Just before her teenage brother-in-law is accused of shooting her and her two young sons to death, a mother from New Hampshire wrote a letter to her husband.
In court documents submitted this week about the triple murder that occurred in Northfield on August 3, 2022, prosecutors disclosed 25-year-old Kassandra Sweeney’s last remarks to Sean Sweeney.
The couple shared messages and videos on Snapchat featuring their two young sons, Mason, who is 23 months old, and Benjamin, who is 4 years old.
At 10:49 a.m., she wrote, “I hope they make you laugh,” which detectives surmise was her parting word to Sean. She and the boys both died from a single gunshot wound to the head less than ten minutes later.
The information was contained in a motion that the New Hampshire State Attorney’s Office submitted, requesting that the judge grant the 17-year-old suspect in the murder case, Eric Sweeney, continued detention without bond.
Since Eric, then 16 years old, was taken into custody on the day of the murders, neither the police nor the prosecution have released as much information as the 10-page paper detailing the horrifying killings.
Tensions started to rise when Eric moved into his 26-year-old older brother Sean’s rural Merrimack County house with his family.
In June, Sean reported that his brother had stolen his Honda Civic to the police. On July 22, he called once more, complaining that his brother “had hidden multiple weapons around the home and was making strange comments.”
According to the document, he informed the officers that he was “concerned for the safety of his small children.”
Sean became so concerned about the brothers’ lack of communication that he locked the door to his master bedroom.
According to the filing, he and his wife wanted Eric out of their house and had started the process of having him removed.
Aug. 3: Eric apparently lost his cool. He took out one of Sean’s two firearms, a.40 Taurus handgun, from a secured safe and is said to have shot and killed his sister-in-law and nephews in the three-bedroom house’s kitchen.
The victims’ orders of death were not disclosed by the prosecution, but a witness claimed to have heard children’s screams just before Eric left the house, indicating that their mother had been shot before Eric.
Both males were shot in the top of their heads, while Kassandra was hit once in her right eyebrow.
While driving his oil delivery truck, Sean received a call from Eric using Kassandra’s iPhone, stating that “someone broke in and killed them all.”
Sean and Eric arrived at the scene in Kassandra’s silver Ford F-150 shortly after the cops.
During an interview with detectives, Eric claimed that he heard multiple “pops” and a “deep, male voice yelling” when he was in the basement.
According to the motion, he told police that in order to leave the residence, he “stepped over Kassandra and Mason’s bodies” by sneaking upstairs.
He didn’t ask the tree workers to call for assistance, even though they were near the end of the driveway.
The complaint in Merrimack Superior Court claims that he threw the handgun out the driver’s side window while travelling on I-93 and then turned around to head back home.
A tree worker stated to authorities that just before he saw Eric drive away in Kassandra’s F-150, he heard “what he believed to be screaming or yelling of young children” at the house.
According to the affidavit, he had to remove the traffic cones that were at the end of the driveway in order for him to leave, and once the police arrived, he watched him drive back in the same truck.
According to court documents, Eric, who is being tried as an adult, has been charged with three charges of first-degree murder and one count of fabricating physical evidence.
