'Joy visibly upset for three days, skipped wedding toast on Saturday' in Goa

CANDOLIM: The sleepy ward of Orda in Candolim was agog in celebration on Saturday evening, as villagers boarded a chartered bus to a neighbour's wedding reception at Penha de Franca. Exactly 24 hours later on Sunday, the same neighbourhood was covered by a veil of gloom.
While the village was deserted, two children aged 8 and 14 were murdered, while their father Joy Fernandes was later found hanging in a thicket behind their home in Orda.
Joy, who contested the zilla panchayat elections and was a popular face in the village, was to raise a toast at Saturday's wedding, but backed out at the last minute, to everyone's surprise.
His friends said Joy appeared visibly upset for around three days before his death, when the village had gathered for the pre-wedding roce ceremony. Nobody, though, suspected anything more as Joy's son's first holy communion was scheduled to take place on January 15.
"We are childhood friends and we would spend hours together chatting," said a longtime friend of Joy.
But over the last few days, he would not even stop to greet me. He could be seen going about his usual chores. He was the one dropping his daughter to her school in Dona Paula and son to his school in Porvorim,” said the friend, dismissing the possibility of any marital strife.
“Which family does not have its share of problems?” The father and the two children were last seen alive on Saturday afternoon, post which, when his wife Irene returned in the evening from the nuptials, she found the home door locked. She initially thought the father had taken the children out with him, but it was around evening that she panicked, not having heard from them yet.
“When the iron door at the back was broken open and the wife rushed inside, she found the children’s bodies lying lifeless on a bed. They were rushed to the PHC, but later taken to Goa Medical College in Bambolim. Their bodies were already stiff and cold when found.
They could have been murdered in the afternoon itself,” said another friend. But when Joy’s body was recovered later hanging from a tree behind his house, it wasn’t as stiff, and the hanging must have taken place in the early hours of Sunday morning, said a neighbour.
The air-conditioners and fans in the entire house were found on. “The children’s murders seemed well-planned,” the friend continued. “It was known that not a single villager would be present on the day of the wedding. Also, no one would venture into the thicket where Joy was found hanging. Joy and I would play there as children and he knew the area like the back of his hand.”
According to those who knew him well, Joy did not hold a regular job at present. “He was working with the Tiatr Academy of Goa when I was the president. He had been appointed by the art and culture department. But after my term ended, he had some differences with the new president and left his job,” said former TAG president Tomazinho Cardozo.
Joy tried his hand at cooking and supplying snacks to the Pilar Fathers, but that too was discontinued after a while. On Sunday, unable to bear the pain, Irene, a teacher at a school in Merces, chose to mourn the deaths at her parents’ home, outside Orda. “We were at the wedding at around 10.30pm when we heard that the children’s bodies had been found and the father was suspected to be absconding. That was the end of the celebrations,” said one of his neighbours who did not wish to be identified.