Tipperary man to be reinterred 80 years after he was hanged for murder he didn’t commit

From that a campaign, including a TV documentary in 1995, was conducted to prove Gleeson’s innocence. In 2013, the Minister for Justice Alan Shatter referenced the case to a senior counsel, who recommended a pardon. The pardon was granted in 2015.

Following his execution in Mountjoy, Gleeson was buried in the prison yard but his body is now to be reinterred near the place he grew up and lived. The notice on RIP.ie says that the family of Henry Gleeson “rejoice in announcing the final homecoming of his remains to his native Galbertstown”. 

“Having languished in an unmarked grave in Mountjoy prison for 83 years wrongly convicted and hanged for a murder in which he ‘had neither hand, act nor part’ Harry’s remains can finally rest in peace having been declared an entirely innocent man.”

It goes on to state that having been “betrayed by the very system that should have protected him, it fell to others to restore his good name and bring him home”.

Murder

Moll McCarthy was a mother of six who lived in what were described as “unfortunate circumstances” in a cottage on land owned by Gleeson’s uncle John Caesar. The children had been fathered by different men whom, it was later alleged, took advantage of Moll’s circumstances. 

She was found shot dead in a field near her home by Gleeson in November 1940. Gleeson had been managing the farm on which she lived for his uncle. Within 10 days the gardaí had concluded Gleeson was the culprit. 

He was charged and sent for trial in the Central Criminal Court in February 1940. His junior counsel during the trial was Sean McBride, son of Maud Gonne and John McBride who was executed in 1916.

Despite an extremely flimsy case the jury found Gleeson guilty and he was sentenced to hang. 

Years later it was suggested that most likely Ms McCarthy met her death at the hands of a local vigilante group, many of whom were old IRA men. 

Her social standing meant that in the Ireland of the times there was little sympathy for her plight and Harry Gleeson emerged as a handy patsy for the crime.

At the conclusion of his trial, he told his lawyer McBride that he would “pray whoever did it will be discovered and that the whole thing will be like an open book”.

Despite an appeal for clemency, he was hanged in Mountjoy on 23 April, 1941, and buried in the grounds of the prison. The campaign to clear his name came about over 40 years later, assembling evidence to show that he could not have been responsible for the murder.

The funeral mass is taking place next Sunday at 2pm at Holycross Abbey with burial in St Mary’s Cemetery afterwards.