The “evil” stepmother who murdered a four-year-old boy in her care can now be identified as 32-yr-old Tegan McGhee after a judge removed the restriction on publishing her name, reports The Mirror.
Mr Justice Paul McDermott today sentenced McGhee, who has no fixed address, to life imprisonment for the murder of Mason O’Connell Conway at a house she shared with the boy’s father in Rathbane, Limerick city on March 16, 2021, reports The Mirror.
The child’s father, John Paul O’Connell (36), had earlier received a seven-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to endangerment, neglect and obstructing McGhee’s arrest or prosecution, aware or suspecting that she had killed his son.
Mason (4) was discovered with severe injuries at a residence in Rathbane, Limerick City, on March 13th, 2021. He was declared dead three days afterwards, reports The Mirror.
Mr Justice McDermott additionally imposed a sentence of four years and six months on McGhee for two counts of child cruelty in the period leading up to the murder. These sentences will run at the same time as the life term.
Mr Justice McDermott conveyed his “deepest sympathies” to the child’s mother, Elizabeth Conway, and her wider family.
The trial was told that on March 13, 2021, the boy’s father contacted emergency services, reporting that his son had fallen from the top bunk of his bed about an hour earlier and was unconscious.
When paramedics reached the scene they found the boy unresponsive on his bedroom floor. Despite being rushed to hospital and receiving urgent treatment and surgery, he could not be saved. Doctors observed multiple bruises of different ages across his face, head, torso and legs, which pointed to non-accidental trauma or abuse, reports The Mirror.
The father attributed the injuries to his son being “the clumsiest child ever” and claimed he had bumped into a door or been injured while playing football.
However, evidence presented at the stepmother’s trial revealed that the boy had endured physical abuse over weeks and had been confined to his room for four days prior to the fatal incident, during which his stepmother shook him and banged his head against the floor. He also sustained a blunt force injury to his abdomen that ruptured his liver. A pathologist concluded that either the head trauma or the liver damage alone would have been fatal.
The defendant described the boy as a “bold cheeky child” who frequently required grounding. While grounded, he was barred from leaving his room except for toilet visits and had to remain seated on the floor, never on his bed. The defendant informed gardai that on the day of the fatal injuries she “snapped” and remembered “shaking him and screaming at him to behave” before he collapsed onto the floor, reports The Mirror.
In her statement earlier this week, the child’s mother, Elizabeth Conway said her son was born in early 2016, a “fine, healthy little boy”. She described him as a “clever little child who brought so much love and happiness into all our lives”. When his sister played peekaboo with him or tickled him, he would laugh, making everyone else laugh.
“He had the biggest smile and the most beautiful brown eyes. He was a perfect little boy,” she said. When he potty trained himself at just 18 months, he felt he was a “little man” and would insist on walking instead of going in his buggy. He adored his younger siblings and would insist on helping to care for them and would kiss and cuddle them, she said. One of Ms Conway’s treasured possessions is a video of her son singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to his little sister. “He was such a caring little boy,” she said, reports The Mirror.
When he saw a homeless man sitting on the ground, he asked his mother to give the man a pizza and later that night he worried about him and sought assurance from his mother that he would be “okay”.
After receiving the “worst phone call any mother could get,” Ms Conway recalled being in hospital with the boy’s father and the defendant when doctors came to say there was nothing they could do. She made the “hardest decision a mother could make” to turn her son’s life support off but before that happened, O’Connell and McGhee asked to be left alone with him.
She said: “I can only imagine what they were saying to my poor child’s lifeless body.”
After the life support machine was switched off, she recalled watching her “beautiful little child’s heartbeat go down and down” until he flatlined and she begged doctors to turn the machine back on, reports The Mirror.
She planned the funeral herself and recalled how the child’s father and stepmother “stood in God’s holy house and said how much they loved him and that he was a superhero,” reports The Mirror.
She said his life was taken by “pure evil”, by someone her son “loved and trusted”, reports The Mirror.
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