Warning: The article contains coverage which readers may find distressing.
Andrew McGinley has revealed the harrowing moments he found his three children dead in the family home after they were killed by their mother.
The Donegal Town man is still trying to come to terms with the deaths of his children Conor, 9, Darragh, 7, and Carla,3, who died from suffocation at the home in Newcastle, Co. Dublin, on January 24, 2020.
The children’s mother Deirdre Morley, a paediatric nurse, was found not guilty of their murder due to insanity.
Speaking to the Talking Bollox podcast, Andrew spoke of arriving home to find his children.
Andrew was away on an overnight trip and was on his way home on the day of his children’s deaths.
He had told Deirdre on the phone that evening that he would bring the children to the wake of a friend’s father who had passed away.
Deirdre declined but Andrew said: “At this stage, the kids were dead.”
Morley admitted smothering her children with plastic bags and tape in their home and then drove towards the M7 with medication and a bottle of wine but crashed her car at a roundabout.
She was brought home by a passing motorist before leaving the house again and emergency services were called when she passed out.
Andrew said: “I was only a couple of minutes away, and when I got home the ambulance were treating Deirdre.”
He went into the house, which was in darkness, to look for the kids, hoping they would be sitting in the back watching TV.
But the devastated dad’s worst fears were confirmed when he walked over to the house and found a note inside the door instructing him not to up upstairs.
The body of his eldest son Conor was in the front room.
Tearful Andrew said: “Everybody [emergency services] just happened to be there.
“A paramedic came in and I was holding Conor in my arms. You’re just willing for a sign of life, and there wasn’t.
“Straight away you’re thinking ‘what about Darragh, what about Carla’ and the fire brigade had gone in and gone upstairs and found them but I needed to see them.
“They were funny kids and I loved that because I have an off the wall sense of humour and I think they got that from me.”
“There was a bit of a wrestling match at the bottom of the stairs; them trying to keep me from going up, me wanting to go up.
“I just remember hearing a voice — the captain or chief or something — and he said ‘let him go’ so I went upstairs and I found them upstairs.”
He said he was left in complete “bewilderment” and was left thinking to himself that “this doesn’t happen in Ireland”.
And he told how it was “bizarre” that his house had now become a crime scene.
He explained: “I remember standing outside and people were speaking to me and… you’re completely lost.
“I remember the call I made to my brother, I said you just need to ring everybody else.
“Thought about my parents, my mother was in the early stages of dementia at the time and was thinking ‘Jesus I can’t ring her, can’t ring my dad, can’t ring anybody.'”
As Andrew stood outside the house, he said one of his first thoughts was that he hadn’t helped his son Conor set up his YouTube channel.
He said: “I promised him I would. Up to that moment, I was rock bottom.
“Had you told me a meteor was coming to hit the earth, I would’ve went ‘Great. Fantastic.’
“But then that spark of ‘I haven’t helped Conor set up his YouTube channel,” that gave me a reason to fight on, and do what I’m doing now.’”
Andrew explained that, although his wife was receiving treatment for her mental health, he “wasn’t informed of how bad she was.”
“Due to patient confidentiality, I wasn’t informed of how bad she was.
“I would have experienced, I suppose, in the house, what they would have called ‘masking.’ I would have seen the mask of all the positive things.”
He added: “I feel I was put at ease as opposed to put on alert.
“I feel I was taken off-guard as opposed to be putting on guard.
“When you tie in that with the masking, I know she didn’t want me to know how bad she was, I was lulled into a false sense of security.
“I do feel that, had I been informed, had I been advised, had I been supported, then Conor, Darragh and Carla would be alive today.”
