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Gardaí is investigating suspicions that the farmer at the center of last month’s murder-suicide on a Co Cork farm, which left three members of the same family dead, persuaded one of his sons to join a pact to kill. his other son in a row with his wife for a will.
Detectives believe both Tadg O’Sullivan (59) and his son Diarmuid (23) were involved in the murder of their other son, Mark (26), who was shot dead in his room at the family home in Raheen, Kanturk. . around 6.40 am on October 26.
However, they are now investigating whether Tadg may have hatched the plan to kill Mark and recruited Diarmuid to help him carry it out in the days leading up to the shooting after a letter arrived at the house, addressed to his wife, Anne O’Sullivan (60), from a Dublin lawyer whose services she had hired.
The content of the letter, which sets out the proposed asset division, may have prompted Tadg to begin planning the sequence of events that ultimately led to the murder-suicide, Gardaí believes.
Anne and Mark had returned to Castlemagner in mid-October after being discharged from Dublin hospital, where they had undergone surgery. But they had stayed with relatives instead of returning to the family home amid mounting tensions between the couple.
Gardaí is also examining the content of a letter sent by a Cork lawyer to Anne on behalf of Tadg in which the latter indicated that although they had their differences, he was confident that they could resolve the dispute and that she and Mark should return home. .
Mark O’Sullivan’s coffin is taken to the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Kanturk, Co Cork. Photograph: Andy Gibson / PA Wire
It is understood that Anne received the letter on October 23 and, interpreting it as her husband extending an olive branch, returned with Mark to the family home in Raheen two days later, on the night of Sunday October 25, the day before the crime. began to unfold.
The Gardaí has already begun taking a detailed statement from Anne, whom the Gardaí believes was saved from her husband and youngest son so that they could live with torment after Mark was killed in a dispute over who would inherit the 115-acre farm, owned by Anne.
It is understood that Tadg and Diarmuid told Anne in the courtyard of the family farm, while trying to escape, that she might live with the consequences of what had happened to Mark and that they would be found in a field near a fairy fort afterwards. that they took their own lives.
The bodies of both men were later found with gunshot wounds to the head along with two rifles in legal possession in the field around 1.40pm on October 26, and Gardaí is satisfied by the preliminary autopsy results that each man shot himself in an apparent pact of suicide.
Diarmuid O’Sullivan. Photograph: Family Brochure / PA Wire
Detailed statement
Officers have spent several hours spread over several days taking a detailed statement from Anne O’Sullivan, who has not returned to the family home but continues to stay with relatives locally, as they seek to piece together the exact sequence of events that led up to the horrible events.
Gardaí expects to receive the results of the ballistics and forensic tests of the two weapons used in the murders within a few weeks to include them in a file that will be sent to the Director of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Gardaí will prepare a file for the DPP even if they are not looking for anyone else in connection with the deaths. Once the DPP is satisfied, no charges can be brought, Gardaí will forward the file to North Cork Medical Examiner Dr. Michael Kennedy for an investigation, which is unlikely to be heard before 2021.
Gardaí declared the family hamlet, where Mark’s body was found, a crime scene, along with the field where the bodies of Tadg and Diarmuid were found. Search teams spent several days combing the farm for any evidence that might help them.
Tadg O’Sullivan. Photograph: Family Brochure / PA Wire
Tadg’s writings, as well as a long note found tied to Diarmuid’s leg, led them to believe that the killings were sparked by a dispute Tadg had with his wife over the inheritance, which had been festering for months.
And they are investigating the theory that Diarmuid had no particular grievance with Mark, but with his mother over plans to leave him only one field, known as the bog field, with Mark due to obtain the rest of the farm, which which is good. – Quality farmland.
The farm in Kanturk, northeast of Co Cork, where the bodies of Tadg O’Sullivan and his two sons, Diarmuid and Mark, were found. Photograph: Niall Carson / PA Wire
Lawyers Letters
Gardaí has dismissed as incorrect some media reports that Mark and Diarmuid had exchanged lawyer letters, but informed sources have confirmed that Gardaí found legal correspondence in the house between Tadg and his wife dating back to February.
And Gardaí is also studying a note written by Mark and found in his room, in which he expresses concern about what could happen to him and his mother amid fears that his father and younger brother were still very aggrieved by the proposed division of assets.
Mark O’Sullivan. Photograph: Family Brochure / PA Wire
Legal sources have noted that regardless of what Anne would have stated in her will regarding the family farm, if Tadg had survived her and challenged her will, she would have been entitled to at least one third of the inheritance under the Act. of succession.
Anne had not actually transferred ownership of the 115-acre farm in her own name; it was still listed in the Land Registry as belonging to his late father, Timothy Cronin.
Tadg owned a smaller property of about 30 acres in Lohort, in nearby Cecilstown.
Mark, who had worked as a care aide at Teach Altra nursing home while in college, graduated with a law and business degree from the University of Limerick in 2017 and has since completed a master’s degree at University College Cork. He worked with a company in Limerick.
The plot involvement of Diarmuid, who had completed a bachelor’s degree in accounting at the Cork Institute of Technology in June and was due to graduate from a virtual ceremony in early November, was described by people who knew him as difficult to understand.
“He was a quiet but hard-working country boy,” said an acquaintance. “He used to work Saturdays at Burton’s hardware store in Kanturk and had started his own firewood sales and delivery business. I used to advertise it every week in the Corkman newspaper. “
Another acquaintance said it was “difficult to reconcile what happened to the Diarmuid that I knew. There was no malice in him from what I could see, he was just moving on with his life, so I find it very difficult to understand that he is the instigator of all this terrible tragedy. “
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