THE body of Thomas Reilly, the Cavan father who murdered his two daughters and hanged himself in June, was clean of all substances at time of death, said police on Tuesday.

Reilly, 46, strangled and drowned his five-year-old daughter Kelly and six-year-old daughter Meghan while they were visiting him at his home in Montclair, New Jersey on June 21.

“The father had no toxicology,” said a representative from the homicide division at the Essex County prosecutor’s office.

Reilly, originally from Ballyjamesduff in Cavan, had recently separated from his wife Theresa, who hails from Scotland but has family in Donegal, weeks before the murders.

Theresa had filed a domestic violence report with police in the town of Verona, the town where the family resided before Reilly moved out, six months previous to the double murder suicide. In March she served a restraining order on her estranged husband.

Reilly was barred from their family home in Verona, from Theresa’s workplace and from the college where she was studying to become a nurse. However, Reilly still had visitation rights to the kids every Tuesday, Thursday and every second weekend.

In the evening of Thursday, June 21 Theresa came to pick her daughters up from their father after a day out. When there was no answer at the front door even though Reilly’s car was parked at the house she panicked and called police.

After an upstairs neighbor let the police into the house, they noticed a light on in the downstairs bathroom. It was there they found the fully dressed bodies of Meghan and Kelly submerged in the bathtub full of water. They were dead.

Moments later, Reilly was discovered hanging by an electric cord from the rafters in the attic. He never left a suicide note.

The Essex County prosecutor’s office also stated that both girls had not been given any kind of substance prior to their murder.

Meghan and Kelly were buried in a family plot in Verona, while Reilly’s body was flown home to Ballyjamesduff and buried there.