputy principal.

His suicide note was later found at their home in Ballyjamesduff in County Cavan and published by the Irish Daily Star: "I am sorry for how I murdered them all but I simply had no other way."

Hawe's suicide note was reviewed by Professor Harry Kennedy, clinical doctor at the Central Mental Hospital, who claimed that it indicated that the murderer was troubled.


Comment: Gee, where'd you get that brainwave Zoltar?

Zoltar
© Unknown



"When people act in the course of severe mental illness, such as very severe psychotic mental illness, their judgment is severely impaired," Professor Kennedy said, adding that his long-term depression evolved into a "severe depressive episode with psychotic symptoms."


Comment: I wonder if it was serious. Severe even.


A lawyer for Clodagh's grief-stricken mother said that Hawe's primary targets were his wife and their eldest son as he feared they might fight back.

"It is clear from the evidence presented at the inquest that Clodagh and her boys were killed in a sequence that ensured that the eldest and most likely to provide effective resistance were killed first, and they were executed in a manner that rendered them unable to cry out for help."

Hawe reportedly requested that he not be forgiven for what he had done.