UPDATE: Distressing evidence heard in trial of woman accused of murdering children of Donegal man

In what the State said was "a desperately sad case," the jury heard that Deirdre Morley used "thick brown tape" and plastic bags to suffocate her three children, two of whom were killed in a play tent.

The eldest boy told her "Stop Mammy" as she suffocated him and she had replied "I'm sorry", the jury also heard during evidence given on Tuesday.

The Central Criminal Court was also told that her husband Andrew McGinley discovered the bodies of his three children in the house, two of them upstairs in his bedroom and one downstairs in a play tent. 

Two notes written by the accused had been left in the house, one at the bottom of the stairs, to urge whoever came through the door of the family home not to go into the front room or upstairs and to phone 911 instead. 

It was during the opening of the trial of Ms Morley at the Central Criminal Court today that a prosecuting barrister said the accused was suffering from a mental disorder when she caused the deaths of her three children and believed their best interests would be served by taking their lives.  

The 44-year-old nurse, of Parson's Court, Newcastle, Co Dublin, has gone on trial having pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the murder of her sons Conor McGinley (9) and Darragh McGinley (7) and her daughter Carla McGinley (3). The children's bodies were discovered at the family home just before 8pm on January 24 last year.

In her opening address, prosecuting counsel Anne-Marie Lawlor SC said it was for the prosecution to prove that Ms Morley did not just kill her three children but had the capacity to intend to do so. 

Ms Lawlor said the jury's primary concern would be the accused's mental state on January 24, when the deaths occurred and there was no issue in the case as to what happened to the children and how they died. "The vast bulk of the evidence will come from Ms Morley's mouth, when she was interviewed on three occasions by gardai and went into detail as to what occurred," she said. 

Addressing the jury, Ms Lawlor said that a very significant part of the evidence came from the consultant psychiatrists concerning Ms Morley's mental health and how the events had occurred. 

Outlining the facts of the case, Ms Lawlor said that Ms Morley was married to Andrew McGinley and they had three children. There was no question but that the children were well cared for and loved by their parents, she said, adding that there was also no issue regarding the parenting of the children.

Detailing the evidence that would be heard, Ms Lawlor said that the couple had a good marriage but it had been challenged in the year prior to the children's deaths. Ms Morley's mental health had deteriorated very significantly and she suffered a breakdown in July 2019, which resulted in her attaining psychiatric care at St Patrick's Hospital in Dublin.

Ms Lawlor said the evidence will be that the accused was dealing with mental health professionals until January 2020. Her family and extended family were very involved in her care. "In the days before the children's deaths, there was a belief that her mental health had improved and psychiatrists will assist you in that was not the case," she indicated. 

On the evening prior to the killings, Ms Lawlor said that Mr McGinley travelled to Cork for work as he understood that there was no difficulty in the family home at the time. Ms Morley, who was very qualified in her field of nursing, attempted to take the lives of her children on the evening of January 23 by administering medicine to them in their food, she said. 

The prosecution barrister went on to tell the court that the jury would hear considerable detail from Ms Morley's interviews with gardai as to how she had killed her children on January 24, which she described as distressing. "Nobody is saying that the physical acts which took the lives of the children did not occur," she said.

There will be evidence, Ms Lawlor said, from consultants psychiatrists Dr Mary Davoren and Dr Brenda Wright who prepared reports on behalf of the prosecution and defence and concluded that Ms Morley was suffering from a mental disorder. "They give different details in regards to that," she said. 

Dr Davoren will give evidence that the accused suffered from recurrent depressive disorder and

Dr Wright will say that she had bipolar affective disorder, said the barrister. "You will hear varying accounts as to whether Ms Morley knew what she did was wrong," she remarked. 

Ms Lawlor said the evidence from both psychiatrists would be that Ms Morley could not imagine that her children would ever live healthy lives and believed their best interests were served by taking their lives. "She couldn't generate an alternative other than taking the lives of her children and they had to go together," she said. 

In summary, the lawyer said that the psychiatrists would offer the jury the benefit of their expertise and understanding as to what Ms Morley's mental state and status was at the time of her children's deaths. "This is a desperately sad case especially for the Morley and McGinley families," she concluded.

Giving evidence today, Detective Sergeant Dara Kenny, from Clondalkin Garda Station, told Ms Lawlor that the accused and her husband had been married since 2008. The two older boys attended primary school and Carla went to creche. The children were loved and cared for by their parents and no one suggested anything to the contrary, said Ms Lawlor. 

Mr McGinley worked at a workplace services company and Ms Morley was a clinical nurse, specialising in renal care. The accused had not been working in Our Lady's Hospital in Crumlin since April 2018 due to stress related issues and she had mental health concerns going back some time. "She was signed off work and could not return until December 2019 but that was held off," said Ms Lawlor. 

Ms Morley was an inpatient in St Patrick's Hospital in 2019 for some time but this worsened her mental health. However, there was an understanding and belief that the accused's mental health had improved significantly in December 2019. 

The witness agreed that matters concerning the care of the children "weighed more heavily" on Ms Morley than her husband. As the accused was so medically qualified she took control of her medication and Mr McGinley was not "au fait" with the medication she had received in St Patrick's, he said. 

