Is It Me? The Joseph Heffernan Story
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
The Joseph Heffernan Story. Last Man to be Hanged in Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin. Early 20th Century British Injustice in Ireland.
A century old Irish murder mystery is re-opened. Joseph Heffernan paid the ultimate price for the murder of Mary Walker in Mullingar, Ireland in 1909. Mary Walker was the innocent victim of a brutal murder. But was Joseph Heffernan also innocent of the crime?
On 4 January 1910, Joseph Heffernan was executed in Kilmainham Gaol for the murder of Mary Walker in Mullingar the previous year. It was a crime that shook the nation and growing up in the town, Jack Kiernan had often heard local people talk about it, even many years later. He was also aware of claims that the wrong person had been convicted of the crime: that Heffernan had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time and that an innocent man hanged as a result.
When the story re-surfaced in the local press, around the 100th anniversary, he decided to investigate the case himself – as much to satisfy his own curiosity as anything else. What he uncovered raised a lot more questions than answers.
When Jack Kiernan decided to look through the statements and court transcripts from the trial, he discovered a number of strange inconsistencies and anomalies that led him to believe that the verdict that was reached was flawed. In Is It Me? The Joseph Heffernan Story, the author unpicks the evidence that sent a man to his death, speculating on whether his conviction was the result of a sinister plot to disguise the identity of the real murderer. He carefully retraces the events preceding the tragic and brutal murder of Mary Walker, suggesting a shocking alternative scenario.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jack Kiernan is an author, historian, retired Irish Army Corporal Fitter Technician and former National Welfare Officer with PDFORRA (the army representative association). He lives and works in Mullingar, the Irish midlands town where he was also born and raised. He has a particular interest in cold cases, unsolved murders and alleged miscarriages of justice. He is also active on the front of community development and securing inward investment for the area where he lives.
Other books by Jack Kiernan include 'Why Did They Lie? The Irish Civil War, the Truth, Where and When it Began' (2018) and 'I Declare Before My God: The Brian and James Seery Story' (2019), both of which are available in print and e-book editions.
He has also written biographies of Mullingar boxers, Chris Cole and Eddie "The Killer" Byrne.