18. The Murder of Mary McCarthy and the framing of Harry Gleeson
Mary McCarthy, also known as Moll McCarthy, and also known as Mary Carthy, was the mother of seven children, fathered by at least six different men, who lived in a rundown cottage near a farm owned by John Ceasar. Moll survived by providing sexual services in exchange for what she needed, and as her property had no well, she drew water from the Ceasar farm. One worker on the farm was Harry Gleeson, Ceasar’s nephew, and it was he who reported discovering the dead body of Moll McCarthy in one of his uncle’s fields. She had been shot twice in the face. Gleeson discovered the body on November 21, 1940, by the end of the month he was arrested for the crime of murder.
The authorities claimed that Harry had fathered one of Moll’s children, recently deceased, and killed its mother to avoid being branded as associating with an immoral woman. Gleeson denied both the paternity and the murder but was convicted on February 27, 1941, and sentenced to death. He was executed in April. By the beginning of the 21st century, enough evidence of police misconduct had been unearthed that the case was widely questioned, and in 2015 Gleeson was officially pardoned of the crime, which was considered to have been based on “unconvincing circumstantial evidence”. Numerous theories about who killed Moll McCarthy, and why, have surfaced, but none has been determined to be certain.