Murder, that is!
In June last year a Cowra man murdered his wife and 2 grandchildren. He stabbed his wife and hit her on the back of the head with a hammer. When police interviewed him he described the hammer with pride, affectionately referring to it as ”Fred”. According to a report prepared by a psychiatrist, the man ”gave a gruesome account of first drowning the younger girl and then luring the boy to go to the toilet and hitting him over the back of the head with a hammer”. He re-dressed his five-year-old granddaughter in her pyjamas and put her on the bed. He put the seven-year-old on the bunk next to his sister. He then drowned the family dog and put it under the children’s bed. He told police he was worried there would be no one left to look after it. When his daughter, a police officer, arrived home from work, he tried to kill her with an axe. He told police he then planned to drive to Newcastle to kill his daughter’s estranged husband.
Less than a year earlier, his younger brother, in England, murdered his partner and 4 year old son. James Conan, stabbed his partner Kirsty O’Connell in what the court heard was a ”hail of knife blows”. During the frenzied attack, Conan severed his 21-year-old girlfriend’s jugular vein. He then smoked a cigarette, played with their son Patrick, then took him to the bedroom, smothered him with a pillow and bathed him. He then laid out his son in what the prosecutor said was a bizarre Viking-style ritual. He put a dagger next to the body, a torch in his hand and boots on his feet. He then surrounded the boy with toys ”arranged like treasures”.
Both brothers have been jailed for life for their crimes. Their parents, had they still been alive, would have been so proud. Or not. When interviewed by police, Conan spoke of an appalling and unhappy childhood, in which the family moved from Ireland and eventually settled in a working-class area of Leeds. But his sister and two older brothers, including the Cowra murderer, spoke of an unremarkable childhood.
By the way, Conan wasn’t the younger brother’s real name – he changed his name to Conan, after his hero Conan the Barbarian.
Seriously? Wow, what are the odds of that happening? You’ve got to wonder if there had ever been any talk of murder between them at any point in their lives while they were together! This is just freaky!
Wow,I agree-what are the chance of it happening twice like that! Anyway it’s a strange world we live in (or at least their are a lot of really strange people in it!)WTF