commentary by Patrick H. Moore
In a shocking development, a highly decorated Iraq War veteran and the current National Security Agency’s Korea division chief, Brian O’Callaghan, 36, has just been charged with 1st-degree-murder in the alleged beating death of his 3-year-old special needs son, Hyunsu. The odd thing is that O’Callaghan and his wife, Jennifer, only adopted the boy in October after going through an arduous vetting process which is standard procedure in the case of special-needs adoptees, and were only accepted because of the defendant’s excellent service record and high-level NSA job.
Assuming the allegations are true, it demonstrates the great difficulty of ever discovering the true nature of a prospective adoptive parent. Clearly, the vast majority of these folks (I’m one myself) have the best of intentions, but god forbid that you are the poor child who gets selected by an unstable personality such as O’Callaghan may well be (this is once again assuming the allegations are true).
What makes this even stranger is the fact that O’Callaghan was awarded the Marine Corps Achievement Medal for his part in a gun battle that helped lead to the rescue of captured soldier Jessica Lynch.
Neither O’Callaghan’s family, nor his wife, Jennifer, nor O’Callaghan himself are in any way admitting that the boy’s death was anything other than a tragic accident. Those that know him best contend that the NSA chief – who has top secret clearance with the agency – isn’t capable of hurting the boy.
‘He was so loving of him,’ a family member told the Washington Post.
O’Callaghan’s story is that his son’s death was the result of an accidental slip in the shower two days before he died.
He reportedly told the police that on the night of January 31, he helped the boy take a shower. He noted that Hyunsu, who they call Madoc, didn’t like it when the water hit him. O’Callaghan was basically on his own attempting to care for his special-needs child. His wife was out of town and their other son, who is only 7, was in a different part of the house.
‘During the shower, Hyunsu was crying and upset,’ Detective Mike Carin wrote in court papers. ‘After the shower had ended, Hyunsu slipped in the bathtub, falling backwards. As he fell, he hit his shoulder. Brian consoled him and he went to bed without incident.’
Then comes a small twist. In the morning, Madoc reportedly appeared to be fine. In fact, according to Carin’s report, O’Callaghan took Madoc and his other son to breakfast and then to a swim center. They then returned home and Madoc took a nap.
According to the police report, it wasn’t until 4 p.m. that day, when O’Callaghan went to check on the sleeping Madoc, that he says he noticed something might be wrong. There were pink stains on the boy’s sheets and mucus coming out of his nose.
At this point most people would say,“Oh my god, what is going on here?” I know that I’d be on the phone getting help so fast your head would spin.
But not O’Callaghan. He did a sort of Marine cleanliness thing. He changed the sheets on his dying son’s bed.
Then he left the room and came back an hour later to check on him again.
You can feel the grains of sand slipping through the hourglass. The second time, O’Callaghan noticed that the boy appeared to be in bad shape — he was unresponsive, O’Callaghan told investigators. Once again, O’Callaghan did a cleanliness number – he washed the boy off in a bathtub (we’re not told what he washed off but let your imagination be your guide). Only then did he finally take the boy to the hospital. According to the authorities, at the hospital, O’Callaghan could not provide an explanation for the boy’s injuries.
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The Montgomery County, Maryland, prosecutors, believe this is a case of cold-blooded murder.
‘An absolutely horrific crime on an absolutely innocent young victim,’ said Assistant State’s Attorney Donna Fenton, running through a litany of injuries to the boy’s head, neck and back. ‘Basically this child was beaten to death from head to toe.’
‘These facts are strong, these facts are horrific, and what this man did to this child is murder,’ said Fenton in court.
An autopsy revealed that Madoc’s injuries were consistent with having been beaten – he had a ‘fracture at the base of skull, bruises to the forehead, swelling of the brain and wounds to other parts of the body.’ There was also ‘blunt impact to the back from a linear and triangular shaped object.’
O’Callaghan’s attorney, Steven McCool, isn’t buying it. He stated in court Tuesday that medical tests performed at the hospital don’t support the findings in the autopsy.
‘There was a full CT scan done of Madoc, and there were no skull fractures,’ he said.
‘I find it impossible to believe that he’s been indicted for murder because he’s worked so hard to get this baby,’ O’Callaghan’s grandfather William Rose told the paper. ‘He was so loving with him. He’s been so wonderful with his other child. I’ve never seen him do anything that would make me believe he is capable of that.’
Until he lost it while trying to give a reluctant special-needs child a shower (assuming the allegations are true).
O’Callaghan has been charged with one count each of first-degree murder and child abuse resulting in death. Needless to say, he is being held without bond.
Update:
An investigation has been launched in Korea which appears to be triggered by Korean concerns that Holt and Catholic Charities USA, a U.S.-based adoption agency that handled the adoption of Hyunsu, charged the O’Callaghan’s a whopping $41,650 to place the boy with them. My sense is that this is more than double what adoption agencies usually charge for Americans to adopt foreign-born children. On the other hand, the cost of foreign adoptions may have gone up sharply since we adopted our daughter 16 years ago. In any event, this would appear to be a face-saving measure on the part of the Koreans. The O’Callaghans were carefully vetted and at this stage, there is no reason to believe that any real impropriety on the part of the Holt Agency occurred.
There appears to be no new news on Brian O’Callaghan’s case with seems to be progressing at the “slow pace of the moon”, which is not surprising considering its high-profile nature and all that is at stake.