Sinead's tragedy in suburbia: How O'Connor's friends tried to help but could not prevent her disappearing and ranting online about her family

Friends had spent weeks helping Sinead O'Connor when she quit Ireland for America, before she went missing and was described as potentially suicidal, Daily Mail Online can disclose.

The singer moved to Wilmette, Illinois, at the start of the year and moved into the large suburban home of her friend, drummer Matt Walker.

He lives there with his wife Charlotte and their children.

Charlotte Walker, a massage therapist, told Daily Mail Online she could not talk about O'Connor's life with her family or her health. 'I'm sorry, I can't say anything. I'm sorry. I'm sorry,' she said.

Neighbors of the Walkers said they had seen O'Connor walking near the $1million property, but none suggested they had any cause for concern.

That O'Connor, 49, is suffering was reinforced as she continued her Facebook rants Wednesday wishing the father of one of her four children would 'drop down dead', and hoping Donald Trump catches a sexually transmitted disease.

Her Facebook page was taken down from public viewing soon after. 

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Last known performance: Sinead O'Connor performed in Chicago on March at a tribute to David Bowie, along with Matt Walker, the drummer friend whose family she has been living with 

Sang with an icon: In January, she appeared with blues great Buddy Guy at his Chicago club Legends, improvising lyrics to his classic Sweet Home Chicago

Hideaway: The Walkers' quite suburban house had been a haven for O'Connor after leaving Ireland

Home she left behind: O'Connor had lived in Bray, just outside Dublin, until moving to Illinois. She left behind her children, saying that her son Shane - who she had spoken of having difficulties raising - was left in his father and brother's custody to 'help her recover'

She has also posted songs with pointed messages meant for various people in her life as she continues to receive hospital treatment following her latest breakdown.

'This is for my son, Shane and for everyone attempting to release him from the clutches of the Irish State, who's (sic) reckless disregard for it's duty of care when it comes to children is known the wide world over,' she wrote as she posted a copy of her own 2012 song I Had a Baby.

'And may his father drop down dead for not fathering him,' she added, referring to Irish musician Donal Lunny, the third of four men she has had children with.

Shane, 12, the third of O'Connor's four children, has been placed in care in O'Connor's native Ireland and O'Connor's latest brush with mental health issues is thought to have been brought on by her despair over that decision.

O'Connor's life in Ireland's recent troubles had been all too frequently lived in public, even her troubles with her children.

She had spoken in 2011 to the Irish Mail on Sunday of her difficulties with her son Shane, then six, and said: 'Last summer, I lost my temper with him and smashed his Xbox on the floor,' she said.

'I just felt like a s*** mum. I was ending up being the mum that I didn't want to be. I couldn't see a horizon. I lost the ability to calm things down and I started to hate myself. I had nowhere to go.'

She added: 'I did buy him a new one, though.'

Asked if she feared her outspoken comments might end up with social workers at her door, Sinéad said: 'Any experiences I have ever had with social services is they're very helpful. They're in the business of supporting parents and therefore kids. So they aren't people to fear.

'So I wouldn't mind at all if they came around. Maybe they'd have some advice. If they could at least post some, I'd be grateful.' 

Eldest: Jake Reynolds, O'Connor's first child, has been dragged into the custody dispute as, she says, she asked him and Shane's father to look after him and accuses them of abandoning the boy 

Family: Donal Lunny (left) is the father of O'Connor's son Shane (right) who is now in the care of social services in Ireland, a move which appears to have been a key to her mental breakdown

She said she wanted advice about how to help kids from one-parent families, and, she said, 'how to manage the resultant extremely difficult behavior without losing your mind. Or making the child feel bad about him- or herself'. She added: 'Social services are way better than some psychologists.'

O'Connor has had well-publicized battles with mental issues in the past and has been diagnosed as a manic depressive with bi-polar disorder. 

Until her move to suburban Chicago, she lived a Georgian house overlooking the sea in Bray, Co. Wicklow, just outside Dublin, with her husband, Steve and her three youngest children.

But before her move to Illinois, it is clear, she was much more troubled. O'Connor has long had close ties to America, but until now had not spent extended time in the States.

Her recovery now depends on her American friends, and US healthcare. 

However her lyrics in I Had a Baby suggest that it will not be easy.

'I had a fling with a man who wasn't mine to be with. I woke up one green day with him up inside me. That did excite me, and I was crazy I was always crazy.'

She also sings the words: 'I had a baby and he looks just like me. A bald headed baby, he's been the makings of me. His eyes are so mean, just like you. But you haven't seen him and I don't know what to tell him.'

On Tuesday, in another Facebook post, she begged her oldest child, Jake, to get Shane out of the care of the Irish state children's welfare agency, TUSLA.

