A SHAKESPEAREAN tragedy? Crime of passion? Murderous misogyny? The inevitable fall-out of a growing knife culture? The confused media treatment of the murder-suicide in Bray last weekend reflected public bewilderment around the tragedy, in which a 22-year-old student, Shane Clancy, stabbed Sebastian Creane to death, embedded a knife in the back of his former girlfriend Jennifer Hannigan and left Sebastian's brother, Dylan, with a punctured lung, before taking his own life, write KATHY SHERIDANand CONOR LALLY
Commentators, “experts” and Opposition politicians honed their prejudices and theories and dumped them into the public domain, conveniently conflating the Bray tragedy with a cluster of stabbings in Co Mayo. There was no-one to answer back. The perpetrator and his target were dead. The chief witnesses lay in hospital, unfit for interview. The case will never reach the courts because there is no living defendant and while inquests will be held, none of the people who were in the house that night will be compelled to give evidence. The inquest process does not apportion blame for a death and might simply record verdicts of death by stabbing. In other words, the full horror of the case may never be publicly aired.
One example of the race to be first with psychological analysis stemmed from the report that Clancy had been studying Middle Eastern studies at Trinity College Dublin. This, suggested one columnist, “has all sorts of connotations, as we have all seen the lack of respect for females in those countries and customs and the punishments they receive for any transgressions”. In fact, aside from the fact that, for example, the study of criminology does not make one a criminal (as far as we know), the 22-year-old was about to enter fourth year of Irish, Biblical and theological studies. He had a great enthusiasm for Irish language and culture, said Fr John McDonagh to an overflowing funeral congregation yesterday (where some of the liturgy was in Irish), “which suggested a young man with respect for tradition . . . traits which in modern society are often dismissed as old hat”. Donations to St Vincent de Paul were requested in his memory.
Another reliable plank of early theorists – the binge-drinking culture – was effectively toppled when it emerged that Shane Clancy was a non-drinker. This left the possibility of drugs, for which there is no evidence so far.
However, there had been knives. This allowed commentators to speak as if stranded at the heart of the murderous gang wars in east London, to talk of a “knife-crime epidemic”. Fine Gael’s spokesman on justice, Charlie Flanagan, talked of a “300 per cent surge” in knife killings and the State did indeed experience a 325 per cent rise in knife killings in four years, from eight in 2003 to 34 in 2007; strikingly, however, it also saw a dramatic drop to 12 in 2008, which was not mentioned. A senior Co Mayo-based Garda, Supt Michael Murray, said during the week that he did not believe there was “an epidemic or anything like that”.
IN A SPEECHdelivered in June 2008, Mr Justice Paul Carney of the Central Criminal Court outlined three categories in which fatal stabbings most frequently occur. The first included cases where somebody is beaten up in a fight, goes home to get a knife and then returns to the scene to seek revenge on their assailant; the second where someone habitually carries a knife allegedly for their own protection, uses it in a fight and then claims he was merely waving the knife when the deceased unreasonably impaled himself on it; the third where non-integrated members of the immigrant community buy alcohol in an off-licence and are drinking in a flat when a row breaks out, whereupon one person reaches for a kitchen knife and stabs another.
The singularity of the Bray tragedy is evident in that it falls into none of these categories. Furthermore, it was not another “Annabels”, as some sought to characterise it. Although at first sight, it appeared to involve the middle-class products of private south Dublin schools with apparently upmarket addresses in Bray and Dalkey (both of which have as much modest housing stock as most other areas), Clancy was not a child of affluence but the eldest of seven children of Leonie, a hairdresser, and Patrick, a gardener. The couple are reported to have separated, with the extended family now living in the Sallynoggin area of south Dublin and Patrick in a modest terraced house in Dún Laoghaire.
A hard worker, popular with his peers, Shane’s generosity with his time – volunteering in charity shops, at Sunshine House and at the St Vincent de Paul summer camp for children – and money (his 21st birthday money went to charity), was also noted at his funeral.
