Bronco’s days as the head of the crime family were coming to an end. The brothers formed sub-groups within the overall gang structure, with Larry and Shamie on one side and Christy and Henry on the other. Joe Roe, who had been ferociously loyal to his mentor Christy, also cut his ties. Their relationship had soured after they’d planned an armed robbery at a post office in Pearse Street while Bronco was on the run in the spring of 1978. Roe, who was responsible for organizing transport for the gang’s operations, claimed that Bronco had ‘bottled’ it at the last minute and he was left to do the job with others. Despite his grievance, Roe still showed his ‘respect’ for the self-styled Godfather and gave him a share of the takings. After that he would only work on jobs with Henry.
It was also the beginning of the end of the Dunne ‘Academy’. It fell apart when the family discovered a new, much more lucrative business, with a lot less risk – the Dunnes were about to start dabbling in the drug trade.
By the latter half of the 1970s there was an increasing demand for drugs in Ireland. The evidence was there, but no one in authority appeared to be bothered about dealing with it. Between 1977 and 1979 there were a total of 581 burglaries in pharmacy wholesalers and drug manufacturers in the Irish Republic. In 1976 alone there were 141 such robberies, of which 115 had taken place in Dublin.
On the last weekend of July 1978, Christy, Henry, Shamie and Joe Roe broke into the Antigen pharmaceutical factory in Roscrea, County Tipperary, and stole £300,000 worth of the powerful painkiller Palfium. Henry was the only one who realized the true value of the little pills on the black market. He had developed an addiction problem while being treated for serious burns (see Chapter 5). Henry’s habit had taught him the value of the drugs and he bought the haul from his accomplices. At the time a Palfium tablet was worth £3 on the streets and Henry turned a tidy profit from the deal. It was to be the turning point for the Dunnes.
By the latter half of the 1970s, cannabis had been established as the drug of choice for a young generation. Unlike LSD, people who smoked dope didn’t tend to jump off buildings in the hope of flying. Cannabis or hashish was considered a harmless, soft drug and people from all walks of life enjoyed a few joints. Criminals in the UK had first realized the potential of hashish in the 1960s when it was smuggled into prisons. Inmates doing long stretches found that enjoying a quiet joint was preferable to the dubious attractions of knocking back ‘hooch’ fermented in piss-pots. The prison authorities tolerated it because it kept the lags calm. English villains had also been introduced to the charms – and potential – of hash while on holidays or on the run in the south of Spain and Morocco. Throughout the 1960s they had gradually decommissioned their sawn-off shotguns and balaclavas for an easier, and much more profitable, way of life. It wasn’t long before the UK drug lords showed their Irish contemporaries the ropes. Among the first to sign up were Eamon Saurin and Pat O’Sullivan, two close associates of the Dunnes.
Saurin had been running with a number of English crime gangs until pensioner Kenneth Michael Adams was murdered in November 1972. When police in Birmingham nominated Saurin as their prime suspect, he returned to Dublin to avoid arrest. Saurin loved his dope-smoking so much that he supplemented his income from armed crime by selling hash. He bought it from his contacts in the UK and Amsterdam. He is one of the first criminals credited with smuggling commercial shipments of cannabis and heroin from Amsterdam into Ireland in the late 1970s. He soon began supplying hash, and later heroin, to the Dunne brothers.
In between pulling strokes with his old pal Shamie Dunne, cockney Patrick O’Sullivan was also a significant drug-trafficker, operating between Europe and the US. O’Sullivan had invested some of his profits in US businesses, including a carpet factory in California, but he also regularly found himself doing heists to get cash to fund his investment in drug deals. He often brought a few kilos of heroin back from the US to sell in London. He tried to convince the Dunnes that heroin was the future but, like most villains, they were reluctant to get into ‘smack’ because it was still an unknown quantity. Cannabis, however, had a ready and expanding market so the Dunnes decided to focus on that.
