That evening the O’Flynns accidentally discovered that Savage had arrived in Cork. They were terrified of the Zombie and knew what his presence meant. Seanie O’Flynn and his older brother Duckie decided to make the first move. They heard that Dorgan and his gang were drinking in the Arcadia pub on Douglas Street. They summoned their troops and 12 gang members gathered in another local pub, including all the O’Flynn brothers, Crinnion and their associates James Daly and Michael ‘Dublin Mick’ Leonard. At least three of them were carrying firearms. The mob drove off in three cars to the wrong pub – the Arcadian. Realizing their mistake, they then headed to the pub on Douglas Street.
At 10.45 p.m. the group arrived at the door of the Arcadia, which was full of Saturday night drinkers. Dorgan was in the pub with a number of his associates, including Dave Healy. The dealer who had been abducted and robbed by the O’Flynns had left a short time earlier. Duckie, Seanie, James Daly and Michael Leonard went in first. Christy O’Flynn would later claim that Dave Healy pulled a gun and confronted his brother Seanie. Healy was overpowered by Seanie O’Flynn and the gun fell to the floor. In the ensuing melee, Dorgan was grabbed and dragged towards the door. Duckie O’Flynn caused panic when he fired blanks from a revolver and customers dived to the ground. At the same time Noel O’Flynn produced a sawn-off shotgun and fired shots into the bar from the door.
Christy O’Flynn later told detectives what happened next. ‘Sean and Daly pulled Dorgan to the door and told me to hold him there. I kicked the shit out of him. Duckie fired two shots out of the dummy gun. Noelie went ape shit with the sawn-off, firing all over the place. He emptied it and re-loaded,’ he claimed.
In the confusion John Dorgan escaped through a back door and the O’Flynns fled through the front. They broke up and ran in all directions. The would-be killers had missed their target but had managed to shoot two of their own men. James Daly was hit in the eye by a shotgun blast and it couldn’t be saved. Christy O’Flynn was hit in the shoulder but wasn’t seriously wounded. ‘All the men with me had guns. Duckie had his own revolver, it’s a beauty. I took four guns away from the scene, Duckie’s, two dummies [guns] and the sawn-off. I took the guns home and wrapped them and buried them,’ he said in his statement. He claimed it was only then that he discovered he was injured.
Tommy Savage and his Dublin pal arrived in a taxi driven by one of O’Callaghan’s men, minutes after the shooting. Garda cars were beginning to arrive at the scene and shocked customers had spilled onto the street. When the INLA thug spotted the commotion, he ordered the cab to drive off.
Detectives were astonished that no one had been killed or seriously injured. One of the original investigators recalled: ‘This was nothing short of an act of madness and it was a miracle that it didn’t turn into a massacre. Dorgan could certainly count himself as being very, very lucky that night. This was the kind of incident that would become so familiar in Limerick ten years later.’ The timing of the attack proved to be fortuitous for everyone concerned. If the O’Flynns had arrived 20 minutes later the Arcadia Bar would have been the scene of a bloodbath.
Gardaí arrested Seanie O’Flynn, Michael Crinnion and James Daly as they ran away from the pub. The three men were extremely aggressive and threatened the arresting officers. Despite his serious injury Daly, who was bleeding heavily from the left eye, told the cops to ‘fuck off’ and tried to punch one of them. As they were being taken away in a squad car Seanie warned his associates: ‘Sing dumb and say nothing. We done nothing.’ Later when he was being questioned, O’Flynn claimed that Tommy Savage and another named associate had fired the shots in the bar. He also accused McSweeney and O’Callaghan of organizing it.
At first the police were inclined to believe O’Flynn’s version of events, especially when they discovered that Savage was in Cork. The following morning they located the INLA man and his Dublin accomplice, and discovered that John Dorgan and his wife were staying in the same B&B. Dorgan was carrying £10,000 in cash, which detectives believed was the payment for the hit. The four were arrested and taken in for questioning. Savage refused to leave his cell for the duration of his 48 hours in custody. The O’Flynn and Savage groups were later released without charge.