It was while working at the Club bar in Dalkey that he met Hannigan, from Killiney, a photography student at Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT), and began a near three-year relationship. That ended some eight months ago and this year at Trinity, co-incidentally or otherwise, he became heavily involved in the Suas Educational Development, from which a carefully selected group of student volunteers is chosen to work in developing countries for the summer. After months of intensive fund-raising and preparation, he was due to fly to Kolkata in India for 10 weeks on June 14th. However, he withdrew very close to departure time, citing personal reasons.
Meanwhile, Hannigan had moved into a new relationship with fellow IADT student, Sebastian Creane, and with it, a new social circle removed from Clancy’s. A good-looking, arty, guitar-playing 22-year-old, Sebastian with his brother Dylan were perceived as the hugely popular, rather bohemian “cool kids”, products of the fee-paying Bray school, St Gerard’s. A month of Sebastian’s summer would be spent with friends in Morocco and Spain.
To Clancy, Sebastian was a young man who seemed to “have it all”, said sources acquainted with both sides; they believe Clancy may have been somewhat intimidated by that. Some of them also believe Clancy’s withdrawal from the Kolkata project was linked to his deteriorating mental state. It has now emerged that it was around this time that Hannigan became concerned about Clancy’s behaviour towards her. He is said to have logged on to social networking sites and contacted people he didn’t know, but whom he believed were friends of Hannigan. A number of those targeted considered it odd that he was trying to join their pages as a “friend”. When they told her about it, she asked them to do nothing that would encourage further approaches from him.
But by several accounts, Clancy had also begun to turn up in social situations involving Hannigan’s friends. He also contacted her by phone in recent weeks, despite his approaches being unwelcome. According to one source, Clancy’s continued phone contact worried Hannigan, although she is not believed to have reported her concerns to gardaí and it is unclear if she even confided this to Sebastian Creane.
Friends of Creane and Hannigan who were also acquainted with Clancy, albeit less well, have said it was widely believed Clancy was in crisis following the break-up of their relationship; it seemed he had become more distressed of late and that Hannigan’s new relationship had contributed to his reluctance to accept that their relationship was over.
They also believe he was suffering from depression and was seeing a counsellor and may have attempted to take his own life at one point.
WITH THEassistance of Garda sources and friends of some of those present in the Creane family home at Cuala Grove, Bray, last Saturday night into Sunday morning, The Irish Timeshas pieced together the sequence of events of that evening.
Sebastian Creane was collected by car from his home by two brothers, old friends from St Gerard’s, from where they drove to Bray Dart station and took a train to Sandycove, where they had arranged to meet another old schoolfriend for drinks in the Eagle House pub. When they arrived there, the friend was with his girlfriend and three of her friends. Also in their company, to the surprise of Creane and his friends, was someone not in their social circle – Clancy. Everyone knew his relationship with Hannigan had ended some eight months before and that Sebastian had recently begun dating her. This might have been expected to cause some awkwardness, but the night seemed to unfold without incident.
From the Eagle House, they moved on to the Queen’s pub in Dalkey, before heading to the Vico nightclub nearby where they finished at around 2.30am. Some of those present utterly dismiss media reports that there was excessive drinking. “It just wasn’t that kind of night. People were spacing out their drinks; it wasn’t a mad night.”
Some went for food. Clancy had not been drinking, and was driving. He offered Creane and his two friends a lift home to Bray. The men were reluctant to go. They didn’t know Clancy.
There was also the unspoken unease around Creane’s and Clancy’s mutual connection with Hannigan. Creane initially declined the offer but Clancy insisted he would drop them to their doors and there was no need to spend money on a taxi. The three friends finally agreed to take the lift.
Some time just after 3.15am the two brothers were dropped off at their home, leaving Creane and Clancy in the car. Clancy then drove across Bray to Cuala Grove, left Creane to his door and drove away. But rather than go home to Dalkey, he drove to a 24-hour supermarket and bought a block of knives. He then drove back to the Creane home, somehow gained access to the house and fatally stabbed Sebastian in the heart.
