‘I LOVE YOU, DUDE’
Andrew McGinley tells of his final words to tragic son Conor
ANDREW MCGINLEY lifted his three-yearold daughter Carla into his arms, tucked her into bed beside her mother as the two snuggled up to one another.
He popped his head round the door of the downstairs room where his eldest son Conor was awake.
‘I love you, Dude,’ he told him.
‘I love you too, Dad,’ Conor, nine, replied. Andrew’s middle child Darragh, seven, was asleep upstairs as he left the house.
It was a morning like any other for Andrew, who was heading off on an overnight trip with work. And there was absolutely nothing to suggest he would arrive home the following evening to a tragedy beyond his worst nightmares.
Outwardly, his wife Deirdre Morley – or Dee as he calls her – was getting better after being released from St Patrick’s Mental Health Services six months earlier.
Andrew noticed how her demeanour and mood had been improving in recent weeks. She had talked about her future and going back to work.
‘In meeting after meeting, Deirdre is expressing concerns’
But what Andrew did not know when he left his three beautiful children that morning was at the same time he thought his wife was getting better, the mental health experts treating his wife were reporting that her mental health was rapidly declining.
The grieving father told the Irish Mail on Sunday he was ‘shocked’ to learn this week that his wife had raised concerns about caring for the children at counselling sessions before the tragic events of January 24, 2020 unfolded. On that fateful day, Deirdre suffocated the three children, first killing her two youngest children while Conor was in school. She first suffocated Darragh. She later suffocated Carla, and placed her on the bed in the master bedroom, beside Darragh’s body. Discovering that Carla was not dead, she had to try again before succeeding.
Andrew McGinley returned home to find his wife unconscious outside his home and his three children dead inside.
The harrowing details of the case were laid bare at the Central Criminal Court this week, where a jury found Deirdre Morley was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Speaking to the MoS, Andrew said he now needs to understand why he was not told of his wife’s concerns about caring for their children. He said if he thought for a second his wife posed a danger to his children, or anyone else, he would been ‘at a door screaming for help’.
‘You are sitting there in the trial and listening to two medical experts who had full access to all the medical records and they’re pointing out… I mean Brenda
Wright [consultant psychiatrist at the Central Mental Hospital] on Wednesday spoke a lot about counselling sessions Dee attended where she spoke of her concerns of looking after the children and that was never relayed to me and I need to understand why.
‘If, in meeting after meeting after meeting, Deirdre is expressing concerns about looking after the children, surely a flag should have been raised and the family told.’
Mr McGinley wants to know why the mental health services treating his wife felt no action was required in spite of her repeatedly raising these concerns.
‘We were all under the impression Dee was improving, yet at the same time they were deciding she was declining quite rapidly and that is the message behind mental health. It is not like a broken leg or any other illness, it’s unseen and you can only see what is portrayed to you and we had a huge support network and none of us saw it.
‘She was chatting about going back to work and yet I think that needs to be explained, why there was no action required or why they believed there was no action required, because they have that training, that education, that qualification, we are probably looking at it from a different perspective, so it would help the family to know.’
Andrew said mental health is ‘hidden somewhat’ and stressed that an advocate needs to be included in the care a person receives.
He told the MoS: ‘Outwardly she appeared to be improving to us and she was talking very positively about her health and mental health and we thought she was on road to recovery. But then the medical experts outline that at the same period they were talking about a decline, so it leaves me with a lot of questions and I need an answer.
‘I don’t know [at what point they raise issues with family], it shocks me somewhat that a patient would express concerns [around caring for her children] and I would not be alerted to that. What I would see is Dee was doing school runs and reading bedtime stories and doing all the things a loving mother does, so it is deeply troubling.’
When asked if this was the first time he had heard his wife had expressed concerns about caring
‘I hope they will give us the answers, because it is hard to move onwards’
for their children, he replied: ‘Yeah yeah… you see we are not included, so I suppose the mental health services are relying on the patient to inform their support circle, but that means they’re relying on someone with a mental health illness, whose thought process, decision making, responses, are quite possibly or probably impacted.
‘They didn’t need to share that information, all they had to do was check what Dee told us and we would have told them “X, Y, Z” and they could have said ‘well, actually she should have told you “A, B, C ”.’
