Badfellas

by Paul Williams

  Detectives were forced to drag Cahill kicking and screaming from his flat in Kevin Street. At Ballyfermot Station it took ten Gardaí to pin him down to get his finger-prints. When they tried to take his mugshot he rubbed the finger-print ink all over his face. They never got the picture. From then on Cahill began disguising his face from public view, covering it with his hand or wearing balaclavas. Whenever the police raided his home over the next 12 years they were met by a grinning Al Jolson look-alike. The police had very few decent pictures of the General, which meant that most of them didn’t know what he looked like. Throughout the rest of his detention, Cahill sat in a corner with his hands over his face repeating the mantra: ‘I don’t want to talk to any of these men’.

  No one was ever charged with the bombing because, ironically, there was no forensic evidence to link any of the suspects with the crime. The assassination attempt should have been a wake-up call but there were no new measures for a more targeted approach to tackling the growing menace of organized crime.

  The need for serious action was reinforced two days after the bombing when an elderly security manager, Gerard Crowley, was shot dead when he tackled robbers stealing the payroll delivery at Clerys’ Department Store in O’Connell Street. A month later the INLA gunned down another unarmed policeman. Garda Patrick Reynolds, who was attached to Dr Donovan’s local station in Tallaght, died on 20 February after he was shot in the back by the gang. Reynolds and four colleagues had been sent to investigate suspicious activity at a flat in Avonbeg Gardens. Two days earlier the gang, led by notorious INLA member Sean ‘Bap’ Hughes from Belfast, had carried out an armed robbery in Askeaton, County Limerick. The brutal murder of another Garda, so soon after the bomb attack and the killing of the security manager, put a huge strain on already over-stretched resources – which more than suited Martin Cahill and his mob.

  For the gang it was business as usual. A few days after his release from custody in February 1982, Cahill took part in a robbery from the Allied Irish Bank in Drumcondra, during which a security guard was shot and injured. Three months later, a teenager called Gerard Morgan was shot dead in Crumlin after one of the men involved in the robbery accused Morgan’s brother of ‘stealing’ his share of the loot, which had been hidden in a local garden. On 12 February, Thomas Healy and another man, Sean McKeon, were arrested and charged with armed robbery in Clane, County Kildare. The INLA man was jailed for 12 years for robbery and possessing a .38 revolver. In April, the General’s gang held the family of an amusement arcade manager hostage in Clonmel, County Tipperary, and robbed £4,500. Some hours later Cahill and his associates dumped the body of their pal Tony Doran on a road in Clondalkin. On the way back to Dublin, he’d drunk a bottle of brandy and choked on his own vomit.

  On 16 July, the gang struck again when four armed and masked men held up the staff in the post office sorting office in Mallow, County Cork. The blaggers – including Martin and Eddie Cahill and Michael and John Cunningham – got away with over £116,000 in cash (over €400,000 today). On 3 August, they raided the home of another arcade manager in Ardmore, County Waterford, during which the victims were assaulted and tied up. The gang stole jewellery, cash and a firearm. A month later they scored another spectacular jackpot when they got away with £133,000 in cash. This time a member of the gang simply walked into the Central Sorting Office at Sheriff Street in Dublin, dressed as a postman. The cheeky crook had no need for a gun. He told the duty clerk that he was there to collect the money for post offices in Tallaght, Clondalkin and Lucan. The only use his trigger finger got that day was signing the dispatch sheet, as he was handed three cash bags.

  The bomb attack on Dr Donovan earned Cahill a reputation among the Gardaí and the underworld as one of the country’s most formidable and dangerous criminals – but he was about to commit his most audacious robbery yet.

  The Thomas O’Connor and Sons jewellery factory in Harold’s Cross in Dublin, which supplied jewellers’ shops throughout the country, was an Aladdin’s cave for an ambitious robber. In January 1983, John Traynor brought Cahill information which set in train one of the most spectacular robberies in Irish criminal history. For months the Coach had been nurturing a relationship with an inside man who worked for O’Connor’s. The corrupt employee was selling Traynor small quantities of uncut jewels and gold dust he’d pilfered from the factory. Traynor showed Cahill a matchbox full of gold dust which the employee had given him, worth £1,000. ‘I told him that if this was what you could pick up off the floor in a tiny box then imagine what you would get if you robbed the place,’ Traynor later recalled. The employee had agreed to provide photographs and detailed plans of the security system and lay-out of O’Connor’s, in return for a share of the loot.

