Evil double killer Frank McCann is set for temporary release from prison over Christmas.
The former swimming coach – jailed for life for the murders of his wife and 18-month-old foster daughter – will be let out of Mountjoy over the festive season.
Twisted publican McCann, 61, torched the family home in Rathfarnham, Dublin and left his wife Esther and baby Jessica to die in a blaze. Instead of admitting his heinous crime he then tried to throw gardai off the scent with a cock and bull story about a customer with a grudge.
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McCann is already released several days a week unsupervised for a work placement and has applied to the parole board for temporary release. His victims’ family are outraged and believe he should be locked up for the rest of his natural life because he still poses a danger.
Esther’s sister Marian Leonard told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “Where and who he would be going to, it certainly won’t be his family. I don’t think he should ever be freed. I don’t think we will be safe, or who else would be unsafe.
“We don’t know who’s going to be at the other end of his evil. Will it be our family? Will it be his own family? Or just some random person who crosses him?”
McCann made several attempts on Esther’s life before setting the house on fire – to stop her finding out he’d fathered a child to a teen with special needs.
He returned from work, kissed Jessica and placed her back in her cot before starting the blaze with a gas cylinder and driving away, leaving them both to die.
Then he came back to the house later and played the part of the anguished father desperately trying to rescue his family. Marian said: “In England child murderers aren’t allowed out. I’m not discounting Esther out of it but he didn’t just murder her, he also murdered a baby.
“I don’t think he’s changed and I don’t think he will ever be capable of changing. There was a time during the summer when I thought I saw him. I was stuck to the spot and couldn’t move. Thankfully it wasn’t him.
“That was my reaction on even thinking it was McCann so I don’t know how any of us would react if any of us actually did see him.” McCann will not be told whether he has been granted temporary release until a day or two beforehand.
A source said: “There is a high likelihood he will get out as he has proven he can be trusted out and about on his own. He could get one overnight out or anything up to six nights.
“If he gets temporary release this Christmas it will be the first time he will be allowed to stay outside overnight.”
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