A month later, on 4 January 1984, Christy’s parents, Ellen and Bronco Senior, appeared on a Channel Four programme where they were interviewed about their family’s involvement in the drugs crisis. Ellen cried when she talked about her boys. ‘My sons were all gentlemen, beautiful men, beautiful manners, beautiful bodies. I never knew they were on drugs. I had to get work and I never had it easy with my husband either, son,’ she said. ‘I could never lay down and have my children in comfort. I lay down with black eyes. Now that’s the truth, so don’t talk to me about drugs, son.’
The most striking picture used to illustrate the newspaper coverage of Larry Dunne’s flight from justice was a photo of his magnificent mansion in the Dublin Mountains. In August 1982, Larry had demonstrated his arrogance – and wealth – when he paid £100,000 (€350,000 today) up front for ‘Gorse Rock’ in Sandyford, County Dublin. It was there that the Today Tonight crew tried to interview Lilly. They used shots of the detached house as the backdrop to Lilly’s comments about her husband, the loyal, family man. The image of the house was greeted with astonishment by a public trying desperately to make ends meet, at a time when the economy was on its knees and unemployment was spiralling. It confirmed how organized crime had taken root in Ireland.
Gorse Rock was one of the most ostentatious displays of ill-gotten gains by a Godfather in the history of the underworld. Dunne was telling the world that crime certainly did pay. Pictures of the house were used over and over again by the media to illustrate what the narcotics trade was all about. In Larry’s mind, however, it was a monument to his successful journey from the gutter. He’d come a long way since he first made newspaper headlines, with his brother Henry in 1960. Larry was like a prince, looking down from his lofty perch on his cash-producing kingdom below. The streets of the crime-ravaged estates were his domain and its army of addicts, pushers and dealers, his loyal subjects.
Larry’s £100,000 cash purchase exposed the State’s complete lack of power to go after the proceeds of crime. This would be a recurring theme in the story of organized crime until action was finally taken in 1996. Dunne didn’t have to hide his drug money from anyone and lodged it in bank accounts held under his own name. But successive governments failed to come up with a solution. Around this time, Dunne was approached by a tax inspector one day, as he was going into court for a remand hearing relating to his outstanding drug charge. The taxman, who was accompanied by a Garda for his protection, asked Dunne how he could afford his mansion in the mountains, considering he was not in any kind of legitimate employment. ‘Where do you fucking think I got it?’ Dunne snapped. ‘I robbed it of course.’
Other members of the family had also been displaying their good fortune, but not on the same grand scale. Henry spared no expense when he completely renovated his home in Rutland Avenue, Crumlin. The house was extended while the front was given a mock-Tudor finish, which looked incongruous in a terrace of Corporation houses. Inside it had a spiral staircase, bar and sauna. Henry even bought his wife, Mary, a race horse called ‘Roebuck Lass’. Boyo also moved into a large house he acquired in nearby Weaver’s Square, Crumlin and had it extensively refurbished. Some of the marble used was specially imported from Rome. He even gave it a grand-sounding name, ‘Adam House’.
Gorse Rock had inspired Larry’s siblings to dream about leaving the rat race to find peace in the mountains. In a cocaine-induced haze, the Dunne brothers would often take in the spectacular view and fantasize about building their own little community in the Dublin Mountains, on a site that Henry Dunne had purchased. They would invite close friends and associates to build alongside them. Eventually they would create their own little self-sufficient community, walled in and cut off from the hostile world. It would have its own shops and even a school – and a plentiful supply of drugs. They would install elaborate defence systems to keep their tormentors – the cops – on the other side. This new nirvana they would call ‘Dunnesville’.
Apart from cornering the heroin business, the Dunnes were heavily involved in the importation of large quantities of hashish. They put together deals with other criminal gangs to invest in dope shipments.
Despite the shortcomings in the Gardaí’s ability to adapt to the drugs’ explosion, they were slowly starting to use a more modern approach against the Dunnes. The Drug Squad had managed to plant a number of paid informants within the organization. One of them was the Prince, who played on both sides of the fence – as long as the price was right. In 1982, the Gardaí paid him £25,000 for his invaluable assistance, but two years earlier he’d been involved in an operation that he didn’t intend sharing with his Garda handlers.
