A woman whose husband walked into the sea with their three-year-old in a horrific murder-suicide hopes to have her daughter exhumed within weeks.
American Rebecca Saunders wants to bring Clarissa’s remains to the US after she was buried in the same coffin as her killer dad Martin McCarthy.
The 50-year-old drowned the little girl at Audley Cove in West Cork on March 5, 2013 after Rebecca told him their marriage was over.
Last month she began fundraising to bring Clarissa to Texas revealing she had only allowed the joint burial “in a fog of grief and shock”.
Rebecca said on Friday: “I spoke to a funeral director who assured me that, once the exhumation is carried out, they could separate Clarissa from her murderer.
“The length of time that has passed since the burial is not an issue.
“I feel so relieved at this news since that was the biggest question in my mind as we go forward in applying to exhume Clarissa.”
The grieving mum has raised almost €50,000 in a matter of weeks through crowdfunding.
She added: “I received the death certificate for the murderer that I need for the application today.
“All going well, I plan to have all the paperwork I need completed and posted by the middle of May.
“Thank you again for helping me in this journey.”
Announcing her plans last month, Rebecca admitted she regretted allowing Clarissa to be buried “with the father she loved but who took her life from her”.
She was just 26 when McCarthy drowned their child. Three days later, father and daughter shared a coffin with the little girl placed in his arms.
On her GoFundMe page, Clarissa’s Cause, she said bringing Clarissa home would lift the burden of feeling that she had abandoned her.
In an interview with the Opinion Line on Cork’s 96FM earlier this year, Rebecca told how she had come to realise her husband’s evil actions were premeditated.
She said: “I really can’t say I feel I will ever be able to forgive him. I feel like he used his daughter as a sword to stab me in the heart with.
“And I think that is very, very wrong. At the time I didn’t know just how planned out Martin had gone.”
She later learned McCarthy had gone to a family court to ensure that his daughter wouldn’t be allowed to leave Ireland.
Rebecca added: “He got a restriction put on her passport. If I wanted to leave the country with Clarissa, I couldn’t have done that.
“The way his will is written it makes it very clear to me he had planned what he was going to do as a punishment to me.
“He had spent at least a month planning it.”