  O’Connor’s had been a source of intense interest to Cahill and other criminal groups for some time. The IRA had cased the factory, but abandoned their plans because the high-tech security systems made it practically impregnable. In 1982 Henry Dunne had also considered hitting the place. To get around the security, his team had planned to dress as Gardaí and simply walk in and rob it. Henry also discussed the job with Cahill and they made a half-hearted attempt to tunnel underneath the factory but only succeeded in alerting the Gardaí. Detectives from the Serious Crime Squad had staked out the premises, on and off for a number of months, but gave up when no one showed.

  Studying the data supplied by the informer, Cahill began working on a plan to hit the factory. Over the next six months, he planned every aspect of the O’Connor’s heist, including organizing a fleet of stolen cars and a van. Traynor and Cahill also did the surveillance, sitting in a park across the road. Cahill assembled a group of 12 criminal associates to take part in the job. He could no longer look to his immediate family to make up the bulk of the team. His brothers Eddie and John were both in prison, and his brother-in-law, Hughie Delaney, had been jailed in January, as had Harry Melia. Henry Dunne had also been jailed in February. A month later, 31-year-old Anthony Cahill died from a drug overdose in prison. Martin dedicated the O’Connor’s heist to his memory.

  Cahill drummed every last detail of the job into the gang members, making them repeat over and over again what each individual had to do. It was during this job that the hoods nicknamed him ‘the General’ because of his military approach. Cahill’s second-in-command was John Cunningham, and they dubbed him ‘the Colonel’. The other members of the O’Connor’s team included Cahill’s brother Michael, brother-in-law John Foy, Noel Lynch, Christy Dutton, Thomas McCarton, Martin Foley, Seamus ‘Shavo’ Hogan and Jimmy Edgeworth. In 2010, at the age of 73, Edgeworth would become the oldest person ever convicted of heroin-trafficking in Ireland.

  Armed with the inside information, the General decided to do the robbery on Tuesday, 26 July 1983 because most of the staff would be on holidays. Cahill even planned an alibi for the raid because he knew he would be one of the Gardaí’s prime suspects. For two days beforehand he made himself as conspicuous as possible. He staged a one-man picket outside the Department of Justice and the Dáil, protesting about forensic evidence connected to the Clondalkin robbery, which he claimed had been planted on him.

  On the Sunday before the robbery, Traynor called to see Michael Egan, an aluminium window-fitter from County Offaly, who lived on Sundrive Road in Crumlin. Egan was a ‘Walter Mitty’ character who was drawn to the company of flash criminals like Traynor and the fraudster was happy to exploit him. Egan was told that Cahill needed to hide a van in the workshop at the rear of the house which was accessed by an alleyway. There was ‘a small stroke going down’ and members of the gang would be hiding there the night before. The following morning, at exactly 9 a.m., Egan was to open the workshop doors.

  On the evening of the robbery the gang gathered in the Dropping Well pub in Milltown in Dublin. On Cahill’s orders, they turned up dressed like a football team and he handed each one a sports bag. Inside each bag were a handgun, balaclava and gloves. The sports bags also carried an assortment of hand-gr
enades, smoke bombs, walkie-talkie radios and coal sacks for the loot. Nothing was overlooked.

  The members of the ‘soccer’ team broke into the O’Connor’s complex from the rear and hid in a boiler house that was not alarmed. The following morning Cahill and the rest of the gang watched as the manager arrived to open up. When he turned off the security system and opened the gates for the staff, the gang made their move. Once inside, they rounded up the employees as they arrived and locked them in a room. A car and a van were driven into the complex with other gang members on board. Cahill remained outside on his motorbike controlling the operation on a walkie-talkie. Other hoods sat in two cars on nearby roads, watching for Garda patrols. The O’Connor’s job was a flawless operation. Within 35 minutes, they removed the contents of the strong room, including gold bars, gems, diamonds and thousands of gold rings. The haul weighed over half a ton and was valued between £1.5 million and £2 million (€4.5 million and €6 million in today’s values). After the robbery, O’Connor’s was forced to close down, with the loss of over a hundred jobs.