In the summer of 1978, Christy and Shamie Dunne took delivery of 13 kilos of hash from a Turkish crime gang based in London. The gang was introduced to the Dunnes by an enigmatic Irish businessman known by the pseudonym ‘the Prince’. He acted as a broker for international drug deals and fraud rackets. Originally from County Clare, the Prince first got involved with the Dunnes when he fenced stolen jewels, bank bonds and travellers cheques for them. He spent several years in the UK before returning to Ireland. He was a sophisticated, polished global player who easily juggled his business interests, on both sides of the law. The Prince’s list of international contacts included the American and Sicilian Mafias, and drug producers in the Middle East.
To the outside world he was a successful businessman, who lived with his wife and family in a luxurious mansion in Wicklow and drove a top-of-the-range BMW. But the truth is that the Prince is one of the most important faceless players who has lurked in the shadows of organized crime for the past forty years. The underworld would not operate as efficiently if it wasn’t for clean-cut crooks like him. The Prince has been linked to the money-laundering activities of several crime syndicates, at home and abroad. Despite the fact that he has featured in several international criminal investigations, the Prince has never been caught. He has only one minor conviction, for possession of hashish. His legitimate business interests today include investments in a huge hotel and apartment complex on the Continent. The Dunnes’ associate is still classified as a major international crime figure by law enforcement agencies on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Prince was one of the sources for the seminal 1985 book Smack, which was the first book to expose Ireland’s developing crime crisis. Co-author Padraig Yeates summed up the significance of the partnership between the Dunnes and the Prince: ‘He was a very accomplished criminal who cut his teeth in England. He met the Dunnes and realised there was a marriage of convenience here. He basically introduced them to contacts in the Middle East and they began smuggling heroin and cannabis into Ireland. The Dunnes quickly realised that this was much safer and more profitable than trying to rob banks.’
The London-based Turks wanted to set up a cannabis-smuggling route between Cyprus and the rest of Europe, using Ireland as a transit point. The Prince invited them to Ireland to meet what he told them was the biggest Irish crime family. The Turks were also introduced to the family by a relation of Saor Eire man Liam Walsh, Christy’s former republican ally whose funeral he’d organized eight years earlier. The Dunnes came highly recommended and the Turks were anxious to meet them in person. A group of four Turks, including the leader of the gang, arrived in Dublin in a Rolls-Royce – with the 13 kilos of hash. The car had been specially adapted to carry drug shipments and the trip to Dublin was a trial run. Shamie and Christy agreed to buy the drugs for £15,000.
Despite their hefty reputations, Shamie and Christy had problems getting the money together to pay for the haul – it would be a recurring problem for the brothers. They paid some of the money in cash and the rest in stolen travellers’ cheques. The Dunnes also provided an Irish passport for the leader of the Turkish delegation. Christy Dunne and the Prince ran a successful sideline providing genuine Irish passports to international crime gangs. Ireland’s policy of neutrality has ensured that Irish passports have traditionally been popular, not only with criminals but with international spy rings, hit squads and arms-dealers. Passports from a batch of 100 which had been stolen from the printers in Artane for Bronco and the Prince later turned up in drug busts in New York, Karachi and Amsterdam. The Turks accepted the mixed pay off and didn’t get a chance to suss that their new friends in Dublin were not exactly the Mafia as, a short time later, the gang were arrested on drug-smuggling charges in the UK and ended up behind bars.
The Prince also introduced Shamie Dunne to contacts in North Africa s
o that he could buy large quantities of Moroccan hash direct from the producers. A number of shipments were successfully transported into Ireland. The family then sold the hash wholesale to the increasing number of cannabis dealers who had sprung up to supply the expanding market. The Moroccan connection was cut off when the Dunnes inevitably fell behind in their payments. There was a serious shortage of the drug in Dublin as they tried to source new contacts. While they were still having problems finding a new hash supplier, a flood of high-quality, cheap heroin suddenly hit the international market. The Dunne brothers were about to move into heroin.