Mr McGinley had a work obligation on January 23 which brought him to Cork and he would return to his family the following day. There was no apprehension or concern on his part leaving his wife solely responsible for the children's care, said Ms Lawlor. 

Det Sgt Kenny said that it emerged during the investigation that Ms Morley had done Google searches for a "noose", "how to make a noose" and the N7 flyover between Newcastle and Rathcoole on January 22. She also purchased a rope from a hardware shop the next day, he said. 

He said Ms Morley had told gardai that she had put morphine into the boys cereal on the night of January 23 but they spat it out when they tasted the food. She had also put a Tylex tablet, containing paracetamol and codeine, in her daughter's drink. However, the witness said she had abandoned any further actions to harm her children that evening. 

Det Sgt Kenny said the accused told her daughter's creche that Carla would not be coming in on January 23, which was not unusual as Friday was a short day. Darragh had been sick earlier in the week and he ended up staying home from school on the Friday but Conor had gone to school. 

Det Sgt Kenny said Ms Morley had described to gardai using plastic bags and tape, which were found in the house. She suffocated Darragh first and then moved onto Carla. "She believed and understood that she had to take their lives as her parenting had damaged them so they could not lead healthy lives," he said.

The first attempt to kill Carla was unsuccessful so she tried again and was successful, he said. The accused then brought her daughter to her bed, where Darragh was already lying dead.

"The DNA finding supports the accounts given by Ms Morley in her interviews," he said.

The court heard that a niece had texted the accused about a wedding and she had replied at 12.39pm saying "so exciting". A parent of a friend of Darragh's had also texted Ms Morley about having a playdate but two of her children were already dead at this stage, said the detective.

Ms Morley collected her son Conor early from school that day at 1.50pm and she had recorded "family reasons" in the school book. Another parent at the school said the accused had a "disturbed look" about her at the time. 

Det Sgt Kenny said Ms Morley stopped at Tesco to get a roll for Conor on the way home to Parson's Court. When they got home, Conor started to watch a video in the play tent in the sitting room, unaware that his brother and sister were already dead upstairs. She told Conor that his siblings were out of the house and then proceeded to suffocate him. She was unable to bring him upstairs and left him in the play tent in the sitting room. 

There was communication between Ms Morley and her husband at 1.58pm and he told her that he was intending to go to a wake that night. The detective said there was no cause for concern in her demeanour at the time on the call to her husband. 

Det Sgt Kenny told Ms Lawlor that she had made "crystal clear" to gardai that she had wanted to take her own life and had expressed a desire that her "family would go together". 

Ms Morley left her home at 4.10pm in her car and took a variety of medication including OxyContin and Xanax. A bottle of wine and some of the medication were later found in the car. 

At 5.10pm, Ms Morley had another phone call with her husband and he told her that he would be home around 7pm that night. The accused crashed her car at 5.35pm that evening and was given a lift home by a nurse, who felt her behaviour was not right.

The accused left the house again on foot at 6.22pm in the direction of the N7 flyover. She was found by a taxi driver who brought her home but she became unconscious in the taxi on the way back to the estate. Mr McGinley arrived home at 7.20pm to find his wife being cared for by paramedics.

Mr McGinley rang the childminder to enquire where his children were and was told that she did not have them. He went into his home with ambulance personnel, where he discovered Conor downstairs with his feet protruding from the play tent. Darragh and Carla were then found upstairs in the master bedroom by the paramedics and Mr McGinley's level of distress was "extraordinarily high" after learning that none of his children were alive, said the detective. 

Ms Morley has left a note on a bicycle at the bottom of the stairs and it read: "Don't go. Front room. Upstairs, Phone 911. I'm so sorry."

A second note beside her eldest son's body read: "I am so sorry. I see no future with disturbance and mental illness. I had to take them with me, It is my fault. I am broke and couldn't be saved or fixed. I have love and support. But I couldn't continue to live with myself. I am so sorry."

Ms Morley was taken by ambulance to Tallaght Hospital and placed in an induced coma until January 27. 

A white plastic bag with a soother in it was found in the toy room and Carla's DNA was found within the bag. A black bag found in the kitchen and a piece of plastic tape were found to contain Darragh's DNA. Furthermore, the adhesive side of plastic tape found in the kitchen was found to contain a combination of Conor and Darragh's DNA, said the detective.

Assistant State Pathologist Dr Margot Bolster attended at the scene and said the children had died by asphyxia from compressions of the chest area and airways. The detective said the pathologist found traces of codeine in Carla's stomach. 

In her first interview with gardai on January 28, Det Sgt Kenny said that Ms Morley told gardai that she felt like she had been "run over by a truck mentally and physically." Referring to the day of the killings, the accused said she felt "very low and overwhelmed" and her thoughts had been getting darker in the last week. She said she wanted "on and off for a long time not to be here" but felt she could not leave the children behind.

"I started to feel remorseful for the effects of my illness on the kids and thought I didn't love them enough and maybe that had impacted them negatively," she said.

She continued: "Life for them was going to be full of difficulty and pain and I wasn't equipped to deal with it. I thought they were more damaged by me."