In July 2019, Andrew was invited to one meeting with his wife’s mental health team and was told ‘treat
ment and some mild medication and it should be reasonably good’.
‘So to take that mild diagnosis and see what happened seven months later is quite troubling and I don’t have full insight of that journey, even when Dee first started receiving treatment in 2018, but particularly from July 2019 when she went in as an inpatient through to when the children died. We don’t have much of an insight on that journey, but we are aware of some flags that were raised about her diagnosis and I think what is troubling for us is if the diagnosis wasn’t correct then the treatment and the medication wouldn’t be right.’
Mr McGinley struggles to understand how his wife went from receiving a ‘mild diagnosis’ through to her smothering her three children and this week being found to have been insane.
‘Medical experts outlined her diagnoses. Before and after the children died are completely different; they’re sort of polar opposites. We don’t know and that is why we need to sit down with them so they can explain that to us. The medical experts’ reports seem to have a lot of chopping and changing of medication and again we need to understand why. We are not the mental health professionals and if you look and see one month the name of a medication, the following month a different medication and you see what happened from July 2019 from what I would call a reasonably mild diagnosis through to “by reason of insanity”, I would have thought insanity is probably the worst mental health illness out there.’
Deirdre Morley was doing everything asked of her by the mental health services in the months leading up to the day she took her children’s lives. She was taking the prescribed medication, attending her appointments and ‘really wanted to get well’.
Andrew added: ‘Dee was a loving mother, she was a caring professional. This seems to be quite a leap from that person to somebody being declared insane.
‘I do hope they will give us the answers because it is very hard to move onwards without that. Whatever she was being prescribed to do she was doing.’
Andrew has been aware of the graphic detail of how his children died for around 14 months. But he said he had to prepare other family and friends before the trial began this week.
‘This week there were difficult days for everyone, for Dee, our family and myself. I knew the details, but I wasn’t sure what details were coming out or not so I tried to prepare everyone as best I could.
‘The graphic detail was reported on as it was in open court and some people were shaken by that and I am sorry for anyone who was troubled by that. I have particular sympathy for the jury, who may have been anticipating speeding fines or a fraud case or something, so I’d have to thank them for their service and the job they had to do and I’m sorry if they were troubled by the evidence they had to hear.’
Andrew said he has spoken with Una Butler, who lost her two young daughters and husband in a murder suicide in 2010, and now hopes the two can join forces to effect change by including an advocate in the treatment of mental health.
‘Una spoke to very senior people in the Oireachtas and nothing changed. Hopefully two voices now can be heard and if more voices want to join us they will be welcomed with open arms.
‘I don’t know what the next step is – do I need to write to them to ask? I see a spokesperson mentioned something about speaking to us, but I don’t have a name for that spokesperson or who to ask, so my only avenue is through the press.
‘Everyone knows where I live so they could gladly pop a letter through the letterbox or sit down with me and the Morley siblings as well so we can all understand.’
Andrew said he is determined to focus on keeping his children’s memories alive by writing children’s books and setting up projects and a charity in their name.
‘It was a long week, but the focus is on moving forward with the projects and move forward as positively as I can. The trial was a process that had to happen, it’s not really relief that I feel, it is sad and
‘I can only hope Dee gets the best care that she can get now’
it’s just another step on the tragic and sad side of it. Now I want to focus on the positive side.’
When asked about his wife, Andrew said he wants her to get the ‘best care’, but added it is ‘troubling’ her diagnosis is so different to what it was before the children died. ‘I can only hope Dee gets the best care that she can get now. I think that finally her diagnosis is correct. She talks about the medication she is on as “a wonder drug” and it came out at the trial she expressed to the medical experts that had she been on that medication that what happened wouldn’t have happened.
‘It’s difficult to hear, because I suppose the CMH [Central Mental Hospital] would take particular care and attention and I’d imagine it’s a place with good patient care and follow up.
‘To know the diagnosis seems to be correct there because care and attention was taken to the patient again it just throws up more questions and I would be happy the diagnosis is correct and she can get the best care and attention that she can get. Medical experts outline their expert opinion on the diagnosis before and after and I need to understand why that changed.
‘There seems to be flags raised from six to two months before the children died about her diagnosis. I would hope I would get all the answers; you would hate to think something would be hidden or held back. I would be appalled to even think after what has happened anyone would think I couldn’t get those answers.’