PDF

PDFprocessed with
processed with CutePDF
CutePDF evaluation
evaluation edition www.CutePDF.com
edition www.CutePDF.com
 John Mooney, 35, has reported on crime and
terrorism for newspapers and broadcasters for over
ten years. He is the crime correspondent with The
Sunday Times in Ireland.
He wrote and devised The Underworld, a four-part
documentary series broadcast on RTÉ television in
2003. He also produced Sabhair ach Salach, a series
profiling Ireland’s richest criminals for TG4 in 2006.
When Gangster was first released in 2001, it went
straight to number one in the bestseller charts.
His second book, Black Operations, The Secret War
Against the Real IRA (2003), co-written with Michael
O’Toole, is still considered the definitive account of
the Real IRA and the 1998 Omagh bombing.
Rough Justice: Memoirs of a Gangster (2004), which
he wrote for the Dublin criminal Maurice ‘Bo Bo’
Ward, was also a bestseller.
The Torso in the Canal (2007), his acclaimed book
on the killing and dismemberment of an African
immigrant by two sisters, reached number one in the
bestseller charts.

PDF processed with CutePDF evaluation edition www.CutePDF.com

gangster
The Biography of
International Drug Trafficker
John Gilligan

John Mooney
Published in 2008 by Maverick House Publishers.
Maverick House, Office 19, Dunboyne Business Park, Dunboyne,
Co. Meath, Ireland.
Maverick House Asia, Level 43, United Centre, 323 Silom Road, Bangrak,
Bangkok 10500, Thailand.

info@maverickhouse.com
http://www.maverickhouse.com

ISBN: 978-1-905379-49-1

Copyright for text © 2008 John Mooney.

Copyright for typesetting, editing, layout, design © Maverick House.

54321

The paper used in this book comes from wood pulp of managed forests.
For every tree felled, at least one tree is planted, thereby renewing
natural resources.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means without written permission from the publisher, except
by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a
review written for insertion in a newspaper, magazine or broadcast.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Much of this book is based on evidence presented to the
Special Criminal Court in the trials of Brian Meehan, Patrick
Holland and John Gilligan. Other evidence was taken from
the trial of Paul Ward, whose conviction for the murder of
Veronica Guerin was overturned by the Court of Criminal
Appeal. Information contained in some parts of the book
is also derived from evidence given before properly consti-
tuted courts in Britain.
 Contents

Prologue 9
Chapter 1: The Murder of Veronica Guerin 15
Chapter 2: Life Cycles of Violence 30
Chapter 3: The Wild West 42
Chapter 4: The Bonds 59
Chapter 5: Portlaoise 71
Chapter 6: A Whirlwind of Crime 86
Chapter 7: Easy Money 104
Chapter 8: Invisible Criminals 120
Chapter 9: Drugs, Guns & Money to Burn 140
Chapter 10: Fight Fire with Fire 158
Chapter 11: Pineapple 183
Chapter 12: A Time to Kill 205
Chapter 13: Public Enemy Number One 226
Chapter 14: Breaking the Code of Silence 247
Chapter 15: The Usual Suspects 278
Chapter 16: Fighting Back 301
Chapter 17: Retribution 327
Epilogue 361
Index 371
 Prologu e

August 1996

TERMINAL ONE, HEATHROW AIRPORT, LONDON

He smiled confidently, exchanging courtesies with

his fellow travellers as they filtered into the airport’s
arrivals lounge. Wearing a blue sports jacket, shirt,
pressed trousers and standing just over five feet tall,
he looked an unlikely criminal.
‘You must be the journalist. Pleased to meet you,’
he said in a flat Dublin accent, whilst shaking my
hand.
‘How did you know what I looked like?’
‘Oh, I just saw you there and you fitted the bill.
Come with me, I don’t like talking in public places.’
He pointed to a restaurant which overlooked the
airport lobby and signalled to follow.
‘This place is good. There’s only one way in
and out. Let’s get something to eat,’ he said, whilst

9
 Gangster

ushering me towards a table situated in a dimly lit

corner, not easily visible from the doorway.
The restaurant was full of businessmen from the
four corners of the globe, but Asians were the main
clientele, all dining on roast duck, the speciality of
the day. A waiter approached with two menus tucked
under his arm.
‘Would you like to order a drink while you wait,
sir?’
‘No, two hamburgers with large fries and 7-Up.
That okay with you, John?’ He eased back into his
chair.
‘Let me tell you this. Anyone can get anyone
killed if they have the money. You don’t have to be
a criminal. I could have ordered Guerin’s death but
I didn’t. I had no hand, act or part in it. That’s the
truth.’
His words sounded rehearsed, but were considered
and spoken with authority.
He leaned forward again, making a point of not
breaking eye contact. ‘I have been dragged into this
because I threatened her before she died. If I was
going to kill her I would hardly have advertised it by
threatening her. I mean, that’s not the way things are
done.’
He was interrupted in mid-speech by the sound of
my cellular phone ringing. The caller was a republican
contact who had helped arrange the meeting.
‘Is he with you now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you all right? Is he giving you any trouble?’
‘No, he has just arrived.’

10
 John Mooney

‘Put him on to me.’