A few days later the O’Flynns decided to further convince the police that they hadn’t been involved in the Arcadia incident. They fired shots into the home of Kieran O’Flynn and smashed up his car, to make it look like another attack by the Dorgan/O’Callaghan side. But the ruse didn’t work. A week later detectives arrested Christy O’Flynn, who made a full admission about what had really happened.
Duckie, Kieran, Bobby and Noel O’Flynn were arrested, along with Michael Leonard. Noel O’Flynn and Leonard later admitted their involvement while the others said nothing. Duckie O’Flynn managed to escape from the police station. Meanwhile Noel, Christy O’Flynn and Leonard were charged with possession of firearms with intent to endanger life. They were also charged with ‘unlawfully and maliciously shooting’ at James Daly with the intention of doing grievous bodily harm. The State, however, was eventually forced to drop the charges because Daly was not prepared to make a complaint or give evidence in court.
Gardaí finally caught up with Duckie O’Flynn when he was arrested and charged with stabbing another local drug-dealer, John Brett. On 20 October 1991, Brett, from Desmond Square, Cork, was drinking with Noel O’Flynn in The Three Ones pub on Barrack Street. Eye-witnesses later claimed that Duckie O’Flynn stabbed Brett with a four-inch kitchen knife. Brett fell to the ground clutching his intestines, which were hanging out of his stomach. Noel O’Flynn, who was Brett’s friend, struck Duckie as he left the pub. Brett was critically injured and was in intensive care for almost two months. Despite his injuries, Brett was abusive and unco-operative when detectives interviewed him. Noel O’Flynn refused to make any statement to the police. ‘You know the score. Jesus, my friend and my brother are involved. I am saying nothing,’ he told detectives. Gardaí arrested Duckie when they tracked him to a safe house he was renting in Baltimore, County Cork, on 13 December. He was later charged with the attempted murder of John Brett and causing grievous bodily harm. Duckie was also charged with possession of a firearm at the Arcadia Bar with intent to endanger life, and injuring James Daly. He was further charged with escaping from lawful custody.
When detectives asked Duckie why he had done a runner he replied: ‘If you leave the door of a bird cage open the bird will fly away. I had been questioned about the same thing for a day and a half and my stomach was killing me. I was after a dose of ecstasy and it was like as if someone put their hand up your hole and was pulling your guts out.’ O’Flynn then told Gardaí that if he was released he would ‘clean the place up of ecstasy’ and warned: ‘This place is going to get worse than Dublin.’ He also offered to give them illegal guns in return for his freedom. ‘I could get you two pieces. One is a big hand job from America. It would blow a hole in the wall there,’ he boasted. The detectives told him they weren’t interested.
The charges were subsequently dropped against Duckie O’Flynn for both the Arcadia shooting and the attack on Brett. John Brett refused to make an official complaint or be a witness for the prosecution. He made a full recovery and went back to work. In November 1999 he was caught with over €500,000 worth of ecstasy in Glanmire and was subsequently jailed for 11 years. In May 2007 his younger brother, David ‘Boogie’ Brett, was executed by former associates near the village of Ballydesmond. Boogie had also been involved in the drug trade.
Meanwhile Tommy Savage and Mickey Weldon ran into troubles of their own and were forced to move their operation to Amsterdam. In December 1991 their associate, Patrick ‘Teasy Weasy’ McDonald, was shot dead by a lone gunman as he fixed the hair of an elderly female customer in his salon in Marino, North Dublin. The armed robber was shot six times. Weldon and Savage were two of the top suspects, as they’d had a major falling out with McDonald in the months before the murder. Associates of Gerry Hutch, ‘the Monk’, who worked wit
h the INLA men, had also been involved in the plot. But Savage and Weldon left the country before they could be arrested. The Zombie later moaned that he was forced to ‘emigrate’ because the Gardaí and the media had let it be known that he was their prime suspect in the case. He claimed that an IRA hit team from South Armagh had agreed to assassinate him in revenge for McDonald’s murder.
In the seven-year period between 1988 and 1995, eight cannabis shipments, with a combined street value of £200 million (over €375 million today) were seized by the Gardaí, Customs and the Irish Navy. Six of the seizures were made along the Cork and Kerry coastline. But successive governments still denied that Ireland was being used as a gateway for drug-smugglers. Everyone involved in law enforcement knew the seizures were only the tip of the iceberg.
