The Framing of Harry Gleeson author set for talk at popular Tipperary bookshop

“The last thing I want to say is that I will pray tomorrow that whoever did it will be discovered, and that the whole thing will be like an open book.”

Harry Gleeson spoke these dignified final words to his solicitor Sean MacBride, just hours before his execution by the Irish State at Mountjoy Prison in 1941.

This tragic miscarriage of justice saw an innocent man hanged for a murder he did not commit.

The investigation into the killing of Moll McCarthy had been essentially a cover-up to protect the actual culprits and the defence was compromised and witnesses threatened.

Police perjury and a hostile judge led to Harry Gleeson beingconvicted.

He was hanged on April 23, 1941, after the government had rejected the 7,000-signature petition pleading that he be saved from the gallows.

For decades Harry’s family members and descendants campaigned on his behalf for a pardon, which was finally granted in 2015.

A government review of the case found police and prosecutors withheld crucial evidence from the trial.

Harry Gleeson was convicted and executed, a result of a case based on unconvincing circumstantial evidence.

There were inconsistencies in the prosecution case, including a failure to call certain witnesses, the withholding of a Police statement relating to the case and the failure to introduce a shotgun register into evidence.

Thanks to the doggedness, dedication and persistence of his family, campaigners for justice and the Irish Innocence Project at Griffith College Dublin, Harry Gleeson became the first person in Irish history to be posthumously pardoned by President Higgins in 2015.

Earlier this year, after a painstaking search of the burial area of Mountjoy, Harry’s remains were identified, exhumed and re-interred in the family plot in Holycross.

The huge attendance at the burial ceremony, with people travelling from many parts of the country was a testament to the impact this story has had and that finally, Harry Gleeson can rest in peace among his own.

Kieran Fagan author of the bestselling book The Framing of Harry Gleeson will give a talk on the tragic case at Bookworm Bookshop on Wednesday, November 20 at 7pm.