How many more times... before something is done?

Jacqueline Connolly watched the headlines light up her phone screen with an increasing sense of dread. She was in work, her phone sitting next to a half-empty coffee cup. The handset flashed relentlessly, buzzing against the polished hardwood tabletop, time after time.

“It mentioned a shooting in Fermanagh and I just knew. I don’t know how, but I felt it,” she recalls quietly. At first, she refused to open the messages, but they kept coming, and with each one, the knot in her stomach tightened. “To see that another suspected murder-suicide had happened, speaking personally, it is so triggering.”

The breaking news last Wednesday afternoon painfully echoed her own family’s unimaginably tragic loss. A mother dead and a family ripped apart. Whole futures lost and communities left devastated - stunned and grieving.

It’s almost nine years now since Jacqueline’s sister Clodagh (39) and her three nephews - Liam (13), Niall (11), and Ryan (6)- were murdered by husband and dad, Alan Hawe, at their Castlerahan home in August 2016.

Jacqueline’s heart immediately went out to the family and loved ones of Vanessa Whyte (45) and her two children, Sara (13) and James (14).

The bodies of Vanessa and Sara were found dead following a shooting at their home at Drummeer Road near Maguiresbridge last Wednesday.

Son James was rushed to hospital with serious injuries, but he too tragically died a short time later.

Their father Ian Rutledge (43) died in hospital on Monday night as a result of his injuries, which are believed to have been self inflicted. Police say they are not seeking anyone else in relation to the incident, which is being treated as a suspected murder suicide. Investigations are continuing to establish a motive.

Jacqueline herself has spent years doing the same, and at all times maintains what happened to her sister must serve a wider purpose.

“How many more opportunities will we get to do something, to stop something like this from happening again? Let’s be honest, there are going to be more because there are perpetrators all around us. They might not all end with attempted murder-suicide, but still there has to be learnings. From what happened to Clodagh, and now what has happened here in Fermanagh and elsewhere, how many more times do we have to read the headlines before something more is done?”

Jacqueline and her mum Mary Coll have themselves fought a tireless public battle to raise awareness and prevent similar tragedies from occurring again. At the heart of their campaign is a demand for the full publication of a serious crime review into the investigation behind Hawe’s actions.

An initial investigation determined vice principal Hawe (40) was motivated by depression and deep psychosis. However, in early 2024, Jacqueline and her mum were granted access to previously unseen elements of that review - details which revealed disturbing premeditation and significantly undermined the earlier narrative for them.

In February this year, the family met with then newly appointed Minister for Justice, Jim O’Callaghan, who pledged to ask the Garda Commissioner to release the file and consult with the Attorney General about the possibility of a second inquest. The first, held in December 2017, returned a verdict of unlawful killing, while Hawe’s death was recorded as suicide.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin, responding to questions from Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald in the Dáil recently, said the Attorney General had not refused a second inquest but was seeking “further information” before making a decision.

He also acknowledged that publishing the serious crime review would be unprecedented.

For Jacqueline, the delay and what she feels is a lack of transparency, is “infuriating”.

The tragedy in Maguiresbridge revives painful memories - not just of Clodagh’s case - but close by.

Concepta Leonard, known as ‘Connie’, was stabbed to death by her estranged partner Peadar Phair in May 2017 before taking his own life. Her son Conor Gallagher, who has Down’s syndrome, was also injured in the attack but survived.

Then there were the 2018 killings in nearby Derrylin, where four members of the Gossett family, including a 15-month-old child, died in a house fire started by Daniel Sebastian Allen. He was later convicted and sentenced to a minimum of 29 years in prison.

Other high-profile femicides elsewhere since the Hawe murders include the death of Jasmine McMonagle in Donegal in 2019 while her children were in the house; and, most recently, the case of Tina Satchwell, reported missing by her husband Richard in 2017. Her remains were later discovered beneath the floor of their Youghal home and earlier this year he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Between 2000 and 2019, Irish authorities recorded 142 family homicide incidents, leading to 166 deaths - including 11 children. Over half of women murdered in resolved cases were killed by a current or former intimate partner. Shockingly, 61% of the deaths occurred in the victim’s own home.

But some believe the true figures or so-called ‘hidden homicides’ are even greater.

“Perpetrators are learning all the time how to carry out the most awful actions, and also to cover their tracks,” shares Jacqueline, who believes the findings from the serious crime review are essential in building on recommendations arising from the Study on Familicide & Domestic and Family Violence Death Reviews, already published.

“Women are not learning how to leave safely, or what warning signs to look out for. We’re not talking about releasing names. We’re talking about releasing the findings of a review so that, as a country, we can strategise on how to prevent things like this from happening again. There is no point sitting on valuable information.”

With Comm Harris stepping down in September, Jacqueline is hoping for a fresh perspective from his successor. But she’s still calling on the country’s current top cop to act before he leaves the post.

“Ideally, I’d hope Drew Harris agrees to release those findings before he steps down, and leave it to the next commissioner to action them,” she says. “I don’t see why we should have to go through the whole process again. I don’t think it’s fair, and it’s certainly not right. Those two investigations happened on his watch. There has to be oversight. There needs to be accountability. But most of all, there has to be transparency. What’s to gain by hiding this?”

Jacqueline questions meanwhile if the public has been told the full truth. “Alan Hawe did what he did and the whole country knows it,” she says. “But what we don’t know is everything he did before it. And that matters because we need to learn from it.”