In February 1991, the Munster Mafia were planning another major transaction. They struck a deal to buy a shipment of 700 kilos of cannabis direct from the Moroccan producers. They invested over £800,000 (over €1.6 million today) in the deal and it stood to make them at least £1 million in profit. They recruited a local antiques dealer, Christopher ‘Golly’ O’Connell, to front the operation. The 50-year-old from The Mews, in posh Montenotte, was a chancer who didn’t mind how he made his money. O’Connell was perfect for the job because no one suspected he was involved in crime. A detective who knew him recalled: ‘Golly was an arrogant bluffer who was always ducking and diving. Even though he was often seen in the company of Judd Scanlan, Buckley and McSweeney he was thought of as a bit of a rogue who would talk to anyone. There was no suspicion about what he was really up to.’
The gang decided to charter a yacht and collect the hashish off the Moroccan coast. It would be the first of several such operations. The shipment was to be brought back to Ireland and landed in one of the hundreds of isolated coves along the Cork coastline. In February, O’Connell hired a skipper and a deck hand for a trip to collect ‘gold coins’. He then rented the Karma of the East from its owner in Dartmouth, England. He paid £16,000 in cash to hire the boat for six weeks.
In June, O’Connell and his crew flew to England to pick up the yacht, and the crew set sail for the Algarve while O’Connell flew ahead to meet the gang’s supplier. But the group’s distinctive Cork accents were to ultimately prove fatal for the Munster Mafia. A local policeman who regularly holidayed in Cork was curious when he heard the accents in Dartmouth. He made a few discreet enquiries, discovered who had chartered the yacht and relayed the information to his colleagues in Ireland. In Cork the previous sightings of Golly in the company of the drug-traffickers suddenly took on a new significance. The vessel’s progress was tracked through its GPS but there was still no way of knowing what exactly it was up to.
From the beginning the yacht had engine problems. They were forced to stop off on the northern Spanish coast for a number of days while repair work was carried out. The boat set sail again and on 15 July O’Connell and his crew left the Portuguese coast. They headed for Gibraltar, where they rendezvoused with a Moroccan boat and transferred the 700 kilos of hash in 28 bales of what the crew thought were gold coins and antiques. When the cargo was stowed the Karma of the East set sail for Cork. The voyage back was a nightmare. The engine developed more mechanical problems as the crew wrestled with rough seas.
The engine finally blew up in flames just as the Cork coastline came into view in the early hours of 23 July. O’Connell was reluctant to call for help and scanned the coastline for hours, as if expecting someone to be waiting for them. When no one appeared the skipper sent a ‘Mayday’ message to the Marine Rescue Co-ordination Centre (MRCC). A lifeboat was dispatched to tow them into Courtmacsherry.
Fate again conspired against O’Connell. The MRCC informed RTÉ radio that they were co-ordinating the rescue of a yacht that had suffered fire damage off the Cork coast. When a member of the Customs Drug Surveillance Unit (CDSU) heard the report, he immediately went to investigate with a colleague. The unit had been recently established to collate intelligence on the activities of known drug-dealers; however, it only had a handful of members and was grossly under-resourced. The CDSU had been looking out for the yacht and arrived as the vessel was being pulled into the harbour. They searched the yacht and found the drugs. The Munster Mafia had taken a major financial hit – and Golly O’Connell was facing serious charges for drug-smuggling.
The syndicate recovered and continued to thrive. For every shipment seized, at least ten more were getting through. The growing demand for narcotics ensured that they were constantly working on more imaginative smuggling methods. But they and the rest of the country’s criminal mobs were about to find themselves crossing swords with another formidable Cork man – the State Solicitor for the city, Barry Galvin.
The Criminal Justice System had never seen the likes of Barry Galvin before. He is one of the undisputed heroes in the story of Gangland. Galvin was the only professional working on the frontline of law enforcement who was prepared to risk his reputation, and his safety, to demand that action be taken to tackle the growing criminal menace. He relished challenging the consensus but he was an unlikely rebel. He was a fourth-generation solicitor of Cork’s respected family law firm Barry C. Galvin and Son. His grandfather was a recipient of the Law Society gold medal when he qualified as a solicitor, and Barry Galvin came top of his class in the 1965 bar exams in King’s Inns and was awarded the prestigious Brooke Prize. As a young barrister, he specialized in the fields of corporate banking and taxation law. He also worked in criminal defence.
