Garda intelligence nominated a number of possible suspects for the audacious crime. Martin Cahill, as a matter of course, was high on the list, but even the General was curious to know who had done it. As a consummate professional he could appreciate a skilled job. With Matt Kelly’s guidance the Monk took charge of disposing of the money. The plan was to simply lodge it in a number of financial institutions across the Border in Newry, County Down. Hutch used two men to move the cash – Francis Joseph Sheridan and Lonan Patrick Hickey. They were perfect for the job as they weren’t known to the police and had no criminal records.
Four days after the robbery, Hutch gave Sheridan £320,000 in cash and told him to hide it in his home. Over the next two weeks, Sheridan received instructions from Hutch, directing him to deliver quantities of the cash to Hickey. In turn Hickey brought the money to Newry, where it was lodged in building society accounts opened by Hickey and Hutch. But the Serious Crime Squad had picked up information about the cash movements and began watching the bagmen.
On the fifth trip to Newry the Garda team investigating the robbery moved in on Hickey. He had £80,000 on him which was to be lodged in the bank accounts. Sheridan was also arrested and he showed detectives the rest of the loot, £129,361, which was hidden in his attic. During questioning Sheridan admitted that the cash was from the Marino Mart job. Detectives also found two building society books, one in Hickey’s name, and the other in Hutch’s. The two men later admitted to Gardaí that they had been working for Gerry Hutch. They subsequently pleaded guilty and were each sentenced to 21 months in prison. They were the only people ever charged in connection with the heist. In the Circuit Criminal Court defence counsel for the pair claimed ‘dangerous and ruthless men’ had used Sheridan and Hickey. Hutch was referred to as ‘Mr X’, and described as being particularly dangerous.
At the same time the Gardaí contacted Securicor, who obtained an order in the Belfast High Court freezing the accounts. A Sterling bank draft Hutch had withdrawn was also cancelled. In total the authorities located £320,000. The remaining £1 million was never recovered. A file was forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions recommending that Hutch be charged with handling the proceeds from the heist, but it was decided not to proceed with the case because the bagmen were too scared to give evidence against him.
In September 1987, the Monk suffered another setback when two of his partners on the Marino Mart job, Thomas O’Driscoll and Geoffrey Ennis, took part in a hold-up at the Cumberland Street Labour Exchange where Danny McOwen had been murdered. The heist went terribly wrong when the raiders were confronted by a detective who was on duty inside the building. O’Driscoll and a third raider opened fire on the Garda, hitting him in the face and body. The injured detective fired all six rounds in his revolver, hitting O’Driscoll five times. The third raider dragged the injured gangster to the waiting getaway car, which was being driven by Ennis. A short distance away they left O’Driscoll on the side of the road, in the hope that he would get medical attention. He died minutes later.
Meanwhile Hutch was putting up an extraordinary legal fight in the Belfast High Court for the return of his ‘hard-earned’ cash. It was one of the many blatant examples of how criminals were prepared to exploit the law. In the days before the establishment of the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) and adequate anti-money-laundering legislation, the Monk was quite literally untouchable. In evidence, he claimed that Lonan Hickey had been acting as his agent when he lodged the money in the Anglia Building Society. Hutch insisted that the money was his but couldn’t offer a credible explanation about where’d he got it.
On 30 July 1992, the Right Honourable Lord Justice Murray ruled that the money was the proceeds of the Marino Mart heist and ordered the return of the cash to Securicor. Hutch then appealed the case to the Appeal Court of Northern Ireland, which upheld the earlier decision. The relentless Monk then appealed the case again, this time to the House of Lords in London. On 23 February 1994, the Lords’ Appeal Committee unanimously refused the Monk leave to appeal the case and ordered that the criminal mastermind pay all costs in the various actions. After that Hutch threatened to bring the case to the European Court, but he later dropped it.
By then Hutch had laundered his share of the Marino Mart robbery and several other heists he’d masterminded. In 1987, he and Matt Kelly went into business with the armed robber Paddy Shanahan, who’d moved into the construction industry. The former member of the Dunne ‘Academy’ was considered a good businessman and through his construction firm, Manito Enterprises, he began laundering money for a host of major gangland players. In October of the same year Shanahan started refurbishing Buckingham Buildings, a tenement complex in the heart of the north inner-city, to turn it into modern apartments.
