Crime & Law

Sister of Esther Leonard says ‘I don’t want Frank McCann to leave prison’

McCann killed his wife, Esther, and their 18-month-old foster daughter when he set their house on fire

A file photograph from 1998 of Frank McCann who is serving two concurrent life terms.

Hajar Akl
Sat Feb 10 2018 - 17:07

The sister of Esther Leonard, who was murdered by her husband Frank McCann in 1992, believes the lives of her family and the lives of others would be at risk should he be released.

McCann killed his wife, Esther, and their 18-month-old foster child, Jessica, in September 1992 when he set their house on fire.

Marian Leonard, Esther's sister, told the Marian Finucane Programme on RTÉ Radio 1 on Saturday, she did not want to see McCann released.

"I don't want Frank McCann to leave prison. I'll be very blunt about it." Ms Leonard said she feared for the safety of her family and that of the McCann family should he be released. "The safest place for Frank McCann is prison."

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Ms Leonard also said she did not see why her family should suffer and spend the rest of their lives “looking over our shoulders”.

In September 1992, McCann set fire to his home on Butterfield Avenue, Rathfarnham, in Dublin and fled the scene. His wife Esther (36) and Jessica were inside the house and died in the fire.

McCann later arrived back to the house and acted the part of the distraught husband attempting to rescue his family.

Claim he fathered a child

His motive for the killings remains unclear. Three months after marrying Esther, it is alleged a child McCann fathered with a 17-year-old swimmer was born, a claim he has always denied.

Former friends believe McCann deliberately cultivated, conservative public image would have been incompatible with such a scandal.

Frank and Esther were in the process of adopting Jessica, the daughter of McCann’s sister, Jeanette, at the time.

The 17-year-old swimmer’s mother had made a complaint to the Adoption Board in 1991. The application was rejected.

The prosecution’s case was that McCann killed Esther and Jessica because he didn’t want his wife to learn the reason for the Adoption Board decision.

Investigators concluded the respectable image McCann created and which had taken him to a position of respect in business and in swimming administration, were dearer to him than anything else.

Re-socialisation

On Saturday, Ms Leonard said she has been trying to come to terms with the fact that McCann could be released since she was contacted by liaison officers last year informing her of “re-socialisation” days where McCann is taken out of prison four times a year.

Ms Leonard said she was particularly concerned to hear McCann will be taking computer courses.

She said the computer training allowed him to be anywhere in the world. “He can be part of the dark web.”

“He is a manipulator. He can tell all the lies he wants across social media. We’ve seen this too often.

“And here we are, taxpayers, paying a convicted murderer, who killed a child, to learn how to use the internet more efficiently . . . and then we’re going to release him. It just, it beggars belief,” she said.

Life imprisonment

In August 1996, McCann, who was 36 at the time, showed no emotion as Mr Justice Carney sentenced him to two concurrent terms of life imprisonment for the murder of his wife, Esther, and the 18-month-old daughter of his sister.

The verdicts brought to an end a nine-week trial and an investigation that lasted four years.

The first trial in the case in January 1994 was aborted when McCann attempted to set fire to himself in Arbour Hill prison.

Marian Leonard recalled the first trial delay in 1994.

“It was coming to the point of him reading out his confession and the defence team had tried to get it excluded, but it was permitted.

“Before it was read - and he was going to be the one reading it - he actually did set fire to himself so the trial fell apart and everything had to be postponed. He didn’t do much damage to himself, but enough to make the trial stop. It succeeded in postponing it for two years,” she said.

The second trial was temporarily adjourned for two weeks when he suffered an apparent panic attack while giving evidence.

Ms Leonard spoke of how McCann acted "inappropriately" after Esther's funeral in Tramore, Co Waterford, where Esther's family is from.

“He was joking when he came out of the church. He was sitting into the car. Now it’s a small town Tramore, but there were young girls walking down the street just at the top of the road in Tramore, the church is on the hill.

“And he quite loudly said across them: ‘I’m free girls if you want to look this direction’ and everybody around went quiet. He was inappropriate,” she said.

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