From his appointment as State Solicitor for Cork City in 1983 Galvin was responsible for the prosecution of all criminal cases. His reputation for hard work and his razor-sharp legal brain won the admiration of his peers and Gardaí. The indefatigable lawyer was driven by a passion for law and order, which he believed should be there to protect the ordinary citizen from criminals. But Galvin found himself becoming increasingly frustrated with the Criminal Justice System. It had failed to keep pace with the activities of organized crime, to the detriment of the public. As he reviewed Garda investigation files in his role as public prosecutor, the evidence of the changing trends in crime was there in black and white. Gardaí were seizing a wider variety of drugs, and in much larger quantities than ever before. The level of violence involved in crimes like burglary and the wanton destruction of property were both escalating. And the spectre of gangland violence had already arrived on the streets of his city.
Through his close working relationship with local Gardaí and Customs, Galvin realized how they were hamstrung in their efforts to take on the Godfathers. He recalled: ‘I had developed a deep concern that the criminals and drug-traffickers were gaining significant ground and nothing was being done about it. They could flaunt their wealth in the knowledge that no one would touch them. The culture of organized crime has a very corrosive effect on the wider society and I could see how it was undermining whole communities. But we had laws there which could be utilised against them but there just wasn’t the will to use them.’
Galvin took a personal interest in the activities of Tommy O’Callaghan, Judd Scanlan, Paddy McSweeney and the O’Flynns. In the late 1980s he successfully opposed the transfer of a pub licence to a bar on Shandon Street. O’Callaghan had purchased the bar for £145,000 through a front company called Capricorn Taverns. Some years later, Galvin successfully obtained a court order to shut down the Screaming Monkey pub in the city. He said it was a front for the O’Flynns, whom he described as a major Cork drug gang. Garda witnesses named Bobby and Christy O’Flynn as two of the pub’s secret backers. Galvin successfully closed a number of other pubs in Cork in the same way.
Galvin also argued that the existing tax laws could be used to at least go after the criminals’ wealth. It was vital to show the Godfathers who had avoided being caught that they were not untouchable. In the Finance Act of 1983, provision had been made for the Revenue Commissioners to tax earnings from criminal activity, but the State still appeared to be afraid to use t
he law – except for Galvin. Following the Arcadia pub shooting, he convened an ad hoc inter-agency group to examine the activities of local hoodlums. He invited officers from the local Garda Drug Squad and Customs to his office at the South Mall, Cork.
The group drew up a list of the top ten drug-traffickers in the region. At the top of the list were the members of the Munster Mafia. Over time, the various officers collated information in a detailed dossier that included employment records, criminal records, intelligence on known investments, property and business dealings, lists of known associates, the cars they drove, the holidays they took and the homes they lived in. When it was completed Galvin sent it to the Revenue Commissioners in Dublin. He included an extensive covering report, suggesting how the existing tax codes could be used to make life uncomfortable for the mobsters. He got no response.
Despite the frustrating setback, Galvin was determined to make life difficult for one member of the crime syndicate. He decided there was enough evidence to pursue a criminal prosecution against Tommy O’Callaghan, for failure to make tax returns contrary to sections of the 1983 Finance Act. The gang boss was shocked when he was convicted and jailed for six months. O’Callaghan appealed the conviction to the High Court but lost. However, he subsequently appealed to the Supreme Court and won his case.
The State Solicitor was also concerned at how Europe’s criminal elite saw Ireland as an ideal bolt-hole from justice. Major international drug barons, like Dutch trafficker Jan Hendrik Ijpelaar and Englishman David Huck, presided over their empires from the safety of their luxury homes in counties Clare and Kerry. Intelligence sources were also aware that Ireland was a gateway for some of Europe’s biggest gangs. They were using isolated Irish inlets to smuggle huge quantities of drugs, intended for transportation onwards to the UK and the Continent. Galvin wrote dozens of detailed and well-researched reports for the various departments, outlining what needed to be done. No one in authority wanted to know and the campaigning Cork man was seen as a nuisance.
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