Between 1979 and 1980 two world events had a dramatic effect on organized crime in Ireland. In Iran, the pro-Western Shah was overthrown by fundamentalist Muslims, led by the Ayatollah Khomeini. The country’s aristocracy and business elite converted their mountains of gold and diamonds into heroin, which was much easier to transport. When they fled to the West they sold the drugs for dollars and various European currencies. Around the same time, the Russians invaded Afghanistan to prop up the Communist administration which was under threat of being overthrown by rebel forces. By the late 1970s the tribal areas of the country – and neighbouring Pakistan – had replaced the Golden Triangle of South-east Asia as the world’s largest heroin producer. It was in these areas that resistance against the Soviets was strongest. The tribesmen, who were traditional opium poppy farmers, dramatically increased their production of heroin. It was sold on the world market and with the proceeds they bought weapons for their war with the Russians.
As a result of these two events, there was a sudden glut of heroin in the Western markets and organized crime began to invest in the wholesale drug trade. Heroin presented a huge opportunity for making money, as supply created a rapid and escalating demand. The international crime syndicates began to expand their markets. As they did so, drug treatment clinics throughout Europe and the US recorded a dramatic increase in the number of people with heroin addictions. The Prince was one of the brokers entrusted with finding new markets and he contacted the Dunnes. Author Padraig Yeates described the significance of their partnership: ‘When The Prince met the Dunnes the rules changed, drugs were suddenly part of the life of Dublin and they have been ever since.’
In 1979, there was an increasing demand for synthetic opiates in Ireland – and a ready-made market for heroin. As it was still not widely available, drug addicts were getting their hits elsewhere with drugs stolen from pharmacies and factories. Larry and Shamie, who were occasional users of heroin and cocaine, decided to set up separate heroin-dealing operations and began testing the market. A dealer could treble, and even quadruple, his original profit in a short period. It made the proceeds of a good armed heist look paltry by comparison. Eamon Saurin and Pat O’Sullivan supplied the first shipments of heroin, which arrived in Dublin that autumn.
One by one the brothers got involved in the deadly new trade, while Christy stayed away from it. Larry and Shamie supplied other members of the family, who, in turn, ran their own local patches. They already had a network of contacts and ‘graduates’ from their crime academy. Henry wasn’t the only family member with a drug problem either. Mickey, Robert, Gerard and their wives, as well as their sister Collette, all ended up as addicts.
Shamie and Larry first targeted the rundown, impoverished inner-city Corporation flat complexes of Dolphin House, Fatima Mansions and St Theresa’s Gardens, on the south-side of the city. The bleak, barrack-style complexes were to be used as the testing ground for the Dunnes’ market research. At first the heroin was harder to sell than hash but Larry had a cunning plan to deal with that. He instructed his pushers to give out free samples in the area, particularly to young teenagers and adults who would try anything for kicks. They even gave the heroin to children in local inner-city schools. At first people smoked or ‘popped’ it. Then they progressed to injecting it into their veins with syringes.
Larry’s marketing strategy was a success and demand soon started to rise. Within weeks, heroin addiction had spread like an inferno across the south inner-city. The flat complexes were turned into squalid shooting galleries for the army of emerging drug addicts. Heroin brought chaos to an already hopeless situation. Over a year later it hit the north side of the River Liffey, destroying areas of Sean McDermott Street, Sheriff Street and Liberty House. Larry Dunne employed the same successful marketing template as before. In a matter of weeks, the area was in the grip of a monstrous heroin plague.
Although Shamie had the largest operation, it was Larry who emerged as the main player in the new family business. He was one of the last members of the clan to get involved in armed robberies and the drug trade brought out his real criminal talents. Unlike his other brothers, Larry kept his head down and took a long-term view.
The Dunnes were forced to find alternative suppliers when Patrick O’Sullivan was jailed for cocaine dealing in Los Angeles and Eamon Saurin ended up in prison. The drug-dealing fugitive was finally arrested on 16 July 1981, in a flat at Raglan Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin, for the Christy McAuley murder he’d been charged with in 1978. The trial went ahead on 10 December, but the chief prosecution witness, Clicky Maguire, refused to give evidence. ‘I am the person who has been running from people on both sides of this situation,’ he told the judge. Maguire was jailed for contempt for a month and Saurin’s trial was rescheduled for June 1982. This time Maguire didn’t turn up and the State was forced to enter a nolle prosequi. Saurin was promptly extradited back to England where he was jailed for life for the Kenneth Adams murder.
