Dublin double killer Frank McCann’s LinkedIn profile page taken down

In the CV, the former swimming coach, who killed his wife Esther and their 18-month-old foster daughter Jessica when he set fire to their home on Butterfield Avenue in Rathfarnham in 1992, described himself as an “enthusiastic achiever” and “problem solver”.

The 62-year-old, who appeared to be pitching himself to potential employers, also said he was “an analytical thinker with good troubleshooting ability, excellent interpersonal and communication skills, good telephone manner and confident and engaging personality”.

It did not mention that he is serving a life sentence for double murder and has shown no remorse for his actions.

He also failed to reveal that the reason he murdered his family was to hide the secret that he had fathered a child with a teenage swimming student who had special needs.

McCann is currently on temporary release and up for parole, and in recent years has been allowed to engage in computer training outside of the prison before returning back to his cell in Mountjoy.

More recently he has been attending a course in the south of the city, leaving Mountjoy early in the morning and returning in the evening.

The CV listed the qualifications he apparently gained through the Open University while behind bars and also reveals McCann is “currently providing Tier 1 IT Help Desk Support part-time, on-site and remotely, to end-users for all desktop, hardware and software issues”.

“I am eager to put my existing skillset to use and to continue to enhance my technological abilities,” it added.

“I am excited about continuing to grow my skills and experience with a great employer. I relish a challenge and find that nothing satisfies me more than putting my skills to good use and solving problems. That also comes in handy with one of my hobbies in designing, baking and decorating cakes. Networking also comes in useful too!” it also said.

Esther McCann’s sister Marian Leonard expressed shock at the online CV page before it was taken down.

“Does this mean Frank McCann can advertise himself to potential employers without revealing any information on where’s he’s been for the last 30 years? Could he use this page to search for information about people he sees as having wronged him,” Ms Leonard asked.

“If I was hiring someone to work on a computer system, I would like to know who they were, and I’d certainly want to know if they had a criminal record. It sounds like there’s a major omission in his CV – he’s a murderer,” she added.

The Irish Prison Service would not comment on individual prisoner cases, but said anyone granted temporary release, for any purpose, from prison is subject to certain conditions that are tailored to individual prisoners.

On enquiring about the LinkedIn page, Ms Leonard was told the online CV was developed as part of McCann’s course and has since been deleted.

Meanwhile, Esther’s family has said they were shocked to learn that McCann was spotted in a Dublin city shopping centre last Saturday week.

Ms Leonard said she had previously been told by prison authorities that McCann would be out on weekdays only.

When Ms Leonard queried this, she was told McCann had been using the Ilac Centre library to access resources not available to him in prison.

McCann burned down their Rathfarnham home after details about the child he fathered with a teenage swimming student with special needs surfaced.

He and Esther had been in the process of adopting Jessica, when the mother of the teenager who had a child by McCann alerted the adoption authorities out of concern he was not fit to be a father.

McCann knew that the fact he was the father of this child was going to be brought up at a meeting with the adoption authorities and set about trying to kill Esther and Jessica so that Esther would never learn of his secret past.

Days before the meeting with the adoption authorities, McCann set fire to the house, drove to his Blessington pub, then acted like the grieving husband and father when he raced home on being alerted to the blaze.

But gardaí quickly became suspicious when forensic evidence showed that the blaze was started deliberately and the truth about Frank McCann and the secret child he had fathered became known.

He was convicted of the double murder and has been in prison since, but in recent years he has been moved from Arbour Hill prison to the Progression Unit in Mountjoy.