{"id":297396,"date":"2026-02-14T07:55:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T07:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/297396\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T07:55:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T07:55:09","slug":"he-wanted-to-mind-henry-and-keep-him-safe-john-mcgowan-planned-to-stay-up-with-disturbed-son-on-night-he-was-strangled-in-ballyfin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/297396\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018He wanted to mind Henry and keep him safe\u2019 \u2013 John McGowan planned to stay up with disturbed son on night he was strangled in Ballyfin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Doctor who liaised with family tells of their fears leading up to the death of dad in luxury hotel\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"John MacGowan (inset), Ballyfin Demesne and Henry MacGowan (right)\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/llyfin Hotel murder.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">John MacGowan (inset), Ballyfin Demesne and Henry MacGowan (right)<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">John McGowan was steeling himself for the long night ahead. He had stayed awake watching over his mentally ill son many times before. He knew how to get through it, he assured Dr Lisa Cunningham.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">\u201cHe wanted to mind Henry and keep him safe,\u201d Dr Cunningham told the Irish Independent this week. \u201cSo that was the plan. He was going to sit up with him all night and the following morning they were going to get a taxi to a nearby hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Doctor who liaised with family tells of their fears leading up to the death of dad in luxury&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48326,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-297396","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-catherine-fegan","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}