Beneath Cannock's Clock: The Last Man Hanged in Ireland by Professor Dermot Walsh
She struggled. She tried to cry out. Manning stuffed a sod of earth into her mouth. But her cries were heard. A local professional man and his wife were out walking and noticing the forms on the grass initially thought it was a courting couple. The wife became concerned about the noise and thought that somebody was in distress. They decided to return to their nearby home, take their car and drive it down to the scene so that they could use the car lights to investigate their fears. When the lights focused on the place where they had seen the figures, a man jumped up and ran away. Catherine Cooper was dead, from suffocation.Michael Manning was a newly married young man of 25 and a cart man of Limerick. On that Wednesday in November 1953 his life took a series of turns that would lead to the brutal death of a 65 year old nurse and his death by hanging in early 1954.In this new book exploring the murder and the events that led to it, Dermot Walsh brings to light new information from the original Garda file and interviews with the original investigation team. Beneath the single eye of Cannock's Clock, fate and circumstance combined to ill effect.