The jury in the trial of a woman accused of murdering her three young children has been hearing details about how she took their lives.
Deirdre Morley, of Parson’s Court, Newcastle, Co Dublin, claims she was suffering from a mental disorder at the time and has pleaded N-O-T guilty ‘by reason of insanity‘.
The 44-year-old has accepted before the court that she killed her children.
On the morning of January 24th, 2020, Deirdre Morley suffocated her seven-year-old son, Darragh, and her three-year-old daughter, Carla.
She then took her eldest son, nine-year-old Conor, out of school early, and did the same to him in a play tent in their living room.
The court heard Ms Morley had been suffering from mental health difficulties and suffered a breakdown in July 2019, after which she spent a period at St Patrick’s Hospital in Dublin.
Her husband, who had been working in Cork that day, returned that evening to find paramedics treating her outside the house.
A note was attached to a bike inside. It read: “Don’t go into the front room or upstairs. I’m so sorry.”
Her husband did. He was the one who found Conor’s body. A note beside him read: “I’m so sorry. I could see no future. This is my fault. I’m broken and can’t be fixed.”
The prosecuting barrister, Anne Marie Lawlor, told the jurors that what happened to the children wasn’t in dispute. “Intent is at the heart of this entire case”, she said.
