Kathleen Chada: “The people of Ballintubber have embraced Eoghan and Ruairi”
Mother of murdered brothers speaks about the connection she feels to Ballintubber and Westport
MANY people will remember where they were when the shocking news came through about the murders of Eoghan Chada and his five-year-old brother Ruairi on a sunny July day in 2013.
The bodies of ten year old Eoghan Chada and his five year old brother Ruairi were recovered in their father’s car boot in Westport.
Their father Sanjeev Chada had murdered them in Ballintubber before crashing his car in Rosbeg, Westport. Earlier that morning Gardai issued a Child Rescue Ireland (CRI) Alert for the first time, seeking public help for the abduction of the boys from Ballinkillen, Co Carlow.
In effect, the whole country had been looking for Eoghan and Ruairi Chada
The reporting in these pages from the late former Managing Editor Neill O’Neill highlighted the sirens wailing in the town being the first signs that something was wrong.
No one could have anticipated the shocking brutality and evil of those murders.
It will be thirteen years this July since that dark summer afternoon in Westport, and for brave mother Kathleen Chada has spoken to The Mayo News about how she has developed a “great love” for Mayo and in particular Ballintubber and Westport.
Words of wisdom
FATHER Charlie McDonnell, the then parish administrator in Westport, came to the scene of the crash and then went to the boy’s funeral in their hometown in Carlow.
Over the years, he has been very gently supportive of Kathleen and they have become friends.
“He’s been incredible. He’s just an incredibly gentle soul. We would talk about everything and anything. If I wanted to talk about the boys, I could and we could also talk about something completely different.”
She has spent many weekends down in Westport over the intervening years.
Kathleen remembers the first time she went to Ballintubber. About a week after Eoghan and Ruairi’s funeral, she was in Castlebar to speak with the detective investigating the case, who asked her if she would like to go where the boys had been killed.
Her relationship with the place could have been very different, as she notes that it could have been somewhere where she never ever wanted to be but she says that “As soon as I stood out of the car that day, I went, 'the boys are not here'. They are just not here.’”
This was very important for her, she explains, as there was no sinister feeling. While “you can’t quantify that, it was important for me to feel that was the case.”
She is very grateful to Fr Frank Fahey for the words of wisdom he has imparted over the years and his “great ability to say very little, but with huge impact and meaning that just turned my thought process and thinking around.”
One moment of solace from Fr Fahey that has stayed with her was about two years after her boys had been killed.
“I felt something was missing. I didn’t feel them as strongly within me,” she recalls.
With a self-deprecating laugh she comments that it sounds mumbo jumbo but she felt that something had shifted and changed.
There is no roadmap for grief and fortunately for Kathleen, she has a strong faith as “for me, it’s important to feel that the boys are somewhere that I will end up and that we will all be together again. I think if I thought death was it that it would be an incredibly lonely place for me to be in at this point,” she told The Mayo News.
She remembers Fr Fahey telling her that her feelings were normal and that “they have moved on because they are happy that you are okay.”
These words brought huge comfort to her and made her shift her thinking.
The Tóchar Phádraig
THERE was no connection to Mayo nor Ballintubber nor Westport for Kathleen, her boys or their murderer before that dark day in July 2013.
Kathleen thinks her ex-husband just drove that particular day.
She classifies herself as very lucky to be able to find comfort in Mayo and comments that it “feels a good place with a positive energy.”
Ballintubber has become an “incredibly special place” for Kathleen and the sense of community reminds her of Ballinkillen in Co Carlow.
The memorial plaque erected in their memory on the grounds of Ballintubber Abbey that overlooks the start of The Tóchar Phádraig, a pilgrimage she has done a number of times.
“Their memories are going to be there for hundreds of years. Somebody will wipe that stone at some point in 100, 200 years, and go, I wonder who Eoghan and Ruairi were. And so there's a real sense of longevity in that,” she said.