A month after Larry’s arrest in October 1980, Shamie had a set-back when a consignment of hashish worth £75,000 (over €380,000) was discovered in a lorry at Rosslare. Three associates were arrested and one of them was subsequently convicted for illegal importation. It was the second delivery of the drug from Patrick Quirke, an expat Irishman who was one of the biggest cannabis dealers in the world. Shamie had been introduced to Quirke as a member of the family who ran the Irish underworld. The following March, a truck containing one and a half tons of cannabis and £75,000 in cash was seized by police in Paris. It was the second load in a run from Holland into Ireland. When French police arrested the driver of the truck, they found a telephone number that linked the Dunnes to the Quirke syndicate in Amsterdam. At the same time Dutch police were looking for members of the group after an Amsterdam taxi driver was murdered when he stumbled upon members of the gang offloading almost two tons of cannabis.
The French and Dutch enquiries led back to Dublin. When the Drug Squad began to investigate they uncovered a huge international conspiracy, involving the Quirke organization and drug producers in Lebanon – and at the centre of it all were the Dunnes. They had hit the big time on the international drug-trafficking circuit. The man who helped broker the deal was the Prince. ‘Operation Angel’, the name given to what amounted to the biggest drug investigation in the history of the State, had a plot very similar to the one in the classic crime thriller The French Connection. A consignment of almost two tons of Lebanese hash – with a street value of just under £5 million – was to be shipped into Ireland by the Quirke organization in a deal with the Prince and the Dunnes. From there Larry was going to arrange its onward transportation to the UK. However, the plot thickened when the Prince brought two notorious members of the Mafia – one from Sicily and the other from the US – into the deal.
The plan was that the Dunnes and the Mafia would ‘steal’ the consignment from the Quirke group and ship it on to the UK. Unfortunately for them, the new Garda Drugs Intelligence Investigation Unit (DIIU) and the Drug Squad had rumbled that there was a conspiracy afoot. They began working with their colleagues in Europe to find out more. The Gardaí, however, had no knowledge of the involvement of the Mafia.
A large force of detectives was waiting on 9 September 1981, when the drugs arrived in Dublin. The huge shipment was in a container carrying ‘household goods’ on board a ship that originated in Lebanon. The Gardaí had put in place an elaborate operation, involving over forty detectives, and waited patiently for the mob to collect the load. But Dunne gang member Joe Roe was tipped off by a man working in the docks who spotted the police activity. After waiting two days the Prince, the Dunnes and the Mafia-men decided to try to snatch the dope from under the noses of the police, who were growing impatient. But before they could put the plan into operation the Gardaí had decided to move in and had seized the haul. Members of the Quirke group, who were staying in a house in South Dublin, were arrested, but they were released without charge because their detention was deemed unlawful. The Gardaí still made the most of a bad lot and proudly displayed the biggest drug seizure in the history of the State. The Mafia-men slipped out of the country when the heat died down and the Dunnes’ flirtation with the Cosa Nostra was over.
In the meantime the family’s drug operation continued to be a high priority for
the Drug Squad, which began pulling it apart. In 1981, an ad hoc group of seven innovative, young, uniformed Gardaí, attached to Fitzgibbon and Store Street Stations, came up with a revolutionary new tactic to use against the Dunnes and their pushers. In their short time on the beat, the officers had realized how difficult it was to catch the dealers and pushers by conventional methods, so they volunteered to work undercover, posing as junkies. The team consisted of Mick O’Sullivan, Tony Lane, Aidan Reid, Oliver Claffey, Janet Russell, Jim McGowan and his fiancée, Noirin O’Sullivan. (In 2011 Noirin O’Sullivan became the first female Deputy Commissioner in the history of the Garda Síochána.) The fact that the officers were from Dublin was a major benefit and helped them to blend in. The vast majority of Gardaí at the time were from the country. Community activist Mick Rafferty explained the problems this caused. ‘The basic problem was that the Guards from the country were suspicious of working-class communities; they almost saw everyone around them as a potential criminal and therefore they weren’t willing to listen to us. They weren’t used to an urban situation and the dynamics of a city.’
The team of undercover Dublin officers was given the cautious blessing of their immediate superior officers, who were desperate to drive a dent into the burgeoning trade by whatever means they could – just as long as it stood up to scrutiny in court. In just over a year the unit became the bane of the drug-dealing fraternity, who nicknamed them the Mockeys – or mock junkies.
