Rumours swirl amid families’ grief

Rumours swirl amid families’ grief


Edwin McGreal

When Alan Cawley was arrested on suspicion of killing Jack and Tom Blaine on Wednesday evening last, many people got half a story and suddenly a completely untrue rumour was being spread as gospel.
Cawley is 26. So is Alan Dunne, son of Paul Dunne who was the next of kin of the Blaine brothers. Word went around rapidly that it was Paul’s son who had been arrested, sharing the same Christian name and age as Alan Cawley.
Paul Dunne was much more anguished about another rumour that went around however.
“We can cope with Alan being connected but there is a well-known Castlebar family who I am very friendly with who were tied into this mistakenly,” Paul told The Mayo News. “They buried a brother last week and that man’s sister is married to a Cawley man in Ballina and people put two and two together and got five,” he said.
Suddenly the line was that the killer was out drinking after his uncle’s funeral.
“There was no connection and there’s enough people suffering without that kind of thing,” said Paul Dunne. “I had one man tell me how I was going to ‘kill’ one of this family because he was an uncle of the accused. Now, he wasn’t an uncle, but even if he was what on earth would he have to do with it? I couldn’t be mad with any relation of the alleged killer,” he said.
It was the spreading of rumours like this that led to Cllr Ger Deere to call for people to desist from idle gossip on Thursday evening last as the July meeting of Castlebar Town Council was adjourned as a mark of respect.
“The other thing I would request is that we leave the investigation to An Garda SiochΡna. Rumours are not helpful. There are enough families suffering because of this, but other families have suffered too from unfounded rumours,” said Cllr Deere.