Four-year-old Mason O’Connell-Conway sat crying on his bedroom floor in his Limerick home. His eyes, ears, chest, back, legs and arms were covered in red, black, brown and yellow bruises. His fractured rib, suffered when his father’s partner had kicked him days earlier, was just starting to heal.
Downstairs, the family celebrated another birthday, the second over a few days, but the boy had not been allowed to take part.
His father’s partner , Tegan McGhee (32), told Mason he had been bold and had to stay in his room, sitting on the floor, never on his bed, all day, every day, for days on end.
When other family members asked whether they could see him, they were told: No – he was “grounded”, McGhee said, and that meant no visitors.
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On the fourth day of his “grounding”, his father, McGhee’s then partner John Paul O’Connell, left the house to go to work. McGhee did not want to be left with Mason and begged O’Connell to stay. She told O’Connell she was worried someone would call to the house and see the bruises all over the little boy’s face.
The father left anyway and McGhee rubbed arnica cream – a remedy that claims to reduce the appearance of bruises – into the boy’s face.
[ Limerick woman jailed for life for murder of boyfriend’s four-year-old sonOpens in new window ]
In her interviews with gardaí, McGhee said that after O’Connell left, she went upstairs to where Mason was in his usual position, sitting on his bedroom floor. She recalled asking the four-year-old why he couldn’t behave and then she started shaking him and screaming at him before he “fell” on the ground. McGhee claimed at other times she had “blanked out” and couldn’t remember what happened.
But phone records and evidence from others show she rang her partner and told him the boy was unconscious and had soiled himself.
McGhee texted the father, saying: “Why did you leave? I need you home, please, where are you? ... You shouldn’t have left and you know that.”
CCTV from a neighbour’s house showed her running up and down the stairs every two minutes from 11.06am, when she rang her partner to say the boy was unconscious, until 12.35pm when he arrived home. During that time, she did a Google search on her phone: “Why is it bad if you bang your head and go to sleep?”
From the time the boy’s father arrived, there was a further eight-minute delay before he called an ambulance.
In November, McGhee pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin to murdering the boy on March 13th, 2021 – the day the ambulance arrived.
On Wednesday, she was sentenced to life, the mandatory term for her crime.
In a victim impact statement read to the court on Monday, Mason’s mother Elizabeth Conway said her child was a beautiful and loving boy whose life was taken by “pure evil”.
Conway, who had suffered from mental health problems, had voluntarily given custody of the child to Mason’s father O’Connell, her former partner, and McGhee some months before his death in March 2021.
McGhee’s sentencing came more than a year after O’Connell was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to endangerment, neglect and impeding the apprehension or prosecution of McGhee , knowing or believing she had murdered his son.
Foetal position
Both O’Connell and McGhee were at the house when the ambulance arrived that day in March 2021. An advanced paramedic who was first on the scene met the child’s father halfway up the stairs. McGhee remained in the kitchen downstairs.
Inside an upstairs bedroom, the paramedic saw Mason lying on his side on the floor in the foetal position, with his head resting on a pillow. The paramedic noted the multicoloured bruises, suggesting injuries of different age and cause, and a bump or haematoma on the back of the head.
O’Connell also said Mason had been “bold, acting up, behaving badly, and was grounded and confined to his bedroom”, the paramedic said.
His pupils did not react to light, indicating a significant head injury. He also showed signs of “posturing”, whereby the limbs become extended and stiff, further suggesting a head injury and swelling or pressure on the brain. The paramedic took Mason in his arms, brought him to the ambulance and called ahead for the paediatric resuscitation room at a nearby hospital to be prepared.
O’Connell told paramedics, nurses and doctors that Mason had suffered the head injury by falling from the top bunk of his bed. He explained other bruises by saying Mason had run into a door or had injured himself playing football. He bruised easily, he said.
Every healthcare professional who spoke to O’Connell and saw the injuries Mason had suffered came to the same conclusion: he was lying, and the boy had been suffering long-term physical abuse.
A CAT scan indicated the child needed immediate neurosurgery, so it was decided he would be transferred to Cork University Hospital.
Dr Niamh Mitchell, a specialist in emergency medicine, was working as a registrar at the time. She said Mason had the most serious type of head injury, and she noted multiple bruises on his forehead, around both eyes and on his right arm and significant bruises on both legs, including on the inner thighs.
“It looked like he had been hit on more than one occasion because of the different colours [of bruises],” she said.
“It didn’t look like something you would get from normal play. The inside of the legs is not something you would injure in normal play.”
