A Galway Epiphany

I was in Ollie Crowe’s bar in Bohermore. The talk was of the murder of Clodagh, a lovely woman in the Midlands. She seemed to have the Irish dream: three gorgeous boys, a devoted husband who was not only a school vice principal but a major figure in the GAA, active in the community.

But.

Beware that fucking but.

He seemed to never leave Clodagh’s side, even went with her and her sister to select Clodagh’s wedding dress.

Creepy, right?

He would never allow Clodagh to have even a cup of tea with her beloved mother without him present. He was, as they say, stuck in everything.

Clodagh, deeply troubled, told her mother that he was in trouble at the school for missing money and something of a sexual nature. He had been wearing Clodagh’s underwear and admitted he watched porn obsessively but Clodagh asserted he was getting counseling.

Yeah, right.

The night before he was due to return to work to, as they say, face the music, he crept up behind Clodagh, who was at the computer, planning a family holiday. He took her head nearly clean off with the ax, then he went upstairs, cut the vocal cords of the eldest boy lest he alert the two younger lads who shared a room; a knife was used, and the coroner stated there were signs of defensive wounds.

Fuck.

He then went into the other children’s room and slit their throats; they were six and four. Back downstairs to transfer his wife’s money into his account, then calmly wrote a five-page letter (that, even three years later, Clodagh’s family have not been allowed to see in its entirety).

Gets worse, if possible.

His brother was to have his car, and he demanded that he not be forgiven.

As Brenda Power wrote in the Sunday Times to that last bit,

“Don’t fucking worry!”

She also added, to the pride of the pub, May he rot in hell.

A-fucking-men to that.

She ridiculed the notion that he’d snapped.

It was obvious he’d been planning for months as, months before, he moved the furniture so that Clodagh would be sitting with her back to him when he attacked her. He was a big man and she a petite woman.

The piss-poor coward.

But what irked her and only one other brave journalist was the

Rehabilitation of the predator syndrome.

This was all the rage, if you’ll excuse the horrendous pun. In this case, the priest praised the killer as a community person, a committed family man (seriously, like fuck that), a pillar of the community.

Clodagh’s mother and sister broke their silence to appear on Prime Time, beg the powers that be (and don’t) pleading for the why of it; his five-page letter still hadn’t been released to them.

Clodagh’s mother revealed in heart-wrenching detail the morning she went to Clodagh’s house, with a feeling of dread, a note on the door, warned,

“Call the police.”

I had to literally shut my ears, it was so agonizing to hear. There was a man sitting next to me. He looked cold, freezing. He asked me,

“Where would I get a hot water bottle?”

I said,

“1957.”