It was to prove to be a profitable relationship – until another hit man upset the partnership.
12. The Kidnap Gangs
Throughout the 1980s terrorist and criminal gangs used a terrifying new method of raising cash – kidnapping for ransom. Scores of abductions were carried out, mainly in Dublin and the Border region, which were never reported to the police. In 1985 alone, Gardaí revealed that there were 37 unreported kidnapping cases in the Republic. And the trendsetters for this terrifying crime were the Provisional IRA.
In the early 1980s, the IRA’s terror campaign was conservatively estimated to be costing them at least £1 million a year, mostly funded by criminal rackets. The money was used to pay members of Active Service Units (ASUs), buy weapons and organize bombing missions in Northern Ireland, Britain and Europe. Money from the annual ‘budget’ was also spent on the dependants of prisoners, full-time Sinn Féin staff and the IRA propaganda machine. The costs kept mounting, but increased security measures at financial institutions and more armed Garda and Army escorts for cash-in-transit vans throughout the country dramatically reduced the Provos income from armed robberies. By the time the ASU was captured abducting Martin Foley, the IRA was already well practised at using the sinister tactic of kidnapping to raise funds.
In the first three years of the 1980s the Provos were responsible for a string of abductions which netted the organization ransoms worth over £3 million. In the process they murdered two members of the Irish security forces, stole the world’s greatest racehorse, and left Ireland’s international reputation as a place to do business in tatters.
At first the terrorists used kidnapping as a weapon to highlight the conditions that their so-called Prisoners of War were enduring in English jails. In December 1973, the IRA abducted Thomas Niedermayer, the Managing Director of the Grundig plant in Dunmurry, West Belfast, which employed 1,000 people. The 45-year-old was also the honorary West German Consul in Northern Ireland. He was taken from his home at gunpoint and there was no further trace of him. In 1980 his remains were accidentally uncovered during excavation work on a building site, less than a mile from his house. His captors later claimed Niedermayer died from a heart attack. The IRA had planned to barter the industrialist in return for the release of the Price sisters. They were among ten terrorists convicted for a car-bombing campaign in London in early 1973, and were on hunger strike, demanding to be sent back to serve their time in Northern Ireland. (Rose Dugdale also stole the Beit paintings in a bid to have the women repatriated, see Chapter 6.) One of Niedermayer’s kidnappers was subsequently convicted for the abduction.
In June 1974, Lord and Lady Donoughmore were kidnapped from their home, Knocklofty House, near Clonmel, County Tipperary. They were held for four days before being released unharmed. The couple later revealed that their captors told them they weren’t interested in money but wanted the repatriation of the Price sisters, who were only alive because they were being force-fed. Over a year later the Provos struck again when they kidnapped Dutch industrialist Dr Tiede Herrema, the CEO of the Ferenka plant in Limerick. The IRA now demanded the release of three of their members, Rose Dugdale, Kevin Mallon and James Hyland, from prisons in the South.
The terrifying tactic
was dropped by the IRA Army Council after that because it was seen as ineffective and counterproductive. There was a change of heart, however, as it became more difficult to make ‘expropriations’ and there was an increasing demand for cash, as they tried to expand their war. The Provos resorted to kidnapping again and were responsible for a number of abductions where they held bank managers’ families hostage, while forcing the bankers to withdraw cash from the premises. These were among the first so-called ‘Tiger kidnappings’ in the country. The most dramatic of these took place in January 1980. The family of a Dublin bank manager was held while a ransom of £30,000 was handed over. A year later the teenage daughter of the manager of the Bank of Ireland in Dundalk and her friend were kidnapped at gunpoint and a £50,000 ransom was demanded. The girls were released the following morning in Crossmaglen in South Armagh, however, after the British Army intercepted a car carrying the ransom. In February 1980, a wealthy Belfast coin-dealer was murdered, nine hours after he’d been abducted and a ransom of Stg£1 million was demanded for his safe return. On the morning of 16 October 1981, the terrorists struck again. Ben Dunne Junior, who ran the family’s successful Dunnes Stores chain, was kidnapped on the northern side of the Border, on the main Dublin to Belfast road. Dunne was grabbed at gunpoint when he stopped to give assistance at a faked accident. The IRA demanded a £500,000 ransom, which his distraught family immediately tried to raise. Gardaí learned that they had arranged the withdrawal of £300,000 from a bank that afternoon. They intercepted a car being driven by a company employee the following day, on the way to South Armagh with the cash. The Government was determined that no ransom should be paid, fearing that it would only encourage further high-profile abductions which would have catastrophic consequences for the already troubled economy. The Dunne family made a number of further attempts to pay the ransom but each time were prevented from doing so by the authorities. Ben Dunne was released unharmed six days later, amid Garda suspicions that £500,000 had somehow been handed over to the Provos.
