Days after the fire, Marian Leonard opened the boot of Frank McCann's car and saw the chain of office held by the president of the Leinster branch of the Irish Amateur Swimming Association. The blaze had killed her sister, Esther (36), and 18-month-old Jessica, but McCann's chain of office had survived. The last time she had seen this chain was at Frank and Esther McCann's home in Butterfield Avenue, Rathfarnham, just hours before the house was engulfed in flames.
"It was in its box on the hall table," said Marian. "He took it with him, and the next time I saw it was in the boot of his car in Tramore."
Marian shut the boot and said nothing. She feared he might retaliate and stop the family from burying Esther and the baby beside her late father in Tramore. Even then, Marian suspected McCann, and the chain of office he stashed in the boot of his car ahead of setting the fire said it all.
In the sordid world of Irish swimming in the 1990s, McCann takes his place among the top swim coaches accused of appalling crimes. The former Irish national swim coach, George Gibney, went to court to halt his prosecution on 27 counts of rape and sexual abuse of minors and fled the country. His successors, Derry O'Rourke and Ger Doyle, were separately convicted of a litany of child sexual abuses.
McCann was convicted of the double murder of his wife and his niece, Jessica, whom they planned to adopt, but he too had sexually interfered with a young swimmer.
His motive for the murders was to conceal the secret that he fathered a child with an underage girl with special needs whom he coached at his swim club. Gardaí believe he feared losing his status in the swimming world. He was on his way to becoming president of the Irish Amateur Swimming Association. At his trial, it emerged that he later became involved with another teenager.
Retired detective Pat Treacy. Photo: Steve Humphreys
The documentary podcast, Where Is George Gibney?, by Second Captains in association with the BBC Sounds, has trained an important spotlight on the former national swim coach, who continued to be involved in swimming after fleeing the country.
The podcast's host and co-producer, Mark Horgan, has said 18 victims have come forward with allegations against Gibney since it was launched and gardaí are investigating new complaints.
But the podcast also stirs up questions about McCann, who at 61 is preparing for his release from Arbour Hill prison after 27 years inside.
At the time, the enormity and profound cruelty of his crimes overshadowed his grotesque sexual interference with a vulnerable young girl. He received two life sentences for murdering Esther and Jessica but has never been called to account for his treatment of that young girl in his care.
Retired detective Colm Featherstone. Photo: Frank McGrath
If there are women out there who were hurt by McCann years ago, said Marian Leonard this weekend, she hoped they could come forward now. "From my heart I would feel, and Esther would feel, that their hurt should not be diminished or made less because he murdered Esther and Jessica," she said.
"He was convicted of killing Esther and Jessica, but their voices must also be heard."
Frank McCann often sat with George Gibney and Derry O'Rourke in Esther's kitchen. "There would be silence if you walked in. They didn't explain it - they just stopped talking. Myself and Esther commented on how uncomfortable it was," said Marian. "There would have been three or four of them around the table. I remember distinctly Gibney, Derry O'Rourke was there as well, but I remember Gibney distinctly. That was the usual gathering."
At the time she thought their behaviour "rude and arrogant". Now it appears unsettling.
Esther McCann with her niece Jessica and husband Frank
McCann married Esther in 1987, the year the young swimmer gave birth to his child at the age of 17. McCann denied paternity but he contributed £500 to the girl's medical expenses through the celebrity priest, Fr Michael Cleary, who also arranged for the baby's adoption. It was yet to emerge that the priest had fathered children of his own.
Esther, a technology adviser from Tramore, knew nothing about the girl or the pregnancy. Marian believes McCann married Esther "as a front".
"They got married in May. That girl had her baby in August," said Marian. "McCann arranged a surprise holiday for Esther, around the time of the child's birth. That's what he did. They went to Portugal."
The couple did not have children of their own but had applied to the Adoption Board to adopt McCann's niece, Jessica, who lived with them.
According to Marian, Esther could not understand why the adoption was taking so long. McCann knew why, but didn't tell his wife. The young swimmer's mother had got wind of the adoption application and alerted the Adoption Board to McCann's behaviour. The McCanns' application was rejected on July 28, 1992. McCann was told that Esther would be officially informed of the reason why.
In the early hours of September 4 that year, Frank McCann returned home from a night's work at his pub, The Cooperage, to find the family home ablaze and a crowd outside. Firefighters recovered the bodies of Esther and Jessica, who suffocated in her cot.
Retired detectives Pat Treacy and Colm Featherstone investigated 13 murders in one 18-month period in the busy M District of Tallaght and Rathfarnham. But one murderer chilled them to the bone, and that was Frank McCann.