‘The whole theatre gasped’
Dr Stephen O’Riordan, a consultant paediatrician, described how he first came to treat the boy on March 13th, 2021. The witness said he knew nothing more when he arrived at the operating theatre than that a boy had suffered a fall.
“We took the drapes away and the whole theatre gasped,” he said.
Mason had significant bruises “from head to toe”, which were consistent with physical abuse or non-accidental injuries, he said. He documented 17 areas of bruising or injury all over the body. The “black eyes”, combined with bruises around both ears, were “classic signs of physical abuse”, he said.
A consultant intensive care doctor said the injuries Mason had suffered would usually be associated with a crash where a car hits a wall, or with a fall from a “very significant height”.
Dr O’Riordan knew the child’s father had said the black eyes were the result of two falls over the previous two weeks. Dr O’Riordan’s view was that they were the result of a single head injury. He noted possible “grab marks” on one shoulder and to the left elbow, and multiple bruises on the back and chest suggesting the boy was “landing on his chest or back a lot, which is consistent with non-accidental injury”.
The most significant concern, he said, was a “hugely extensive injury” to the back of the head. A laceration to the boy’s liver, Dr O’Riordan said, would have been caused by “extreme force”, and of a type that would normally be associated with a car crash.
X-rays carried out by another paediatrician showed the boy had previously suffered a fractured rib that was starting to heal. The healing would suggest the injury was seven to 10 days old, Dr O’Riordan said. It was further evidence of the long-term nature of the abuse Mason had been suffering.
Postmortem
State Pathologist Dr Heidi Okkers told the trial the head injuries Mason suffered were the result of shaking and being struck by a hard surface such as a floor or wall. Both the injury to the liver and the head could have been fatal on their own, Dr Okkers said.
The brain, she said, was significantly swollen, with subdural bleeding above the right ear. There was also evidence of “axonal injury”, which is caused by the brain shifting from side to side. Such injuries are associated with road traffic collisions and assault, the pathologist said.
In a child, she said, such injuries would be caused by shaking, punching or striking the head, causing it to rotate or move back and forth. A person does not suffer axonal injuries from falling off beds, Dr Okkers said, because a rapid rotation of the head is required. “The head has to move at some speed for the brain to move,” she said.
Dr Okkers noted lacerations to the front and back of the child’s liver which would have been caused by direct trauma to the abdomen. She said the injury would have been caused by a punch, a knee, a kick or a blow with a blunt object. It would not be caused by a fall, she said. The liver injury would have been painful and would have caused the child to cry, Dr Okkers said.
The pathologist concluded that the cause of death was a traumatic head injury in association with blunt force trauma to the abdomen.
The different ages and distribution of the bruises, she said, would not typically be found in a child. While children often have bruises to the knees, shins and forehead, the injuries to the child’s arms, legs, face, each side of the head, chest, sides and back are not typical.
A series of oval-shaped bruises to the right shoulder could be fingerprints as a result of someone handling the child, she said.
Father
In November 2024, O’Connell, Mason’s father, was sentenced to seven years in prison, having pleaded guilty to endangerment, neglect and impeding the apprehension or prosecution of McGhee, knowing or believing she had murdered his son.
Passing sentence at the time, Mr Justice Paul McDermott described his actions as “shameful” and said he bore a high level of criminal responsibility for failing to nurture and protect his son.
Mother
Elizabeth Conway, Mason’s mother, and O’Connell had been in a relationship, but split up following Mason’s birth. In September 2020, Conway was suffering problems with her mental health and so let her son live with O’Connell and McGhee.
In their house, the abuse the boy suffered went on for months. One friend of the family recalled an evening when the boy didn’t finish his dinner. McGhee slapped him twice across the face and put him to bed.
On another occasion a witness saw her slapping Mason at the bottom of the stairs before dragging him up to his room. She remained with him for 20 minutes.
Following McGhee’s arrest for murder, she pleaded guilty to assaulting the child on January 1st, 2021, and March 5th, 2021. The assaults consisted of kicking and slapping, leaving the child with some of the myriad injuries that were visible when he went to hospital.
When her trial began last month, she pleaded not guilty to the boy’s murder, but guilty to manslaughter. Her anonymity was preserved during the trial to protect a child who was due to give evidence in her trial. The Children Act contains provisions designed to protect children who appear as witnesses in criminal trials. That cloak of anonymity was lifted when McGhee was sentenced to life on Wednesday.
Having been sentenced to seven years in prison backdated to March 2024, O’Connell, aged in his mid-30s, is likely to be released in the summer of 2029.
McGhee will serve many more years for the boy’s murder.