Then in February 1983 the republicans sunk to new depths when a Dublin-based IRA gang kidnapped the £10 million racehorse Shergar from Ballymoney Stud, County Kildare. It was another attempt by the Provos to destabilize the economy with an attack on the country’s horse-breeding industry. The terrorists demanded a £2 million ransom for the safe return of the world-famous horse, which was owned by a syndicate that included the Aga Khan.
According to former IRA commander Sean O’Callaghan, who was also a Garda Special Branch agent, Shergar injured himself within hours of the abduction. Another credible Provo source later claimed the prized animal was gunned down in an isolated shed by a gutless patriot using a machine-gun. Shergar was then cut up with a chain-saw and buried, either in County Leitrim or in the Arigna Mountains in County Roscommon. To avoid international outrage the IRA and the INLA regularly denied committing atrocities during the Troubles – the murder of Shergar was one of them. The organization never publicly accepted responsibility for the crime and Shergar’s remains have not been found.
After the Shergar fiasco, the eight-man IRA gang involved in his kidnapping were ordered to target Canadian millionaire Galen Weston. He was the joint owner of Associated British Foods (ABF), the parent company of the Quinnsworth and Penneys chains. Weston was to be kidnapped for a ransom of £5 million. The organization planned to use the money to purchase more sophisticated weapons, including surface-to-air missiles and other armaments. However, the gang had been under intense surveillance since the Shergar abduction and Garda Special Branch were aware that they were plotting something big. The Gardaí were also tipped-off by a number of high-level informants in the Provos, including Sean O’Callaghan and a prominent member of Sinn Féin who has never been publicly exposed as a spy. The plan was to take Weston at his home on the morning of Sunday, 7 August 1983.
Around 4 a.m. that morning, the IRA unit cut the phone wires to the Westons’ mansion near Roundwood, County Wicklow. Shortly before 8 a.m. the Provos, armed with automatic pistols, machine-guns and Armalite rifles, made their move, but 13 members of the Special Task Force, carrying pistols and Uzi machine-guns, were waiting for them in the house. Galen Weston and his family had been warned of the attack and had secretly flown to England for the weekend. As the Provos were walking into the trap, the millionaire was preparing to play polo with the Prince of Wales. When five members of the gang appeared, the waiting detectives ordered them to put down their weapons. Two of the Provos opened fire on the Gardaí, who began shooting back. The three other Provos also began firing down at the house from higher ground. An intense gun battle ensued during which the STF officers fired a total of 185 rounds in less than five minutes. When it was over, four of the would-be kidnappers lay wounded. Five members of the gang were arrested while the remaining three escaped. Three of the men detained at the scene were from Belfast: John Hunter, Gerald Fitzgerald and John Stewart. Fitzgerald was the IRA’s intelligence officer. The two others were Nicky Kehoe from Cabra in Dublin and Peter Lynch from Derry. Kehoe, the only one of the five who was uninjured, had a previous conviction for possession of explosives in 1974. Lynch also had previous for firearms’ offences and possession of explosives.
The operation was another disaster for the Provos and a huge victory for the Gardaí, who had shown that they were now more than a match for the terrorists. On 4 November 1983, the Special Criminal Court convicted the Provos for a series of charges, including possession of firearms with intent to endanger life. They were jailed for terms ranging between ten and fourteen years. As the five terrorists were being led down from the dock they gave clenched fist salutes and shouted ‘Up the Provos’. Gerry Adams, who was the Sinn Féin vice-president at the time, acknowledged the salute from the public gallery.