  As the gang jumped into their vehicles Cahill set off a smoke-grenade to warn staff not to call the police. Then he led his convoy out into the morning rush-hour traffic. At the same time a car was set on fire two miles away in Walkinstown. Cahill believed the decoy would send the Gardaí in the wrong direction. The loot was driven to the workshop and Egan closed the doors behind the gang.

  Cahill, Cunningham, Traynor and Lynch spent the following day and night sorting through the mesmerizing array of gold and jewels. At one stage they were almost caught when two detectives, who were hunting for the robbery gang, were heard searching the alleyway behind the workshop. If they’d decided to search the building there would have been a shoot-out – Cahill and his men were all armed and ready to open fire.

  While the loot was being sorted, Traynor took a break and went for a coffee in nearby Crumlin Shopping Centre. As he walked in, a detective he knew strode towards him with a broad smile. Traynor reckoned his number was up. But instead of clasping handcuffs on the fraudster, the cop was anxious to share the good news – Shamie Dunne had been caught red-handed by the Drug Squad earlier that morning. They’d burst into his luxury apartment in Milltown and found him cutting up 32 ounces of high-quality heroin.

  Despite his difficulties with the law, Dunne still helped out his old friend by putting him in touch with London fence Les Beavis. The Dunnes had done plenty of business with Beavis, who bought jewels that had been stolen in various robberies or handed over as payment for drugs from them. He was one of Scotland Yard’s ‘most wanted’ criminals. On the black market the O’Connor’s haul was worth only a fraction of its legitimate value. Eventually Cahill and Traynor agreed to sell the sapphires, rubies, emeralds and diamonds to Beavis for £100,000. The money was divided equally among the gang members, who also had a bag of gold each which the fence agreed to buy for £40,000 a go. Some gang members opted to swap their gold for heroin and cannabis, through contacts in Manchester’s Quality Street Gang. The Dunnes had also introduced Cahill to the English mob.

  Over the next six weeks the gold and jewels were smuggled to London on the Cork to Swansea ferry, concealed in the panels of a car. The operation was a complete success. Some time later Cahill sold Beavis another bag of gold from the robbery haul. This time a mechanic from South Dublin, who was on the periphery of the gang, agreed to do the run. The gold was hidden in the car and taken on the same route to London. However, when the door panels were opened it was discovered that the loot had been ‘stolen’ from the robbers. What happened next became part of gangland folklore and added to the General’s reputation as a sadistic thug.

  The mechanic made the fatal mistake of not contacting his boss to offer an explanation. Instead he stayed in London for two weeks. His reluctance to face the music convinced the General that the mechanic was guilty. When he eventually surfaced, Cahill had him abducted and taken to a derelict house in Rathmines, where he interrogated the suspect for several hours.

  ‘Tell me what you done with the stuff and who ya gave it to,’ the General demanded, over and over, as the mechanic was slapped around by two of his henchmen. The terrified driver protested his innocence, as he was knocked to the ground. Cahill produced a staple gun as he stood over the suspected thief, who was pinned down by the henchmen. He stapled each of the mechanic’s fingers to the wooden floor. Before he stapled a finger, the General asked the same question and each time the terrified suspect screamed that he didn’t do it.

  Cahill then produced a claw-hammer and two, six-inch nails. He placed the point of the nail in the palm of the man’s stapled hand and held the hammer in the air. He repeated his question. When he got the same answer, Cahill hammered the nail down, as the suspect let out a blood-curdling cry. The General struck again, punching the nail into the floor. Then he moved to the other side of his victim. As he asked the question again, Cahill ignored the agonized pleas for mercy. He drove the second nail through the other hand and completed the crucifixion.

  When the harrowing ordeal was over Cahill and his henchmen were satisfied the mechanic was innocent. No one could endure such torture for a mere £40,000. The General’s court of rough justice had found the man not guilty. But he had to endure even more excruciating pain as Cahill used a pinch-bar to pull the nails out of his hands. The General gave his victim some rags to soak up the blood and brought him to the casualty unit of Meath Hospital. The mechanic never made an official complaint to the Gardaí. One crucifixion had been enough. As Cahill later commented, ‘People remember pain. A bullet through the head is too easy. You think of the pain before you do wrong again.’ It sent a clear message to other gangsters that the General would tolerate nothing less than total loyalty.

