An American woman whose three-year-old daughter was drowned by her Irish husband in a murder-suicide in west Cork has been granted permission to exhume the child’s remains for burial in the US.
Rebecca Saunders has spoken of her relief at being given permission for the exhumation and burial of the child in her native country. Clarissa was buried with her father, Martin McCarthy, in Schull cemetery after he drowned the child and took his own life on 5th March, 2013. Posting to her Twitter account ‘Clarissa’s Cause’ about the development, Ms Saunders said:
“Thrilling news! Today I was granted the licence to exhume Clarissa. After nine years I will be able to take Rissa home! This has been a really long time coming. It’s a day for celebration! A heartfelt thank you to everyone who has helped to shape this in to reality. You’ve no idea what this means to me and my family.”
Thrilling News!
Today I was granted the license to exhume Clarissa! After 9 years I will be able to correct my awful mistake! Can’t wait to be able to take Rissa home! This has really been a long time coming. It’s a day for celebration!
. pic.twitter.com/25hbFuZdeC— Clarissa’s Cause (@ClarissasCause) March 22, 2022
In April 2021, Rebecca Saunders reached a $50,000 (€45,280) fundraising target to have the remains of her little girl exhumed and transferred to the US for burial.
An inquest into the deaths heard that both Mr McCarthy (50) and Clarissa died from cardio-respiratory failure because of drowning. In Mr McCarthy’s case it was self-inflicted, and it the case of Clarissa, she was taken into the water and drowned at Audley Cove in Ballydehob where the family lived.
The inquest before coroner for west Cork, Frank O’Connell, heard that Mr McCarthy left a note. While the note was not read at the inquest, Mr O’Connell said it could not be ignored and it indicated that Mr McCarthy decided to end both his own life and that of his young daughter. Mr McCarthy had also changed his will before his death and excluded his wife from inheriting major assets.
Speaking to the Irish Examiner, Ms Saunders, a native of California, said Mr McCarthy feared she was going to take Clarissa back to the US. She said he said on the note, “If you can take Clarissa to America, I can take Clarissa to Heaven”.
A spokeswoman for Cork County Council has confirmed that it has granted a licence for the exhumation but said it would be making no further comment on the matter.
Ms Saunders returned to the US after the killing of her daughter but came back to west Cork to attend the inquest in February 2014.
INQUEST
At the inquest in Bantry courthouse, Supt Mark Fitzpatrick read out her statement to gardaí about the events that unfolded on 5th March 2013 when she returned to the family farm at Foilnamuck, Ballydehob at around 8.30pm to discover her daughter and husband were missing.
She recalled how she began contacting friends and neighbours after she tried ringing her husband’s phone, only to discover it was ringing in his 4×4 while Mr McCarthy’s friend, Alan Hurley found a note marked “Rebecca” on the dairy.
“They (the gardaí) asked me did I want to read it – I got upset and I skimmed through it and then I got upset more and they said that it was just a note and we didn’t know if it was acted upon or not,” said Ms McCarthy in her statement.
She was there when they found Clarissa at 1.50am after going down to nearby Audley Cove, less than a minute’s walk away from her home, to watch members of the Irish Coastguard, Goleen Cliff and Coastal Rescue Unit and Schull Fire Brigade and volunteers search the shoreline.
“I went over to these little rocks at the head of the beach and I got this little rock that she [Clarisssa] liked and I began squeezing it … then three guys from the Inshore Rescue came around the rocks and found Clarissa and they brought her a bit more out of the water and began working on her.”
Ms Saunders told how she was restrained by friends when she tried to run over to her daughter where members of the Goleen Cliff and Coast Rescue spent a long time attempting to resuscitate her before some paramedics from the HSE took over.
Ms Saunders began to feel faint, but a friend of hers told her she needed to remain strong because she thought the medics had got a pulse. She was about to go in the ambulance with Clarissa when a doctor arrived, checked on the little girl and told her that she was dead.
Mr McCarthy’s body was recovered roughly 15 minutes later, several hundred metres down the coast from where Clarissa had been found. The inquest heard that he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Last year, Ms Saunders set up a GoFundMe page which raised more than €50,000 to help with the cost of the exhumation of Clarissa’s remains and their transportation to the US for burial near her new home in Houston where she has since remarried and has two children.
She says that she is trying to learn to live with the tragic loss of her firstborn, and wants to live and not allow the tragedy to “consume her.”