The IRA had suffered a humiliating defeat but it didn’t deter them. Less than three weeks later, on 24 November, the Provos launched a second attack on the Weston business empire. Forty-nine-year-old Englishman Don Tidey, CEO of the Quinnsworth chain, was taken at gunpoint as he left his home in Rathfarnham to bring his daughter to school. His kidnappers, three of whom had shot their way out of the Maze Prison in Belfast two months earlier, had set up a fake Garda checkpoint as Tidey approached. He was bundled into a car and driven off at speed, while a ransom demand for £5 million was delivered to the headquarters of ABF in London.
The search for Don Tidey was one of the biggest ever mounted in the history of the State. It involved over 4,000 Gardaí and troops. To add to the pressure on the security forces, an intensive nationwide search was also being conducted to locate a dangerous terrorist, the notorious leader of the INLA, Dominic ‘Mad Dog’ McGlinchey, who had been on the run since December 1982.
McGlinchey was one of the most psychotic killers to emerge during the Troubles and by his own admission, had been responsible for at least 30 murders and 200 bombings. He’d skipped bail while awaiting the judgment of the Supreme Court when he challenged his extradition to Northern Ireland on murder charges. A close friend of Martin ‘the Viper’ Foley and Thomas McCarton, Mad Dog also lived in Crumlin and organized several armed robberies with local criminals. Foley and his wife looked after McGlinchey’s children when he went into hiding. While on the run Mad Dog was involved in the abduction of relatives of INLA member Harry Kirkpatrick. In the first of the infamous ‘supergrass’ trials that took place in the 1980s, Kirkpatrick had turned State witness against his former comrades. McGlinchey was still in hiding when the Tidey manhunt almost cost him his freedom.
On 2 December, two uniformed Gardaí who were searching for Tidey stumbled across the INLA mass-murderer when they inadvertently visited the safe house he was using in Carrigtwohill, County Cork. The policemen were held at gunpoint, stripped of their uniforms and left bound and gagged, before Mad Dog made his escape. Five days later, he did the same thing to two other unarmed officers when they tried to arrest him in Wexford. By the time McGlinchey was finally cornered, following a shoot-out in County Clare in March 1984
during which a Garda was shot and injured, he had left a trail of chaos around the country, including armed robberies and other shooting incidents.
In the meantime Garda intelligence confirmed, through their informants on the IRA Army Council, that the supermarket executive was being held near Ballinamore, County Leitrim. On 13 December, hundreds of extra police and troops were drafted into the area. They began focusing the search operation on woodland in isolated countryside, some miles from the northern end of the town. Ten search teams, made up of armed and uniformed Gardaí backed up by troops, were deployed to comb the area. Garda recruits from Templemore were also drafted in to boost up the numbers. It was to prove a disastrous decision.
On the afternoon of the third day, one of the search teams stumbled on to the hide where Don Tidey was being held. Recruit Garda Gary Sheehan was the first to spot an IRA man. As he turned to tell Private Patrick Kelly, the soldier covering him, the IRA men opened fire, unleashing mayhem. The rookie Garda and the experienced soldier were gunned down as a hail of bullets zipped through the woods. Gary Sheehan was 26; 36-year-old Patrick Kelly was the father of four children, the youngest born 11 weeks earlier. Sheehan was the tenth member of the Gardaí to be murdered since 1970. Private Kelly was the first soldier to be killed by the terrorists since the start of the Troubles.
In the confusion that followed the initial gun battle the gang, who were also dressed in combat clothing, took a number of Gardaí and soldiers as hostages. The terrorists forced their captives to run in front of them, as the Provos fired at the other search teams in the area. The gang hijacked a car and got away. At the same time the supermarket executive, who was dressed in the same garb as his kidnappers, managed to escape. Tidey was lucky that a Special Branch detective recognized him or he might have been shot in the pandemonium. He had been held captive for 23 days.
Badfellas Page 23
