Reality star Hughie Maughan says he spent time with child killer Andy Cash hours before brutal triple murder

Reality star Hughie Maughan says he spent time with triple murderer Andy Cash just hours before he brutally killed his siblings.

Speaking to the Irish Mirror, the former Celebrity Big Brother star claimed he met evil killer Cash, 26, in a bar in Dublin hours before the murderer stabbed to death his sister Lisa, 18, and twin siblings Christy and Chelsea Cawley, 8, at their home in Tallaght, South Dublin in September 2022.

Maughan claims he spent time with Cash in Panti Bar – before the killer went to a family house party and subsequently took a taxi home, where he then carried out the gruesome murders – which he pleaded guilty to this week.

“I met him in town on a night out that night. He obviously must have left and went to the family party and then took the taxi to go up to the house where his siblings were killed,” he said.

“In town he was quite strange, he was just standing there and he knew who I was from the telly. We were speaking in the smoking area of Panti bar in town. Him and my friend had a little bit of an argument because of a guy that both of them liked.”

Hughie Maughan

Maughan added that he had a “normal” conversation with Cash, who he said was “strange,” before the pair parted ways, and tragedy ultimately unfolded.

“We were chatting normal to him and to others. He was a very strange human, very bizarre, very weird. The next day my friend told me he murdered the kids and it was in the newspapers. I couldn’t believe it. It was a shock that you could meet someone and 24 hours later they do something like that.”

Hughie said he remembers Cash wearing a blue shirt, and says he often thinks about how he could have ended up at the same house party with him that night.

“I’m sure it was that night. He wore that blue shirt. He was at a family house party later that night. I still sit down and think about it now. I spent a long time chatting with him and especially with us both being gay travellers and whatever, we might have ended up drinking more together and I could have even drunkenly went to that after party with him.”

Cash pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court on Tuesday to the murders of 18-year-old Lisa Cash and her eight-year-old twin brother and sister, Christy and Chelsea Cawley, at their family home in Rossfield Avenue, Tallaght, Dublin 24, in the early hours of September 4, 2022.

The court heard how the murderer left a family party in a taxi and went home, where he used a knife to stab his siblings hundreds of times – and went on to dangle the lifeless body of 8-year-old Christy out the first floor window of the home.

Brendan Grehan SC, for Cash, told the court that since going into custody in September 2022, his client has been assessed by two psychiatrists and a psychologist. He said Cash asked him to say that he is “sorry for his actions and sorry to the people he has hurt”.

In their victim impact statement read to the court, family members including Margaret McDonagh, mother of the three victims, spoke of the effect the murders had had on them.

“Our three innocent children were viciously taken from us and that was the day the world stopped turning. What is left is our broken family and every day since has been unbearable,” they said.

Andy Cash (File photo)

“It’s been two birthdays, two Christmases and two of every occasion that we have spent without them. We miss everything about them, hearing their voices, their laughs, the conversations we would have, the games we would play as a family, the hugs and kisses that we won’t ever get from them again.”

They said there are not enough words to describe the pain and hurt that is in the hearts of their family and the pain that they have to live “with every second of every day since”.

“The only thing that hurts more than losing them is knowing how much they have missed out on, how they never got to finish school with their friends or learn how to drive a car or get the chance to see the world. It’s not just what was taken from us that hurts, it’s how their whole lives were taken from them, before they even had a chance to live them.”

Margaret Cash McDonagh, the mother of Lisa Cash, 18, and her eight-year-old twin siblings, Christy and Chelsea Cawley, is consoled as the coffins of her children arrive at St Aidan’s Church, Brookfield, Tallaght, ahead of their removal service in 2022

The family said “there is no amount of time a person can spend in a jail cell that will justify what has happened to our family. It was not just three lives that were taken from us that day but six lives. We are no longer the people we were when they were alive as we died with them that day. We do not know how to live in this world without them. It’s a struggle we live with every day.

“Lisa, Christy and Chelsea deserved so much more from life, they deserved to grow old and live their lives however they would have chosen to and to have families of their own. They were the most beautiful, kind, and loving children in the world. We will cherish every memory made with them and love and miss them forever,” the statement concluded.

The emotional and powerful victim impact statement was heard before Cash was sentenced to three mandatory terms of life imprisonment for murdering his three siblings. The sentences were backdated to September 4th, 2022 when he went into custody.

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