A wave of online speculation has linked the deaths of three Irish children to a separate US case, developing from social media comparisons into an international conspiracy theory despite there being no evidence that the two tragedies are connected.
Conor, Darragh and Carla McGinley were killed by their mother, Deirdre Morley, at the family home in Newcastle, Co Dublin, in January 2020. Morley was later found not guilty by reason of insanity.
The renewed online discussion began after the case of Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts mother accused of killing her three children in January 2023. Social media users identified similarities between the two cases, including the fact that both women were nurses, both had three young children and mental illness became central to the legal proceedings.
Andrew McGinley, the children’s father, said he was familiar with strangers using details of his family’s tragedy to attract online attention.
“They see it as content,” he said, accusing people of seeking clicks, followers and advertising revenue at the expense of his children’s deaths.
RTÉ Clarity traced the spread of the comparison across YouTube, Reddit and X. The earliest identified reference appeared on June 16 beneath a YouTube video about the Clancy case. Further discussions appeared during July, with users examining similarities and questioning issues surrounding mental illness and criminal intent.
By August, the comparisons had become more detailed. RTÉ Clarity identified 299 mentions linking the two cases during the month, compared with 18 in July.
The discussion later shifted increasingly towards X, where details accumulated during weeks of online debate were presented as a single narrative. Some users began suggesting, without evidence, that one case had inspired the other or that the events were part of a “psyop”, a term used online to describe an alleged psychological operation.
On August 28, US commentator Owen Benjamin described the Clancy case as an “energy harvesting psyop” in a post on X. Another account with more than 300,000 followers later shared the claim, generating more than one million views.
RTÉ Clarity identified more than 1,100 posts and comments mentioning both Morley and “psyop” between September 1 and 10.
Communication researcher Professor Tim Schatto-Eckrodt of the University of Hamburg said unusual similarities can encourage people to search for explanations. He said coincidence was often considered less interesting than the possibility that someone was deliberately concealing information.
The use of AI chatbot Grok also became part of the discussion, with users asking it to verify details about the two cases. While individual facts could be confirmed, researchers warned that establishing those facts did not prove the broader claims being made online.
“The facts might be correct,” Schatto-Eckrodt said, while noting that the conclusions drawn from them could go much further than the evidence supports.
By early September, the comparison had reached millions of people. Large X accounts shared videos presenting the cases as highly similar, amplifying a narrative that had developed through weeks of smaller online discussions.
McGinley said he had little practical recourse against strangers making claims about his family.
He has since stepped back from much of his social media activity but continues projects remembering his children. A children’s book based on a character created by Conor and Darragh, with influence from Carla, is due to be released later this year.
“I’m doing it for them,” he said.
