Mum facing €13k funeral bill after murder-suicide pleads for donations
Helen O’Driscoll pleaded to anyone who can assist to consider donating a few euro to a fund which has been set up in her local bank to help them meet the costs of the triple funeral.
“I would appeal to peoples’ better nature, if people are able, to maybe donate a euro or two to help us through this,” she said. “The bill was ready a few days after the funerals but I’m only getting around to it now. People asked at the time how they could help us and the family and they didn’t know how. But now, this is a way they could help.”
Helen was speaking last night ahead of what will be an extremely difficult day today for the family — her twins, Patrick and Thomas, would have celebrated their 10th birthday. “It’s going to be a very hard day. It should have been a day we’d be celebrating, but that’s not going to happen. You never expect what happened to happen to anyone.”
The twins were found stabbed to death at their family home at Deerpark in Charleville on September 4.
Their bodies were found by their younger brothers, Jimmy, 5, and Martin, 3.
Ms O’Driscoll and her husband Thomas had been in Waterford buying a miniature traditional barrel Traveller caravan for the twins when they got a phonecall urging them to get home immediately.
As they rushed home, word came through about an hour later, that the body of their older son, Jonathan, 21, had been found in woodland in Buttevant about 15km away.
Gardaí believe he stabbed the twins before driving away and taking his life.
The twins were buried in the O’Driscoll family plot in Charleville and Jonathan was buried later with Helen’s parents in Kilmallock.
Helen said the last few weeks had been extremely traumatic for the family.
“We have good days and bad days. We are trying to cope as best we can.”
She revealed she hasn’t set foot inside the house since that dreadful day, and is now living in a mobile home in the yard to the rear of the house. “Thomas Sr goes in to light a candle for the twins, God speed to them, but I won’t go in. It’s too upsetting. I haven’t just lost three children. I’ve lost my home as well. I’m not going in there.”
Despite hostility towards Jonathan from sections of the Travelling community, Helen has said she will always love him. “As I have said 101 times, I am his mother. I forgive him. I couldn’t give a hoot what the whole world would say about my son because I knew him as the boy I reared,” she said, previously.
The first big fundraiser for the family will be a walk taking place in Charleville town park today at 3.30pm.
- The O’Driscoll fund details are:
