Sanjeev Chada was handed two mandatory life sentences in 2014 after pleading guilty to murdering his little boys, Eoghan and Ruairí, but he has now applied for parole after serving 12 years
Liam McInerney Content Editor
05:00, 13 Apr 2026
Kathleen Chada spoke to Virgin Media News(Image: Virgin Media News/Youtube)
A brave mother whose former husband took off with both of their sons opened up about the moment he called and said the words: “They are dead in the back.”
Kathleen Chada has described chilling details about that life-shattering phone call — as evil Sanjeev Chada made a bid for parole after brutally killing his sons, Eoghan and Ruairí, on July 29, 2013, in a botched murder-suicide.
The heartbroken mum has now revealed her biggest fear is that Sanjeev will one day be released from prison to “finish the job” — which she said would involve murdering her before taking his own life.
She said it was an “insult” that Sanjeev, a man she said she loved and thought was her soulmate, would apply for his freedom just 13 years after his horrific act.
Sanjeev, a stay-at-home dad residing in County Carlow, was supposed to take Eoghan, 10, and Ruairí, five, bowling, but instead he drove across the entire country to an isolated lane in Ballintubber, County Mayo.
Sanjeev, Eoghan and Ruairí Chada
Kathleen desperately tried to reach him and her loved ones ended up staying the night in the vehicle.
However, in the morning, Sanjeev strangled them, placed the bodies in the boot, before deliberately crashing into a wall, but he managed to survive.
Kathleen has now spoken to Colette Fitzpatrick on Virgin Media News about the moment Sanjeev called her on an unknown number.
“‘They are dead in the back’ are the words he used,” she said. “They are imprinted on my mind. I answered the phone — it was him.
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“I was actually with the detective at the time giving my statement. And I looked at him, he realised, he could tell from me that it was Sanjeev on the line, and my first words were ‘are you okay, where are you?’ He told me there had been a crash and I said ‘are the boys ok’ and he said ‘no, they are dead in the back.’
“And I went… I lost it at that point. The detective took the phone. I know that I screamed. We were in a sunroom off the side of the house and I came back into the sitting room and I just sat on the sofa going, ‘they can’t be’. If he has spoken to me, they are probably stunned if they’re unconscious or whatever, but they couldn’t possibly be dead if he is ok.”
Kathleen Chada has written a memoir called Everything (Image: Irish Mirror)
However, the devastating truth eventually emerged when the detective came back inside after speaking to officers at the scene.
She remembered: “I could see him coming in the front door and I could tell by his face — and he walked over to me and he shook his head and I knew.”
Kathleen has now met the Parole Board and she told them that it wasn’t enough for them to know what he did — they needed to know how.
She then described how what he did to Eoghan was “quite brutal” and his injuries, including several broken bones, were “catastrophic”. She said it showed he was fighting with all he had to protect his little brother, in what must have been an unimaginably frightening situation.
They were just 10 and five when their father killed them (Image: PA)
The senseless killings were a far cry from their old life where Kathleen described Sanjeev as the “fun one” while she provided for her family with a high salary.
She thought everything was ok until it was revealed that her husband had embezzled €56,000 from a local community group to fund his habit of dabbling in the stock market.
But despite this shock, she stood by him, and reassured him that they would figure it all out.
However, just 10 days later, their sons were dead.
And in another haunting twist, Kathleen later found an email Sanjeev sent to himself 18 months before the murders.
In it, he expressed his desire to kill his wife and children.
Sanjeev Chada now lives in Dublin’s Arbour Hill Prison(Image: PA)
She said she now feared he will come after her once he is released — but she said she still could not erase the memory of him.
Explaining her complex feelings, she said: “I can’t undo that part of it. I can’t cut him out of life because he was their father. He was Eoghan and Ruairí’s dad and he was my husband. I loved him. I absolutely loved him. I thought he was my soulmate.
“I thought he was the person I was going to grow old with. I certainly never saw anything like this inside of him. We had, I would have thought, a happy marriage. So all of those things are important.”
In the courageously honest interview, she continued: “I’ve moved away from our house now, I sold it, but I kept a family photograph there for a long time, right up until the time I moved out because we were a happy family.
“And I’ve done a lot of work to know it’s ok to remember that. The memories, and the good memories, and happy memories are what sustain me now going forward because they have to. I don’t have a choice in that.
“But as I say, to cut him out of that would be to cut Eoghan and Ruairí out. They were a part of him, but they’re also a part of me, and I have to remember that as well.”