It

disappearance of the older boy.
From the Derry News, June 30th, 1958 (page 5):
MACKLIN QUESTIONED IN DEATHS
OF GROGAN, CLEMENTS Produces Unshakable Alibis, Source Claims
From the Derry News, July 6th, 1958 (page 1):
MACKLIN TO BE CHARGED ONLY WITH MURDER
OF STEPSON DORSEY, BORTON SAYS
Edward Corcoran Still Missing
From the Derry News, July 24th, 1958 (page 1):
WEEPING STEPFATHER CONFESSES TO BLUDGEON DEATH OF
STEPSON
In a dramatic development in the District Court trial of Richard Macklin for the murder of his stepson Dorsey Corcoran, Macklin broke down under the stern cross– e x a m i n a t i o n o f County Attorney Bradley Whitsun and admitted he had beaten the four –year-old boy to death with a recoilless hammer, which he then buried at the far end of his wife’s vegetable garden before taking the boy to Derry Home Hospital’s emergency room.
The courtroom was stunned and sile nt as the sobbing Macklin, who had previously admitted beating both of his stepsons ‘occasionally, if they had it coming, for their own good,’ poured out his story.
‘I don’t know what came over me. I saw he was climbing on the damn ladder again and I grabbed the hammer from the bench where it was laying and I just started to use it on him. I didn’t mean to kill him. With God as my witness I never meant to kill him.’
‘Did he say anything to you before he passed out?’ Whitsun asked.
‘He said, «Sto p daddy, I’m sorry, I love you,»‘ Macklin replied.
‘Did you stop?’
‘Eventually,’ Macklin said. He then began to weep in such a hysterical manner that Judge Erhardt Moulton declared the court in recess.
From the Derry News, September 18th, 1958 (page 16):
WHERE IS EDWARD CORCORAN?
His stepfather, sentenced to a term of two to ten years in Shawshank State Prison for the murder of his four –year-old brother, Dorsey, continues to claim he has no idea where Edward Corcoran is. His mother, who has instituted divorce proceedings against Richard P. Macklin, says she thinks her soon-to-be ex-husband is lying.
Is he?
‘I, for one, really don’t think so,’ says Father Ashley O’Brian, who serves the Catholic prisoners at Shawshank. Macklin began taking instruction in the Catholic faith shortly after beginning his prison term, and Father O’Brian has spent a good deal of time with him. ‘He is sincerely sorry for what he has done,’ Father O’Brian goes on, adding that when he initially asked Macklin why he wa nted to be a Catholic, Macklin replied, ‘I hear they have an act of contrition and I need to do a lot of that or else I’ll go to hell when I die.’
‘He knows what he did to the younger boy,’ Father O’Brian said. ‘If he also did something to the older one, he doesn’t remember it. As far as Edward goes, he believes his hands are clean.’
How clean Macklin’s hands are in the matter of his stepson Edward is a question which continues to trouble Derry residents, but he has been convincingly cleared of the other child –murders which have taken place here. He was able to produce ironclad alibis for the first three, and he was in jail when seven others were committed in late June, July, and August.
All ten murders remain unsolved.
In an exclusive interview with the News last week Macklin again asserted that he knows nothing of Edward Corcoran’s whereabouts. ‘I beat them both,’ he said in a painful monologue which was often halted by bouts of weeping. ‘I loved them but I beat them. I don’t know why, any more than I know why Monica let me, or why she covered up for me after Dorsey died. I guess I could have killed Eddie as easy as I did Dorsey, but I swear before God and Jesus and all the saints of heaven that I didn’t. I know how it looks, but I didn’t do it. I think he just ran away. If he did, that’s one thing I’ve got to thank God for.’
Asked if he is aware of any gaps in his memory — if he could have killed Edward and then blocked it out of his mind — Macklin replied: ‘I ain’t aware of any gaps. I know only too well what I did. I’ve given my life to Christ, and I’m going to spend the rest of it trying to make up for it.’
From the Derry News, January 27th, 1960 (page 1):
BODY NOT THAT OF CORCORAN YOUTH, BORTON ANNOUNCES
Police Chief Richard Borton told reporters early today that the badly decomposed body of a boy about the age of Edward Corcoran, who disappeared from his Derry home in June of 1958, is definitely not that of the missing youth. The body was found in Aynesford, Massachusetts, buried in a gravel pit. Both Maine and Massachusetts State Police at first theorized that the body might be that of the Corcoran boy, believing that he might have been picked up by a child molester after running away from the Charter