'Jake, kindly go to the court on Tuesday and take custody your brother from Tusla. My lawyer will be making the illegal way yourself and Donal got him into Tusla (lying to the cops etc) known to the judge,' she wrote in a profanity-laced posting

Paramedics rushed the troubled singer to hospital by ambulance on Monday after she was discovered in a run-down $84-a-night Best Western motel in Morton Grove, Illinois, six miles from the comfortable five-bedroom house that she has called home for months. 

She hadn't been seen for more than 24 hours after riding off on a motorized bicycle at 6am Sunday, wearing leather pants, a sweatshirt and a black parka

Peaceful: Wilmette, Illinois, where O'Connor has been living since the start of the year, is an affluent suburb of Chicago. It is home to the Baha'i House of Worship, the North American headquarters of the Baha'i faith. 

Haven: The town of Wilmette has a beach on Lake Michigan and is a short commute from Chicago, where O'Connor performed a concert while spending time with the Walker family

Safe: The singer was found Monday six miles from Wilmette in a run-down $84-a-night Best Western Hotel in the Chicago suburb of Morton Grove

Police launched a search for her, describing her as possibly suicidal, before she was found in the hotel.

While living in Wilmette, O'Connor, 49, made occasional appearances at concerts. She appeared with blues great Buddy Guy at his Chicago club Legends on January 22, improvising lyrics to his classic Sweet Home Chicago.

Both she and Guy told the audience they expected she would 'f… up' the song.

'I'm just a short little girl, I don't know no-one. You're gonna have to help me, 'cos I don't know no-one,' she sang as Guy encouraged her.

Then in March, backed by Walker's band, Sons of the Silent Age, she sang Life on Mars and Sorrow at a David Bowie tribute concert in the Windy City.

Apart from those two appearances she has been living quietly with the Walkers with few people even knowing she was in the sleepy suburb, which has been ranked as the best place to live in Illinois.

Wilmette, population 27,087, is a commuter town 14 miles north of Chicago's center. It is one of the richest communities in Illinois. Charlton Heston and Bill Murray were both born there. The Walkers' home is just a three-minute drive from the town's main beach on Lake Michigan.

It all started to go sour for O'Connor on May 7. 'It's Mother's Day in America tomorrow. The second mother's day I will endure this year without my son, Shane,' she posted, pointing out that in Ireland - and the United Kingdom - Mother's Day was in March.

She talked of having surgery in August from which 'I did not recover well.'

'I placed my then eleven year old son in the care of his father and my eldest child. So that I could recover and the child wouldn't have to deal with my inability to cope. Instead of keeping him they put him into foster care. He's still there,' she wrote.

'He's been abandoned by his father for his whole life, over and over. Now he's been abandoned by his brother too. And because I have rightly been torn to shreds by this and expressed the gamut of feelings any sane mother should, I am not allowed to have my son,' she added.

'This is grotesque. But what is more grotesque is that the child has a family and Tusla have confirmed in writing the only reason he is in care is that 'No one in the family wishes to have him'. They have confirmed he is NOT in care for protection from me.'

Rant: Sinead O'Connor (above in 2014) posted a Facebook message lashing out at her family on Monday night

Direct: In the message (above), which is directed at her first husband John Reynolds, O'Connor threatens to kill herself and accuses her family of letting her die

'My son is being punished for being my son,' O'Connor continued. 'Is this love? Please would someone in my family love this boy enough to stop punishing him.

'As for whether it is right or not to write this? A mother will help her child by any means necessary.'

Just four days later she seemed much happier saying she had signed up for the volunteer group No Veteran Dies Alone, and was due to start training that weekend. 'SO excited. Can't wait. Dream job of lifetime. Luckiest woman on earth,' she wrote.

But the following day O'Connor posted a picture of Underground Railroad heroine Harriet Tubman, along with Tubman's quote 'I had reasoned this out in my mind, there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death. If I could not have one I would have the other,' increasing fears that she was suicidal.

'For Tusla and all else involved in the malicious separation of me and my sons,' she wrote above the picture.

In among the posts about her sons, she has posted messages supporting Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and attacking Republican Donald Trump. Her latest suggested Trump should pick his daughter Ivanka as running mate, adding: 'Let's hope Trump gets the galloping clap.'

On May 13 she wrote an open letter to Shane claiming that she had been trying to get him out of care, but that 'Tusla are being monsters.'

'I have to back off because they are hurting me so badly I get unwell again if I go near them.'

Since her hospitalization, O'Connor has tried to get her message out by posting music. On Monday it was John Lennon's Woman is the N***** of the World, then her own I Had a Baby and Muddy Waters singing Forty Days and Forty Nights, which bemoans the lengthy separation of a man and his loved one.

She dedicated that to the judge in Shane's case.