‘They’re dead in the back, were the words he used’ – Kathleen Chada on moment husband told her he’d killed their sons

On July 29, 2013, Kathleen’s former husband Sanjeev Chada murdered their sons, Eoghan (10) and Ruairí (5), and later attempted to take his own life.

He killed the boys at Skehanagh Lower in Ballintubber, Co Mayo, and their bodies were found in the boot of his car, which he had crashed near Westport.

Sanjeev Chada pleaded guilty in court and handed two life sentences to run concurrently.

The couple had been together for almost two decades before the double murder. They lived in Co Carlow and because Kathleen had a well-paid job, they made the decision that Sanjeev would be a stay-at-home parent.

Ms Chada said she felt it was “absolutely” the right decision at the time and it offered the family a “good lifestyle”.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Brendan O’Connor programme, Ms Chada said her ex-husband was the “fun parent”, who gave Eoghan and Ruairí their love of sport. She said the boys idealised him, and “that’s what makes the betrayal so much harder”.

"He didn’t want to be seen as less in their eyes after he was found out,” she said.

Kathleen was aware that Sanjeev played the stock market, but she was unaware that he was losing heavily. He ran up debts and used €56,000 from community funds to fuel his habit.

Ms Chada said his fraud was uncovered 10 days before the boys were killed and initially, she thought they would be able to repay the debt.

"I wasn't kicking him out. I wasn't asking him to leave the family home. We would get through this,” she said.

"In the immediate, we would work through it. I'm a practical person, I went into fix it mode… We'd have managed it, whatever we would have done it.”

On the day Sanjeev and the boys went missing, Kathleen said he told her they were going for a walk. When they did not return, she drove around Carlow with her brother looking for them and later contacted Gardaí. Ms Chada said she thought her husband might have “bolted” and took her sons with him, but she never thought Eoghan and Ruairí were in danger.

She was with a detective when she got a call from an unknown number, it was Sanjeev. He had driven his car across a busy road Co Mayo, but he survived the collision. A passerby came to his aid, and it was his phone that Sanjeev was phoning from.

"They’re [the boys] are dead in the back, were the words he used, and I lost it at that,” she said.

"The detective took the phone from me… God love that detective, I do think of him often, because I remember him walking past me to be on the phone and as he walked back in, I knew just looking at his face, and all he had to say was ‘I'm sorry, Kathleen', and there's a bit of a blur after that.”

Ms Chada would later find an email that her husband had sent to himself a year and half previously. It was a suicide note, in which he outlined his intentions to kill all four of them.

She said her husband was not suffering a “moment of madness” and instead she thinks he was “confronted with something he couldn't worm his way out of basically, and made the decision that he did”.

Kathleen said she has often been asked why she has kept her ex-husband’s last name and she explained that she does it for her boys.

"Eoghan and Ruairí were born as Eoghan and Ruairí Chada,” she said.

"They weren't born as Murphy and I can't change that. I don't want to say that was them. That was their identity and I’ve chosen to keep that for them, not for him.”

It’s almost ten years since the boys were killed and Ms Chada said she has “worked out ways of being able to manage” her grief.

Kathleen said Eoghan and Ruairí are “always in my heart” and she feels it’s “up to me to make that life somewhat meaningful”.

Ms Chada said her sons were “loved boys” who “loved in return”.

"They were happy, they were content. They had a good life in a loving home,” she said.

"So, what happened to them in those last moments, are just their last moments and as significant as they are and as just enormous as they are, They're their moments within their lives. I don’t go there that often.”

"I choose to remember the happy life that they had and that we had and we were of happy family,” she added.

“I had to do a lot of work myself, with the psychologist, to remember that and to allow myself to remember that we were a happy family. Because to discount that, and to completely try and wipe Sanjeev, out of my life. Would take out the boys as well.”

Kathleen Chada has written a memoir called ‘Everything’ which will be published next week.