Neither the Gardaí nor the underworld had seen anything like the Mockeys before. The Drug Squad soon realized their potential and began dipping into the huge amount of intelligence they were unearthing on the streets. In 1982, they arrested and charged 55 drug-pushers in the Store Street district alone. After a prolonged and patient surveillance operation, they busted several members of the Dunnes’ drug-distribution network. Trusted lieutenants like Paul ‘Gash’ Ainscough, Thomas ‘Bugsy’ Kinsella and Paul Gallagher were all caught with large quantities of heroin, convicted and jailed. But their biggest prize was catching Mickey ‘Dazzler’ Dunne, who was openly dealing heroin from his flat in Fatima Mansions.
On the evening of 26 August 1982, Dazzler answered the door and barely looked at the dishevelled young guys standing outside. It had been a very busy day, with a constant stream of customers, and Mickey was running low on stock. ‘Now lads I’m only doin’ grams of heroin, I’ve no twenties,’ said Mickey, before he noticed that the ‘junkies’ were holding up Garda ID cards. In seconds the entire Mockey squad burst in on top of him. As they searched the flat other pushers continued to call at the door looking for ‘gear’. Each time they were invited in and promptly arrested. By the time the Mockeys ran out of handcuffs Mickey, his wife, Dolores, and nine customers were under arrest. Stolen jewellery and heroin had been seized. Dazzler had no choice but to concede defeat: ‘Well lads, ye are the fucking best. Bugsy told me about ye but I didn’t believe him. Ye caught me easy.’ Mickey was charged with possession of drugs with intent to supply.
He joined his siblings, including brothers Larry and Shamie, and a string of their dealers who were already in the queue before the criminal courts. It wouldn’t be long before Henry was also before the courts. The Dunnes were going down.
In January 1983, Christy’s eldest daughter, Jacqueline, got married in Mount Argus church. The family’s dear friend, Fr Michael Sweetman, officiated at the ceremony. It was a typically flamboyant affair, with the style and glamour of a high-society wedding. Over 400 guests were royally entertained in the Killiney Castle Hotel, in South County Dublin. It was the last time the entire Dunne family – three generations of them – were together in one place. A television camera crew and photographers turned up, to watch the jewel-laden, designer-clad underworld come out to play. The Gardaí also turned up with their long-lens cameras, to snap some of the most wanted gangsters in the country.
A month later, on 25 February, two of the wedding guests, Henry Dunne and Joe Roe, were both jailed in connection with an armed confrontation with members of the Garda Special Task Force (STF) on 26 May 1981. The STF was a specialist firearms unit which had been set up in 1979 to take on the growing threat from the IRA, INLA and ‘crime-ordinary’ robbery gangs. Armed with Uzi machine-guns and .38 Smith and Wesson revolvers, the unit was the first of its type in the Gardaí. At the time of the confrontation the two gangsters were planning to hold up a United Drug company van, carrying a £500,000 consignment of drugs. It was to be another Dunne family operation, involving a total of six robbers, including at least two other brothers. Around 2 p.m. that day Dunne met Roe at the North Strand and gave him an automatic pistol for the job. Dunne also carried a handgun under his coat. The four other gang members were in a car which was parked nearby. A shopkeeper who spotted the pair acting suspiciously called the Gardaí and the STF were sent to investigate.
Two STF patrols arrived in the area and checked out local premises. When the gang spotted them, the crew in the car pulled away quietly. The STF officers then spotted Dunne and Roe walking in the opposite direction, onto Charleville Avenue. The detectives recognized the two well-known villains and followed them. Roe and Dunne were getting into a car when the STF pulled into the road. Detective Garda Valentine Flynn got out and ordered the men to stop and put up their hands. Instead, Henry Dunne ran towards Flynn’s partner, John Donohue, who was behind the wheel of the squad car. Dunne pulled his gun and ordered Donohue to drop his weapon. The pair began to struggle and Roe jumped into the squad car, beating Donohue over the back of the head with the butt of his gun. In the melee, Dunne fired a shot, hitting Donohue and severing an artery. He ran off and got away by vaulting a six-foot wall.