  It hadn’t taken long for word to filter through the underworld network about who was responsible for the O’Connor’s job. From his many underworld informants, Detective Inspector Ned ‘the Buffalo’ Ryan, the man in charge of the Garda investigation, soon pieced together the whole plot. His men had even succeeded in recovering some of the stolen loot when they dug up a grave in Mount Jerome cemetery, across the road from the factory. A special squad was formed to target the gang and all the suspects, with the exception of Cahill, were arrested and questioned. Much to Ryan’s intense annoyance, his superiors would not give him permission to arrest the gang leader. The Buffalo always maintained that the top brass held the bizarre belief that by arresting Cahill they would in some way be giving him public recognition for a job well done. But the police were not the only ones interested in Cahill’s landmark stroke.

  A week after the heist, two senior IRA figures in Dublin arranged a meeting with the General and Traynor in a coffee shop in Crumlin Shopping Centre. When the niceties were out of the way the Provos got down to business. They demanded half of the O’Connor’s haul. The IRA badly needed funds to fuel their killing machine and, as a result, were also planning a number of high-profile kidnappings (see Chapter 12). Cahill was having none of it and smiled across the table at them: ‘If you want gold then go out and rob yer own gold like we did.’ The Provos were agitated by Cahill’s complete lack of fear and respect. They reminded him that there would be very serious repercussions if he failed to comply with their demand. The General stood up and moved his face closer to the IRA men: ‘You do your strokes and we’ll do ours. Ye’r not gettin’ a fuckin’ penny.’ Then he stormed out of the coffee shop with Traynor in tow.

  The General and his army were on a collision course with their terrorist counterparts and the Provos had no intention of letting Cahill off the hook. Nor could they allow his temerity and lack of respect go without sanction. They bided their time and began building up intelligence on the General’s large criminal network. They met with the INLA and other criminals to share information on Cahill’s gang and to ascertain what they had done with the O’Connor’s money. One of their sources was the General’s bomb-maker, Thomas McCarton. He was supposed to take part in the robbery
but had failed to turn up. When McCarton demanded a share of the loot anyway, Cahill refused. The Provos soon had an excuse to make their move.

  The Concerned Parents Against Drugs (CPAD)’s tactic of patrolling the streets of the inner-city communities and marching on the homes of known pushers and addicts had resulted in the latter’s exodus to the relative peace of the working-class suburbs. The area worst hit by the migrating junkies was Crumlin, where the heroin plague quickly spread. In February 1984, the CPAD was organized in Crumlin and immediately found itself on a collision course with the large local criminal population. The principal organizers of the group were IRA/Sinn Féin member John Noonan from Tallaght and John ‘Whacker’ Humphrey, a convicted armed robber with close ties to the republican movement.

  Rumours soon began to circulate that Cahill’s gang had invested the O’Connor’s loot in drugs. The gossip was corroborated by the fact that some of them were closely associated with families suspected of heroin-dealing, and Jimmy Edgeworth, Martin Foley and others were involved in the drug trade themselves. It was also widely known that the Dunnes and the Cahills had been partners-in-crime. Curiously, Christy Dunne agreed to assist the Provos in their investigation of the heroin trade. He nominated several drug-dealers but failed to mention anyone from his own family circle, even though Larry and Shamie were facing drug charges. Instead loyal Bronco named Cahill and members of his mob.

  On the night of 19 February, the CPAD marched on the homes of suspected drug-dealers in Crumlin. The protesters also stopped outside the homes of several criminals suspected of involvement in the trade. One of those visited was Shavo Hogan’s in Rutland Grove. The robber had a blazing row with Humphrey and other protesters on his doorstep. The marchers then made their way to the home of Thomas Gaffney, whose family was heavily involved in heroin-pushing in the area. Gaffney, a drug-abuser with a reputation for violence, was a close friend of both Cahill and Foley. Gaffney and his brothers sold heroin for Ma Baker, a notorious drug-dealer from Crumlin, whose family were long-time friends of Martin Cahill. The granny had no scruples and paid children to sell her ‘gear’. She reputedly even sold it to her own kids. Gaffney confronted the CPAD marchers and exchanged threats with Whacker Humphrey. Later that night, Foley and Hogan ran into a CPAD picket in Rutland Grove and ended up in a fist-fight.