Remains of Tipperary man given posthumous pardon still missing after five-year search
The popular hurler and fiddle player, from Holycross, Co. Tipperary, was executed in Mountjoy in April 1941, for the murder of mother of seven, Mary McCarthy, who was also from the county.
Almost seven years have elapsed since the Department of Justice sanctioned a search for the remains of the country’s only person to be given a posthumous pardon for a murder he did not carry out.
However, to date there is no sign of Harry Gleeson (38). The popular hurler and fiddle player, from Holycross, Co. Tipperary, was executed in Mountjoy in April 1941, for the murder of mother of seven, Mary McCarthy, who was also from the county.
Ms McCarthy’s murder was perpetrated by local gunmen who made sure no one stood up to defend Mr Gleeson. Mr Gleeson’s wrongful conviction and the death of Ms McCarthy became the subject of several books and a documentary by the late Cathal O’Shannon.
In 2015, 74 years after his hanging, then Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald along with President Michael D Higgins issued the State’s first posthumous pardon for Mr Gleeson, who had always protested his innocence.
In February last year, the Department of Justice admitted that it could not find his remains, following a five-year search of the grounds at Mountjoy Prison where executed prisoners would have been buried.
The recovery project had been halted for a time due to Covid-19 restrictions which came into place soon afterwards. A Department of Justice spokesperson said it is still “the Department’s objective to do what can be done to identify and return the remains of Harry Gleeson to his family.”
The spokesperson said the Department “continues to engage” with Mr Gleeson’s family “and with relevant authorities and specialists to advance this".
The spokesperson said the Department has spent “€26,300 from 2017-2019 and additional costs have been incurred at prison level in terms of equipment rental, services and ground works".
Kevin Gleeson, a grand-nephew of Mr Gleeson said they remain anxious to discover and re-inter the remains in the family burial plot in the old graveyard in Holycross, especially since his closest living relatives are now elderly.
The case of Mr Gleeson’s wrongful execution had been taken up by the Irish Innocence Project, which investigates possible wrongful convictions of those who claim factual innocence, following requests from his nearest living relatives.
An American pathologist helped prove Mary McCarthy’s time of death coincided with a time that Gleeson had an alibi for. He was granted the pardon after the re-examination of a large amount of information relating to his case.
