Double killer Frank McCann has been left “fuming” and refusing to leave his prison cell following days of inmates quizzing him over his crimes.
It comes after his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Shorten, begged the Minister for Justice Helen McEntee to keep him in jail live on radio.
Ms Shorten told Joe Duffy on RTE Radio One she believes he could commit another crime, while his brother Bernard McCann also said he was dangerous.
Following their outbursts, McCann has been the centre of attention at Dublin’s Arbour Hill Prison – which he “absolutely hates”.
A source told the Irish Sunday Mirror that McCann has been “in awful form” following the revelations. He added: “He wasn’t at all happy this week with all the attention his case has been getting on the radio and in the papers.
“He doesn’t like being the centre of attention.
“He normally works the grounds, cutting the grass and the likes but he hasn’t been engaging at all.
“He hasn’t left his cell in the last few days.
“The stuff on the radio has really hit him hard.
“The inmates have been listening all week to the Joe Duffy Show, which talked about his case two days in a row. They were then talking amongst themselves behind McCann’s back, and going up to him and asking him questions.
“McCann is also probably aware that the Parole Board take the thoughts of his victims’ family and his own on board when deciding on whether to grant him release.”
The former swimming coach, who had worked with the Irish Olympic team, set fire to his Rathfarnham home killing wife Esther and 18-month-old foster daughter Jessica.
He carried out the killings to stop Esther finding out he had fathered a child with a 17-year-old girl with special needs. McCann was undergoing a background check as he had made an
application to adopt Jessica, the daughter of his adopted sister.
McCann set a gas cylinder and blowtorch in the house on Butterfield Avenue when he went to work in a Blessington pub on September 4, 1992.
He arrived back to the house and acted the part of the anguished dad desperately trying to rescue his family.
The garda investigation found that it was the fourth time he had tried to murder his wife and child.
He first cut the brake lines of his wife’s car before causing an electric blanket in her bed to catch fire by stripping electric wires. On the third occasion he tried to spark a gas leak at their home.
McCann was charged in April 1993 and tried to kill himself during his first trial.
His second trial in 1996 resulted in McCann’s jailing for two concurrent life sentences for the murders.