‘It’s for you.’
He looked across the table with a blank expression
on his face, took the phone and held it cautiously to
his ear and listened attentively.
‘He wants to talk to you now,’ he said returning
the phone.
‘I’m going to ring you on the hour, every hour, to
make sure you’re okay.’
The line went dead.
‘You won’t have any problems with me; I’ve no
problem with you. Ask me what you like, I’ll answer
any question,’ he said confidently.
‘Did you threaten to kill, kidnap and rape her six-
year-old?’
‘Yes I did. But it isn’t the way you make it out. I
knew she didn’t fear for herself so I used a tactic,
which we used on screws [prison officers] who caused
us problems. If a screw’s house got turned over, he
would get sympathy from his neighbours. They would
say, “Look at the poor prison officer, he’s only doing his
job keeping criminals locked up.” So somebody, I don’t
remember who, came up with the idea that you worked
the next-door neighbour over, so nobody talked to the
screw or his family in case they were next. Instead they
blamed the attacks on the screws. It was only a tactic I
used to try to frighten her off, that’s all.’

Although I could not have imagined it at the

time, I was sitting with one of the most dangerous
criminals ever to emerge from the Irish underworld.

11
 Gangster

In the hours of conversation that followed, he spoke

about drug dealing, hijackings, gunrunning and
racketeering, his background and his separation
from his wife. Crime, he proclaimed with a degree of
smugness, had earned him close to IR£15 million.
But it was the public’s reaction to the cold-blooded
murder of a crime reporter on the streets of Dublin,
the Irish capital, six weeks earlier that preoccupied
him. He kept returning to the subject of the shooting,
saying he wasn’t responsible, that the media was
unfairly targeting him by labelling him chief suspect.
The assignment of blame and guilt was passed to
others.
‘I’m not as black as they portray me although I am
a criminal. This is hype by journalists. That’s all,’ he
proclaimed.
When the interview concluded hours later, I asked
if he had any objections to his photograph being
taken. He looked nervous.
‘Can you get one off another newspaper?’ he
asked.
‘No, it’s better that I take one now.’
After much persuasion, he agreed and I pointed
the camera in his direction. As I focused the lens, I
noticed he was staring at the ground.
‘Could you look directly at the camera?’
‘No, I’m fine like this,’ he said, looking
uncomfortable and agitated.
I took two photographs before he stood up and
said, ‘That’s enough.’
The camera annoyed him, and he found this
difficult to hide.

12
 John Mooney

‘You don’t like your picture being taken?’

‘No, it doesn’t bother me too much. Did you see
the pictures of me in the papers last week, the one
with me wearing the sunglasses?’ he enquired, smiling
once again.
‘Yes. Yes, I did.’
‘What did you think of them?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you think I looked good? Everyone said I
looked cool. Some of the fellas from home even rang.
They thought I looked cool, like a guy from the Mafia,
a real gangster.’

13
 Chapter 1

Th e M u rder o f Vero nic a G ue r in

‘We know who killed her—and he’s untouchable.’

HEADLINE FROM THE IRISH INDEPENDENT

The assassin held the .357 Magnum revolver with

both hands and fired five shots at point-blank range
through the side window of the car. He shot once, then
twice, before discharging another three shots into his
victim. The sound of the gunfire reverberated in the
hearts of those watching the nightmare unfold. The
victim had seen her killer stride towards her car, but
had no time to escape. Overcome by fear, she raised
her right arm to shield herself from the bullets, which
ripped through her arms, torso and upper body, killing
her within a matter of seconds. It was 12.54 p.m. on
Wednesday, 26 June 1996.
The victim was Veronica Guerin, a crime reporter
for the Sunday Independent newspaper. She was 37
years of age, a wife and mother. The scene of her
slaying was the traffic intersection which adjoins the

15
 Gangster

Boot Road to the Naas Road in Clondalkin, a suburb

that lies south-west of Dublin city. The main road is
known as the N7.
She was travelling to her office in the city centre
from the town of Naas in County Kildare, where she
had appeared earlier in court on a minor speeding
charge. A red light temporarily halted her journey.
When she stopped, a powerful motorcycle carrying
two men pulled up alongside her red Opel Calibra
sports car. The rider and the pillion passenger both
wore dark clothes and full-size helmets, which
concealed their identities. Neither she nor the other
drivers stopped in the traffic took much notice of them.
That was until the pillion passenger dismounted.
It wasn’t until the last moment that she noticed
her killer. Guerin was forever on the phone and just
before her killer struck, she was leaving a message on
a friend’s answering machine. The call was to say she
had not been banned from driving, and the answering
machine recorded her last words. ‘I did very well.
Aah, fined a maximum of IR£150 . . .’
Her voice was interrupted in mid-sentence by the
sound of a crack, followed by the sound of a mobile
phone key being pressed, and then a second crack, the
sound of gunfire. Many people witnessed her death.
Michael Kirby was giving a driving lesson from the
passenger seat of a lorry parked in the traffic. ‘I heard
what sounded like a crack, followed by a few more. The
driver’s window was open. I looked out and saw what
was taking place. This guy was shooting somebody
in the car. I saw the gun. It was like something you
would see on TV,’ he remembered.

16