ESTHER McCANN was a loving and lovable woman who appears to have been warmly appreciated by those who knew her. Cheerful, gregarious and friendly, she was a person who above all else wanted a child, a home and a marriage.
Her love of children, in particular, is obvious from a diary she kept for Jessica from the date of the baby's birth. In an introduction made poignant by subsequent events, she describes her intention to record the important moments in Jessica's early life.
Her joy in the baby girl is evident in every line, until a sadder note emerges in the later entries. This relates mainly to the onset of cancer which was to claim the life of her much loved nephew, James. But other events were by then overshadowing her happiness, whether she realised it or not. The diary ends in July 1992, a little over a month before the fatal fire.
Aged 36 when she died, Esther had already survived personal tragedy. In 1979, when she was 23, she was in love with a young man who died in a motorbike crash. Days after the accident she found she was pregnant by him. Her family rallied around her mother helping her to buy a house in Dublin. But the baby died in a cot death.
A lively and spirited woman she was generous with her time and energy. She gave free word processing classes to local women. She was instrumental insetting LIP the Conor Farrelly Trust Fund, to send a friend's child with cerebral palsy to the Peto Institute. She was an important contributor to the effort which raised £20,000.
She had an independent mind but, according to one of the young women who took computer classes with her, was almost in awe of Frank. She was funny about him. She didn't speak that much of him but, when she did, it was always kind of important. She lived for Jessica. But anything he said went, even about Jessica." The same woman remembered with a laugh that she and Esther would smoke in the back garden because Frank banned smoking in the house.
A native of Tramore, Co Waterford, Esther was the youngest child of Mrs Brigid O'Brien and her late husband, Thomas who was an employee of CIE. She moved to Dublin in 1973, studying psychology in UCD. But 5he didn't finish the course and instead turned her attention to word processing and computers.
From 1976 until 1979 she worked as a managers with Scholl foot ware and for the next three years was involved in training with Nexus office system's. She joined the staff of the Shelbourne Hotel as banqueting co-ordinator and office manager in 1984 and two years later became a secretary/executive with accountants O'Hare, Barry & Associates.
When that company split, she went to work as personal assistant to one of the partners, Mr Bernard Somers full time until 1989 and later on a part time basis.
Esther O'Brien was introduced to her future husband by a mutual acquaintance in the Shelbourne Hotel in January 1986. Esther had decided against moving to Australia with her then boyfriend and McCann quickly "moved in". The introduction was made at his request and they were married on May 22nd, 1987 having jointly purchased 39 Butterfield Avenue.
In his first statement to gardai, McCann said that his wife was infertile. According to her family, however, her medical problems arose from an under active thyroid. They believe the suggestion of infertility disguised the coldness which existed in the marriage from early on and which was the real reason she had not conceived.
She quit full time employment in 1989 to "sort out" the thyroid problem, which was resolved after 12 months of medication.
Mrs McCann had a close relationship with Jeannette, Jessica's natural mother. The baby was born on Sunday, March 10th, 1991, and Mrs McCann was in the hospital at the time. With the blessing of the natural mother, she regarded Jessica as her own daughter and, in the words of her sister, Marian Leonard, they just lit up in each other's company.
Her quick wit almost certainly saved her and Jessica an even earlier death. On July 28th, 1992, she woke up with a blinding headache and smelled gas. Had she lit a cigarette, or turned on a lightswitch, there would have been a massive explosion. She left the house without doing either and pushed the car down the driveway before telephoning her husband, who was at the pub.
A friend who visited Esther the night before this incident was later to recall that she was very "dopey" going to bed and uncharacteristically quiet. Neither this nor a later and equally sinister development, in which she woke up to find an electric blanket which hadn't been on the bed the night before on fire, have alerted her that her.
But her attention was distracted by the tragedy enveloping her sister's family. As Marian explains. "You have to understand, Frank was so sure of himself in every way, she would always doubt herself. There was alway's some other way of explaining things.