Assassination
On Sunday, 10 July 1927, O'Higgins was assassinated at the age of 35 on the Booterstown Avenue side of Cross Avenue while on his way to Mass at the Church of the Assumption by three anti-Treaty members of the IRA, Timothy Coughlin, Bill Gannon and Archie Doyle, in revenge for his part in the executions of IRA men during the civil war. None of the three assassins was ever apprehended or charged, but Coughlin was killed in 1928 by a police informer in Dublin. The other two benefited from the amnesty to IRA members issued by Éamon de Valera upon his assumption of power in 1932. Doyle remained a prominent IRA militant and took part in various acts in the early 1940s. He lived to an old age (d.1987) and continued to take pride in having killed O'Higgins. Gannon (d.1965) joined the Communist Party of Ireland and had a central role in organising Irish volunteers for the Spanish Civil War, and in party publications his part in assassinating O'Higgins is downplayed.
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