IRISH TRAGEDY

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 11 June 1926, Page 5

IRISH TRAGEDY

LAMANCHA MYSTERY. NOT CLEARED UP THREE MEN MURDERED. BY CABLE- -rRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT. LONDON, June 9. At the inquest on six victims of the Malahide, County Dublin, tragedy on March 31, the jury returned a verdict that the three men died from fractured skulls caused by a person or persons unknown. There was no evidence to show hoiv the women met their death. (A mysterious murder was revealed by the 'burning of a country mansion known as “Lamanclia,” close to Dublin, owned and occupied by Joseph and Peter McDonnell, their two sisters, a servant and a gardener. Early in the morning the workmen observed the mansion ablaze. On the arrival of the brigade they found the body of the gardener in a room of the basement with large wounds in the head. Peter McDonnell was found naked in a back room, with his clothes spread over the dead body, Joseph was dead in another room in an upper part of the mansion, which was ablaze, and contained the practically cindered bodies of the sisters. The servant was unable to tell whether they wore attacked. The outer doors were barred. It appears that the fire started in a different room on the ground floor and spread to the upper rooms. The McDonnells were reputedly wealthy. The police believe one of the brothers lost his reason, and having set the premises afire he attacked the occupants.)