Bloody ironies would stack one upon the other. Barrett was a member of the same IRA brigade as Hales during the Anglo-Irish War and both were childhood friends. Rory had been best man at O'Higgins' wedding a year earlier; The rest of Sean Hales’s family had remained staunchly anti-Treaty, and publicly denounced the executions. In reprisal for O'Higgins' role in the executions, the Anti-Treaty IRA killed his father and burned his family home in Stradbally, County Laois. O'Higgins himself would die by an assassin's hand on 10 July 1927 (See also Executions during the Irish Civil War).