BREAKING: 'Evil' stepmother, who murdered Limerick boy, is named after judge lifts reporting restrictions

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THE “EVIL” stepmother, who murdered a four-year-old Limerick boy in her care, can now be named as 32-year-old Tegan McGhee after a judge lifted an order preventing publication of her identity.

This Wednesday, Mr Justice Paul McDermott sentenced McGhee, of no fixed abode, to life imprisonment for the murder of Mason O'Connell-Conway at a house she was renting with the boy's father in Rathbane, Limerick city on March 16, 2021.

The child's father, John Paul O'Connell (36), was previously sentenced to seven years in prison having pleaded guilty to endangerment, neglect and impeding McGhee's apprehension or prosecution, knowing or believing she had murdered his son.

Mason was found with serious injuries at a house in Rathbane, Limerick City, on March 13, 2021. He was pronounced dead three days later.

Mr Justice McDermott also sentenced McGhee to four years and six months for two counts of child cruelty in the weeks and months leading up to the murder. The child cruelty sentences will run concurrently with the life sentence.

Mr Justice McDermott extended his "deepest sympathies" to the child's mother, Elizabeth Conway, and the extended family.

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The trial heard that on March 13, 2021, the child's father phoned emergency services, saying his son had fallen from the top bunk of his bed one hour earlier and could not be roused.

When paramedics arrived they found the boy lying on the floor of his bedroom, unresponsive. They rushed him to hospital and despite emergency intervention and surgery, he did not recover. Medical professionals noted numerous bruises of various ages all over the child's face, head, torso and legs that were indicative of non-accidental injuries or abuse.

The father explained the injuries by saying that his son was the "the clumsiest child ever" and that he had run into a door or been hurt playing football.

However, it emerged during the stepmother's trial that he had been subjected to physical abuse for weeks and spent four days grounded in his room before his stepmother shook him and struck his head off the floor. He had also suffered a blunt force injury to his abdomen that lacerated his liver. A pathologist found that either injury to the head or the liver would have caused death on their own.

The defendant claimed that the boy was a "bold cheeky child" and often had to be grounded. When grounded, he was not allowed to leave his room other than to go to the toilet and had to sit on the floor, never his bed. The defendant told gardai that on the day the boy suffered his fatal injuries, she "snapped" and recalled "shaking him and screaming at him to behave" before he fell on the floor.

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.

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.

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".

She said his life was taken by "pure evil", by someone her son "loved and trusted".

More to follow…