While Shamie scoured the markets looking for cheaper deals from new suppliers, Larry decided to pay over the odds to an American mob for continuity of supply. The man at the head of the well-organized drugs network was involved in moving heroin from Pakistan to the US via Copenhagen. He ran an international operation from leafy South Dublin, after he’d quietly moved to Ireland to escape the attentions of police forces all over Europe.
The Dunnes’ heroin was brought in by couriers from Amsterdam, Paris, Malaga and London, usually through Irish airports where there were few checks. The drug was brought to safe houses where it was diluted or cut with a variety of bulking agents, including talcum powder, glucose, milk powder, chalk, Bisto and curry powder. It was then repacked and sold to mid-level dealers, who in turn sold it down the chain. On its way through the supply chain it was diluted down several times more to maximize profit. By the time it hit the streets it was sold in £10 and £20 deals to pushers and addicts, with an average purity of around 10 per cent.
When Larry Dunne’s drug operation was at full tilt, it was estimated that he was making an average of £12,000 per week, or €60,000 in today’s values. By then Christy Dunne was no longer the pivotal player in the family business – and the Dunne ‘Academy’ was no more. But Bronco did continue to deal in the hash trade and organize bank robberies with former ‘students’.
One observer eloquently described the Dunnes’ new business enterprise: ‘The Dunnes did for smack what Henry Ford did for the motor car: made it available to the working man and woman, even the kids on the dole, even the kids at school.’
The heroin plague was here to stay.
5. The General
If the Dunne ‘Academy’ had kept records of their brightest students, the one whose name would have been at the top of the ‘Roll of Honour’ was a strange, complex and menacing character named Martin Cahill. Of all their alumni, he would go on to become the most legendary criminal mastermind in the history of the Irish underworld. He became the ultimate anti-hero, whose ‘talent’ for organizing major robberies led his underworld associates to nickname him ‘the General’. With his gang he was responsible for some of the most brutal and outrageous crimes ever seen in Ireland. His name was synonymous with violence, fear and intimidation.
No criminal over the past forty years has had such a formidable reputation in the eyes of the Irish public as the General. Cahill’s crimes and extraordinary antics, as he played what he c
alled the ‘game’, made him a household name. His willingness to drop his trousers and show off his Mickey Mouse® underwear, while at the same time hiding his face behind sinister balaclavas, made him the subject of intense curiosity. Everyone wanted to see the face of the underworld’s hooded bogeyman. Psychologists would describe him as an anarchist, suffering from acute paranoia, with multiple personalities. In fact there was enough material in Cahill for a PhD on the criminal mind – and for a book and no fewer than three movies. By comparison, Christy Dunne only ever got 15 minutes of fame.
But unlike his one-time mentor, Cahill never set out to court the limelight, it was just that his ‘strokes’ and acts of violence made it impossible for him to avoid it. Over two decades, he organized the theft of art, jewels and cash, worth well in excess of €60 million. His meticulously planned robberies included one of the biggest art heists in the world. Cahill preserved his position as an untouchable gang boss by instilling fear in other criminals. When people got out of line they were punished by being shot, beaten or, in one case, nailed to the floor. But when it came to his choice of victim he was egalitarian – they came from both sides of gangland’s razor-wire fence. Unlike any other criminal, the General took his war to the State and especially the Gardaí, for whom he harboured a pathological hatred that became more and more irrational over time. While other villains did everything to avoid the cops, Cahill spared no effort trying to humiliate them. He equipped his extensive arsenal of firearms by robbing the Garda depot where confiscated weapons were stored, and he stole the country’s most sensitive crime files from the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. Getting one over on the police was sometimes the sole motivation for his more mischievous strokes.
Badfellas Page 9