The case left a lasting impact on investigators. "You know, I was a parent myself and you could not but be struck by the human aspect of the case. It was a dreadful personal loss," said Treacy.
Featherstone was struck by its cruelty. "McCann committed this crime with textbook malice aforethought. He had the intention to murder in spades. It was pre-planned and executed."
Featherstone, who went on to serve as detective superintendent in the Garda's fraud bureau, passed the scene of the fire that night. "I didn't know anyone had died and we continued our patrol. I always remember that later at about two in the morning, we came across a patrol car from Rathfarnham coming towards us. We both stopped, and rolled down the windows: 'How are you lads, any news?' They told us then that two people had died. But we had no conception of what that case would become."
At a packed briefing in Tallaght Garda Station the next morning, a key line of inquiry quickly emerged. The grieving husband had reported to gardaí a litany of anonymous threatening phone calls and graffiti over the previous months. Pat Treacy, a now retired detective sergeant, was the "bookman" who analysed the statements and allocated "jobs". He recalled: "The thinking was that this poor man had lost his wife and child, and he was being threatened. And here was a fire after taking place. It was imperative that we get his side of the story."
McCann came in for an interview the next day: "He went through the gamut of emotion from hyperventilating to being in the throes of despair and sorrow and what have you, to maybe composing himself remarkably well during certain aspects of the statements… But different people portray grief in different ways," said Treacy.
McCann's story quickly unravelled.
McCann claimed his marriage was good. Esther's family told detectives otherwise. He behaved suspiciously, casually approaching but conspicuously "pumping" them for information. The threats did not stack up, but he persisted in reporting them. Pat Treacy recalls how McCann reported a threatening Mass card arriving through the letterbox of the neighbour's house where he had been staying since the fire. It was signed by a Reverend Burn. "I wrote it down as Byrne. But he corrected me and said it was spelled Burn," said Treacy.
Two months before the fire, four gas leaks in as many weeks were reported at the property. Weeks before the blaze, Esther awoke to find her electric blanket on fire.
Added to these peculiar happenings was McCann's secret. Within days of the fire, the Adoption Board reported their dealings with McCann to senior gardaí in great secrecy.
Colm Featherstone can still recall the day he heard the news, at a case conference in Tallaght Garda Station shortly before McCann's arrest in November 1992.
"I couldn't believe it. Whatever evidence we had beforehand - and we had a lot of circumstantial evidence - we had nothing as pointed as this revelation that gave us a clear motive for the murder: he had been given an ultimatum by the Adoption Board to disclose the birth of the child to his wife," he said. "Any doubts I had at that point were dispelled."
Featherstone and a colleague were among a relay of detectives assigned to interview McCann. "It was his first day in custody and he was alert. He was very studied. He thought about the questions. He didn't answer immediately. At times he would stare at you. He was measured, with a certain level of calm about being interviewed. There might have been the odd raised voice. Our job was to get him to admit it, but he wasn't admitting it," he said.
By day two, he signed a statement to gardaí and on his release, admitted himself to a psychiatric hospital. When Pat Treacy accompanied by Detective Inspector Tony Sourke went to arrest and charge him with double murders, he was living in a mobile home in Tramore with a woman whom he met in the hospital.
Treacy recalled how in the back of the squad car, a "crestfallen" McCann revealed he was about to leave the country. "He intimated to us that he intended to go to Canada the following week. And there was no extradition then between Ireland and Canada," said Treacy.
Gardaí believed that McCann set the fire using a blow torch, a gas canister and an accelerant. He fled and then returned to the scene a short time later, feigning shock and distress.
Featherstone and Treacy said gardaí investigated McCann for double murder. His paedophile swimming cronies, Gibney and O'Rourke, never featured in their inquiries, although each was being separately investigated at that time for child abuse. Despite his fathering a child with a young swimmer, no complaint of abuse was ever made against McCann.
Following an inquiry into abuse in swimming in 1998, it emerged that McCann had covered for Gibney. A swimmer and an official the swimmer confided in each reported Gibney to McCann. McCann did nothing, and told the official he hoped it wouldn't break on his watch.
Marian Leonard told the same inquiry that McCann used to walk freely through girls' changing rooms at Terenure Swim Club. "There were teenage girls there, young teenagers going through various stages of puberty, and Frank walked through the girls' changing rooms. And I said to him 'you can't be doing this. You're embarrassing young girls'. He said: 'I am the only honorary man allowed to walk through here.'"
