The Framing of Harry Gleeson

In November 1940 the body of Moll McCarthy, an unmarried mother, was found in a field in Tipperary. She had been shot. The man who reported the discovery was neighbour Harry Gleeson. Although Harry had an alibi, he was swiftly convicted and hanged. This travesty of justice suited the parish priest, the Gardaí, and respectable families whose sons, brothers and husbands had fathered Moll’s seven children. The investigation was hijacked and the defence compromised. Neighbours and friends felt intimidated. Moll’s daughter Mary, approaching death over fifty years later, became upset and said to a nurse ‘I saw my own mother shot on the kitchen floor, and an innocent man died’. Somewhere in the grounds of Mountjoy Jail lies the body of Harry Gleeson, posthumously pardoned by the State in 2015. This is the story of how and why he was framed and who the guilty parties were.

In November 1940 the body of Moll McCarthy, an unmarried mother of seven, was found in a field in Tipperary. She had been shot. The man who reported the discovery was her neighbour Harry Gleeson. Within three months, he was convicted by an all-male jury. Within five months, he was hanged. But he was innocent, the victim of a local conspiracy.