The infamous story of swimming coach Frank McCann’s Dublin murders as he drops parole bid (2024)

The family of 1990s murder victim Esther McCann are concerned that her killer husband may be looking for a new way to find freedom after he dropped his sixth attempt to be given parole.

Frank McCann, a swimming coach, murdered Esther and Jessica, their 18-month-old foster daughter, by setting fire to their home in Rathfarnham, Dublin 14.

Esther’s nephew Thomas O’Brien, 50, said McCann’s decision to drop his bid for parole was unexpected. “While he won’t be coming out any time soon I’m not 100 per cent happy. Everything is calculated with him. He’s definitely planning something else,” O’Brien said.

Describing McCann as “a dangerous predator”, he said: “You just don’t know when or how he will strike again and you can be sure he thinks he got away with it. Hopefully he dies behind bars. Then we as a family might be able to close the book on it.”

McCann, 63, has never admitted the murders, nor apologised publicly or shown remorse. O’Brien said the family had been “destroyed” by the killings and that not a day went by when they did not think about Esther and Jessica, who was the daughter of McCann’s sister Jeannette, a single mother.

“The pain is still as bad as the day it happened,” he said. “I try to block it out and get on with life but from time to time it comes back. Each time I end up crying my eyes out.”

O’Brien said matters had been made worse because McCann had been seen in Dublin on day release from Mountjoy prison. “I’m a father of four children and a grandfather. I don’t think someone like that should be allowed onto the streets again,” he said.

“I have yet to see him myself but my brother Patrick has spotted him coming out of the Mater Hospital on two occasions, accompanied but not handcuffed. He also saw him down by O’Connell Street, unaccompanied on that occasion.”

Esther was 30 when she was killed and O’Brien remembers her with affection. “She was brilliant,” he said. “She was the life and soul of the party.

“She was that young auntie that was closer to our age than our other aunties. She always got us great Christmas and birthday presents.”

Esther used to bring Jessica to their home in Firhouse every day as her mother Bridget O’Brien was living there. “For years after their murder, we didn’t wash the mirrored wardrobes in one of the bedrooms because Jessica’s little handprints were still on them,” said O’Brien.

O’Brien didn’t like McCann from the start and found him condescending. “He always looked down his nose at us,” he said.

He was 21 years old when he learnt that Esther and her baby had died in the house in Butterfield Avenue on September 4, 1992. He vividly remembers that night. He had been out with his girlfriend Rachel, now his wife, and had dropped her home.

“I used to often drive by Rathfarnham and pass my auntie’s house but for some reason I didn’t that night,” he said. “Shortly after I returned home the house erupted. McCann, his uncle, his brother and his brother’s wife arrived with news of the fire.”

McCann had been vice-president of the Irish amateur swimming association and president of the Leinster swimming association and had seemed to be clean-living.

“He thought he was better than everyone else because he didn’t drink or smoke and had a real job, whereas we used to run ice-cream vans,” said O’Brien.

“He [McCann] was a creep and not a nice person,” he said. “He used to insist that we call him Uncle Frank instead of Frank, in the way that a teacher would.”

Even at the funeral, McCann did not appear to be upset, he said. “There was a lady there who was blind and when she heard McCann speak she said, ‘There’s no sadness whatsoever in that voice’,” said O’Brien.

At first McCann deflected attention from himself by claiming that he tried to save his family from the fire.

Gardai considered the possibility of a gas leak or a vendetta by one of the customers at the Blessington pub, which he owned.

It soon became clear that the murder was the culmination of numerous attempts on Esther’s life over three months.

It was said that McCann killed Esther to avoid her finding out that he had fathered a baby with a 17-year-old girl with special needs, who was one of his swimming pupils. The child was born three months before McCann and Esther married in 1987 and was adopted by another family.

Five years later when McCann and Esther tried to adopt Jessica, who had been in their care for months, the Adoption Board refused the application. Officials had also carried out an investigation into a claim by the mother of the 17-year-old swimmer that McCann was the father of her daughter’s child.

The board’s policy was that Esther must be told about the board’s decision against allowing McCann and her to adopt Jessica and the reasons behind it.

It is thought that McCann killed Esther so that she would not find out — it was a way to protect his reputation.

McCann was charged with both murders in 1993 and was convicted after one of the longest trials in the history of the state in 1996.

He was given two life sentences to run concurrently and has so far served 27 years.

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