Ms Morley told gardai that she had not given her husband any indication that she had felt unwell before he left for Cork. She said she had told Darragh to take a break from his screen time on the Friday morning and he had put up a bit of a fight.

"Around 12am I just had to end our suffering and I got some brown thick tape," she said.

She said she suffocated Darragh in the front room in the play tent and put tape on his mouth whilst Carla was watching a movie in the kitchen.

"When he had gone I brought him to the bed upstairs and then went into Carla and did the same thing," she said.

The accused said she was not sure if she had put tape on Carla's mouth but she had put a plastic bag over her head and used a cushion to smother her. She then brought her daughter upstairs, realised she was still breathing and held her nose until she was no longer breathing. She had also put a pillowcase over her head at one stage. 

The defendant said she had got the plastic bags from under the sink - a white bin liner bag for Carla, a black refuse sack for Conor and was not sure what type of bag she used for Darragh. 

Ms Morley said she had picked up Conor early from school as she was expecting her husband home at 4pm and wanted to make sure she "was gone."

"I was going to take some tablets and drive and jump off the bridge between Newcastle and Rathcoole before the N7," she said.

She said she picked up Conor at 2.15pm and was already regretting what she had done to the other children but did not think she could stop.

Ms Morley said she put tape on Conor's mouth whilst he was watching "Jurassic World" in the front room and smothered him in the play tent. "I put tape on my mouth like it was a game so he put it on his mouth and was trying to talk through it," she explained. She said she then put a bag over his head and turned him over.

She told gardai that Conor said "stop Mammy" and she replied: "I'm sorry Conor." She said she did not feel she could stop.

"I was on top of him so there was no struggle, he was faced down and I had my knees either side of him," she added.

She told gardai that she had planned to get out of her car when she sedated herself and jump off the bridge at the N7. 

When asked where the idea to suffocate the children had come from, she said: "I didn't think there was another way."

Ms Morley told gardai that she had crushed up morphine and put it into the boys cereal on January 23 as she thought they might not suffer as much if it happened in their sleep. When the boys told her that the cereal tasted disgusting, she told them that the milk must have gone off and gave them another portion. 

Gardai asked Ms Morley why she had put morphine into the boy's cereal.

"To sedate them so they wouldn't suffer," she said. She was then asked what she was going to do next and said: "I was going to suffocate them."

However, she agreed with gardai that she had changed her mind about killing her children on January 23. 

Referring to Darragh, she said that he had got a lot of screen time over the last few years and she felt he had become mean and she had "to save him from himself."

"I felt I had damaged him and damaged them all. I couldn't parent them and couldn't be resilient and then this display of anger from Darragh reinforced my faulty thinking," she said. 

In her second interview, Ms Morley told gardai that she had crushed around 10 mg's of morphine tablets on the evening of January 23, which amounted to between six and eight crushed tablets.

"I was thinking three or four each and they wouldn't drink all the milk so half that was enough to sedate them," she said.

When the gardai asked her what her intention was that night, she said it was to put it in their cereal and "sedate" the boys because she "planned on smothering" them.

"I planned to smother them when they were sedated that night," she added. 

Det Sgt Dara Kenny told Ms Lawlor that gardai interviewed numerous people who knew Ms Morley's children and the universal view was that they were impeccably behaved, fantastic children who had a happy life and were cherished by their family and all who knew them. He said that any concerns Ms Morley had about her children were due to her misapprehensions. 

In her second interview, Ms Morley described to gardai how she first killed Darragh by putting tape over his mouth and a bag over his head. She put a cushion on top of the bag and leaned on it. He struggled for a time but she said she knew he was dead when his chest stopped moving. As she did it, she said, she was thinking she wanted to stop but she couldn't.

She added: "I didn't want to do it but I felt I had to because I had started to do it and something was telling me I had to do it but I didn't want to do it but I had to do it."

After killing Darragh she said she felt she "couldn't leave any of them behind," that they were already damaged and that she was sparing them from the pain of mental illness that she thought she had passed on to them.

She described how she killed Carla and then collected Conor early from school because she wanted to have enough time to kill him and herself before her husband got home.

Conor had some screen time when he got home and then Ms Morley made up a game where she put the tape on her mouth and then on his.

He tried to talk through it and Ms Morley said: "Let's see if you can talk through the bag."

When she put the bag over him she turned him over and pulled the bag tighter by twisting it. He said, "Mum stop", and Ms Morley said, "sorry Conor", and pulled the bag tighter and put a cushion over him. She held him down until he stopped moving. They were in the play tent at the time.

Under cross-examination Det Sgt Kenny agreed with defence counsel Michael Bowman SC that Mr McGinley had supported his wife as best he could with her mental health problems. He was unaware, however, that Clondalkin Mental Health Services and the Swiftbrook Medical Centre had written to St Patrick's Hospital requesting that Ms Morley be readmitted due to concerns about her mental health. Those closest to Ms Morley had sought to manage her problems as best they could, the witness said, and they didn't realise the gravity of the situation.

The trial continues today before Mr Justice Paul Coffey and a jury of ten men and two women.