Roe also fled the scene, towards the North Strand, followed by two other STF officers. He turned and pointed his gun at Detective Garda Aidan Boyle, who fired a single shot over his head. Roe then tried to hijack a car but the detective caught up with him and ordered him to put the gun down. Instead the loyal Dunne henchman fired two shots at the cop. Detective Garda Boyle returned fire, hitting him in the side of the neck.
Roe was brought to hospital, where Detective Garda Donohue was already undergoing emergency surgery. He’d lost one-third of his blood and was lucky to be alive. Roe’s injury was not serious and he was discharged the following day. Henry Dunne was found, within minutes of the incident, hiding under a bed in a house in Waterloo Avenue. Detectives fired a warning shot to show that they meant business. When Dunne looked up, he was greeted by a roomful of armed STF officers. When the detectives asked if the gun he was still holding was loaded, Dunne replied: ‘I’ll clear it for ye, lads, you can trust me.’ As he was being taken into custody the armed robber said: ‘Is he [the injured detective] badly hurt? I didn’t mean to shoot him. He must have shot himself. It was an accident. It shouldn’t have happened.’ Forensic tests on the pistol later showed that it came from the batch stolen by Bronco Dunne from the Parker-Hale armoury in Birmingham in 1968.
The two gang members were charged with a number of offences, including possession of firearms with intent to murder, resisting arrest, causing grievous bodily harm and wounding. Despite the seriousness of the charges they were both released on bail, and weren’t jailed until almost two years later in February 1983.
Two months after Henry’s hearing, Larry Dunne’s trial finally got underway, on 20 April 1983 – two and a half years after he was originally busted. He had hired the best defence counsel in the country and hoped they could get the case thrown out on a point of law. The drugs had actually been seized by Detective Garda Felix McKenna on foot of a warrant under the Larceny Act – not the Drugs Act.
On the first day of the trial Larry ensured the public gallery was filled with Dunne associates. They stared into the faces of every member of the jury in a bid to intimidate them, which is when Larry had a stroke of unexpected luck. One of his henchmen recognized one of the jurors. That night the juror was having a drink in his local when Dunne’s lieutenant sat beside him. He got straight to the point. ‘
You will hold out, no matter what, for a not guilty verdict. You will say that Larry Dunne is innocent and you’ll be paid for your services,’ the henchman said, before getting up and leaving.
Each evening of the week-long trial the henchman met the juror. He reassured him that he could pull it off and convince the rest of the jury of Larry’s innocence. When the jury retired to consider their verdict on 26 April, the same gang member ordered champagne for the planned party in the Legal Eagle pub, beside Dublin’s Four Courts.
The juror did what he was asked. He held out against the other 11 members, who all agreed Dunne was guilty. But he could not convince them to return a not guilty verdict. When they didn’t reach a unanimous verdict, the jury was discharged as the existing legislation only provided for unanimous jury decisions in criminal trials.
A new trial was set to take place on 21 June. For Larry it was a result of sorts and he had bought his freedom for a while at least. The juror was paid £5,000 for his trouble. But the prosecution counsel and the Gardaí smelt that something was amiss. Their suspicions were confirmed shortly after the collapse of the case when an angry juror approached the officer in overall charge of the investigation, Detective Inspector John McGroarty and told him what had happened in the jury room. It didn’t take the Gardaí long to establish a link between the juror and one of Dunne’s men. When detectives interviewed the man, he admitted that he had been put in fear of his life to bring back a not guilty verdict. The jury nobbling incident was brought to the attention of the Coalition Government. As a direct result provision was made in the new Criminal Justice Act in October 1983 to allow majority verdicts.
In the meantime Larry was back in business. A month before his first trial, Herbert da Silva, a Nigerian drug-trafficker, had arrived in Dublin to meet members of what he was convinced was the country’s most formidable crime syndicate. Based in Paris, da Silva had been deported back to Nigeria from England when he was convicted on charges of drugs possession and conspiracy to rob. Da Silva was a drugs’ wholesaler, buying directly from the heroin and cannabis producers in Lebanon, Pakistan and Afghanistan. He’d met the Dunnes through the Prince and their other continental contacts and accepted them for what they said they were – the Irish Mafia. He returned to Dublin again in May 1983, just weeks before Larry Dunne’s second trial. Larry believed that he could beat the rap, although the rest of the clan told him he was going down.
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