By that time, just after 4.30am, Hannigan had arrived at the house and Clancy also lashed out at her, stabbing her once in the back. Sebastian’s brother Dylan, a 28-year-old self-employed graphic designer, was in his bedroom with his partner, Laura Mackey, a guitarist with the Dublin band, Boss Volenti, and when he heard the commotion, he rushed out of the room. The knife Clancy had brought into the house had lodged in Hannigan’s back. He grabbed a knife from the kitchen and stabbed Dylan up to eight times, puncturing one of his lungs.
Clancy then went to the back garden and made a number of efforts to stab himself before driving a knife into his own heart.
Meanwhile, Hannigan had managed to make her way to a neighbour’s house where she raised the alarm. Both she and Dylan were rushed to St Vincent ’s hospital where they are described as distraught but healing physically.
Gardaí initially believed Clancy had fled the scene on foot. His car, with the remainder of the block of knives, was found outside the house. However, during a search by gardaí of the house on Sunday morning, his remains were found in the shrubbery.
Post-mortems on both the deceased men confirmed they had died of a single stab wound to the heart. In Garda interviews, Dylan Creane and Hannigan may be able to shed light on whether Sebastian mentioned any row with Clancy in the car, on who was stabbed first, and on how he gained access to the house.
There seems little doubt that Clancy had been planning the attack from at least the time his path crossed with Creane in Sandycove on Saturday night. It may be that he was there for the sole purpose of attacking him. However, the fact that he was not carrying a knife from the start suggests that this level of premeditation was absent.
Some in the group say that while Clancy contributed little to the conversation, he was more vocal when they were deciding on the moves from pub to pub and nightclub, engineering a late finish. “Looking back on it, he did steer our plans a bit,” says one.
Both gardaí and some who were out with the men that night are convinced that Clancy’s offer of a lift home was part of a plan to discover the location of the Creane family home and to be sure that Sebastian would be there when he called back armed with the knives. They also believe that Sebastian Creane was the main target and that Hannigan and Dylan Creane were effectively collateral damage.
Prof David Wilson, a leading British criminologist at Birmingham City University, describes the Bray tragedy as a “paradigm” of the most common type of murder: the perpetrator and victim are known to each other and the murder is triggered by some form of a “domestic dispute”. He says this is why, contrary to popular belief, British police solve some 92 per cent of murders each year.
The term, “crime of passion” is not one he cares for. “I don’t see a moral relevance. I don’t think you can rank murders in a league of heinousness. A murder is a murder is a murder. And I just don’t like that phrase because it appears as if it happened on the spur of the moment, that it was sudden, spontaneous, with no malice aforethought, when in fact, this is ultimately a way of maintaining control and is often the end product of a long history between perpetrator and victim, which began when the victim said ‘I am not happy and would like to leave . . .’ – and often this is the very last act of a series of acts that are about control and power.”
Cases where a perpetrator kills and then takes their own life are more often encountered, Prof Wilson says, in “family annihilations” (where a parent kills spouse and children, then themselves). “That way they can maintain control over every single facet of what they engage in. By killing themselves, they cannot be touched by the criminal justice system and so reach their objective . . . I am often touched beyond comprehension by what I have to deal with, by all the families involved, so don’t think my apparent steeliness denies a sense of human suffering. But when one stands back, I become aware of the broader, psychological, underlying criminological reality . . . that this is an outgrowth of patriarchy and sexism.”
THERE ARE NO ready answers, as Fr McDonagh, Clancy’s funeral celebrant, pointed out yesterday. He characterised Shane’s final hours as a time when he “was overtaken by a cruel darkness . . .”, when his mind “suddenly entered” a “psychotic state and destructive frenzy . . . so uncharacteristically, it would seem . . .”.
At the same time, however, a Jesuit friend of the Creane family was telling the Irish Independent that mental illness is no excuse for such actions. As long as a person had free will, they were responsible for their own actions, said Fr Fergus O’Donoghue. “We don’t like to use the word ‘sin’ nowadays and we like to find a psychological explanation. This doesn’t do. Anybody in any situation has free will and we have a choice as to how we can act.”