Love and death in 18th century tuam

A STORY OF THE BODKIN MURDERS
By Paul B McNulty
Club Lighthouse Publishing

WITHOUT any doubt, the bloodiest crime ever recorded in this area was the Bodkin Murders of 1741, perpetrated at Carrowbaun House, Belclare. Every so often it crops up in a local reference, but very many people are still unaware of it.
Now a man with a strong local connection has built a novel around the very strange case of the family who became known as the Bloody Bodkins.
Paul McNulty is the son of a Tuam woman, Kathleen McHugh, a daughter of Tom McHugh, the stonecutter and businessman who featured in the recent RTE radio documentary asking if there had been a Caravaggio in Tuam.
Kathleen was married to T Bernard McNulty who worked in the Bank of Ireland and Paul was raised in Castlebar.
He ended up as Professor of Agricultural Engineering at UCD, but he obviously cultivated his romantic side alongside the scientific, because when he retired he studied Genealogy-Family History and Creative Writing.
His diploma project on the genealogy of the Anglo-Norman Lynches of Galway led to the discovery of stories that inspired him to write novels based on real events in 18th century Ireland — Spellbound by Sibella, and The Abduction of Anne O’Donel.