Badfellas

by Paul Williams

  In the face of such a level of denial, and fuelled by his crusading zeal, Galvin decided to share the unpalatable truth with the Irish public. In 1992 he put his neck on the line when he appeared on the Late Late Show. For the first time since Saor Eire started robbing banks in 1967, someone from the cutting edge was prepared to shine a light on the true extent of organized crime in Ireland. Galvin revealed how wealthy villains, both local and foreign, were able to enjoy their ill-gotten gains and that nothing was being done about it. He described the West Cork coastline as the headquarters of international drug-trafficking into Europe and how the only two customs officers assigned to the region had no boat, radar or radios. He was seriously critical of the inaction of successive governments. The public was astounded by the amounts of money Galvin claimed the mobs were making. Most significantly, he called for the establishment of a single agency, combining the skills of Customs, Revenue and the Gardaí, similar to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in the US. Galvin’s media campaign put organized crime firmly on the national agenda – and incurred the collective wrath of the mobs and the Fianna Fáil Government.

  The revelations were seriously embarrassing for the administration. Instead of confronting the issues raised, the then Minister for Justice, Padraig Flynn, attempted to discredit Galvin. He claimed in the Dáil that Galvin had been ‘questioned’ and his allegations were found to have been exaggerated. In his sneering manner, Flynn conceded there was a drug problem, but stated it wasn’t of the scale ‘suggested by the State Solicitor for Cork’. It was further proof of how the State’s complacent attitude had allowed gangland to thrive over the previous two decades.

  ‘I was quite amazed at the reaction I got from Mr Flynn. It was an effort to suppress what I had to say and belie it as untruthful,’ Galvin recalled later in a rare interview. ‘Instead of dealing with the problem of organized crime they [Government] just tried to make it go away but it wasn’t going to go away. That was misleading the Dáil because he [Flynn] knew there was a serious problem because the reports that I had on file were available to him as Minister for Justice.’

  Over the next few years, Galvin was vindicated, as the Gardaí and Navy made a string of huge drug seizures around the coastline. One of them involved two tons of hashish on the Brime, a yacht owned by David Huck. The haul was intercepted by Gardaí and the Irish Navy off the Kerry coast in July 1993. The Moroccan cannabis was destined for England. The crew of four men – from England, Holland, Belgium and Ireland – were convicted and jailed. Huck was also subsequently caught by the British Navy with another shipment. One of the largest seizures made was a £10 million hash haul that belonged to the Munster Mafia.

  On 9 July 1994, a yacht called the Nicoletta arrived off the Galway coast with a ton of Moroccan cannabis on board. Undercover Gardaí watched as four men collected bales of hash from the yacht in a dinghy and brought them ashore. The men, criminals from Cork and Dublin, were loading the haul into a camper-van when they were surrounded by armed police. One of the four men arrested was John Dorgan’s associate Dave Healy. The other three were Patrick Kelleher from Shandon in Cork and Ronnie Byrne and John McKeown from Dublin. Byrne, from the inner-city and McKeown, from Finglas, were well-known drug-traffickers. Both men had originally been armed robbers and McKeown was an associate of PJ Judge. The joint operation was backed financially by Tommy O’Callaghan, John Dorgan and Patrick McSweeney. Two months earlier, over Stg£250,000 had been withdrawn by members of the Munster Mafia from local banks and sent abroad as part-payment for the load. The Nicoletta had been chartered in La Baule in France and set sail for the Moroccan coast on 22 May. The syndicate had originally agreed to buy three tons for Stg£3 million. But when the Moroccans met the yacht, they had just one ton on board. Rather than wait for the remainder of the shipment, the crew set sail for Ireland, where an international surveillance operation ensured that the Irish Navy and the Gardaí were waiting for them. The four men were subsequently convicted and jailed for up to ten years each. The seizure was further proof that Barry Galvin had been correct all along.

  Meanwhile, the O’Flynns had also suffered a number of major setbacks – although it didn’t stop them throwing their weight around. In 1994 the Cork Drug Squad caught Kieran O’Flynn with 53 kilos of hashish in a speed boat at Hop Island in Cork Harbour. O’Flynn had collected the drugs, which were dropped over the side of a container ship from Rotterdam as it approached Cork docks. He was arrested and charged. Due to the work of Barry Galvin and the Gardaí, O’Flynn was refused bail and was subsequently jailed for seven years. In the same year Christy O’Flynn was jailed when he pleaded guilty to shooting at another man with intent to do him grievous bodily harm in September 1992. And in 1995, Seanie O’Flynn was caught with over 100 kilos of hash by Spanish police in the Costa del Sol. While the investigation was continuing, the Godfather was held in a Spanish prison.

  Back in Cork the enforced absence of three important members of the family business presented unique opportunities for the Munster Mafia. A new generation of young, hardened criminals emerged to claim a stake in the drug trade. One of them was a violent young thug called Michael ‘Danser’ Ahern, from Churchfield Green on Cork’s north-side. Ahern was a protégé of Tommy O’Callaghan. Born in 1967, Danser had been a champion under-16 boxer and could ‘sort out’ other criminals who got in his way.

  Ahern was the leader of a tough new gang with big ambitions. When John Gilligan set up his huge drug-dealing empire, Ahern’s mob were major customers. Danser was a close friend of Brian Meehan, Paul Ward and Peter Mitchell. Through O’Callaghan, his gang also had associations with the crime organizations run by the Penguin and Tommy Savage. Ahern had plenty of reason to be cocky. With the three O’Flynn brothers out of the way, he saw his chance to expand.

  Ahern’s mob began pushing into territory controlled by the O’Flynns on the north-side of the city. This led to confrontations between the ‘soldiers’ on both sides, involving fist-fights and stabbings. It wasn’t long before they resorted to firearms, leading to one of the first major gang wars in the history of organized crime.

  On 4 November 1993, Paul ‘Mossy’ O’Sullivan, a close associate of Ahern, was drinking in the Unicorn Bar on Great William O’Brien Street. Around 10.45 p.m. two men called his name at the door. When he walked out to investigate, he met two men who were wearing motorbike helmets. One of them produced a handgun and shot O’Sullivan twice, hitting him in the neck and head. The victim was critically injured and a Garda spokesman later revealed that the hit men clearly intended killing him. O’Sullivan was confined to a wheelchair as a result of his injuries. Michael Crinnion and members of the O’Flynn family were later arrested and questioned about the attack but there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone. Ahern and his gang pulled back from O’Flynn territory – but not for long.

  In January 1995, the uneasy peace was shattered when the O’Flynns made a move into Ahern’s drug-dealing territory in the sprawling estates in Churchfield and Gurranabraher. Ten of Ahern’s dealers were taken aside by a mob led by Crinnion and threatened. The enforcer said that they would be shot if they didn’t switch their allegiances. Ahern decided that it was time to finish the job that John Dorgan and Tommy O’Callaghan had started in 1991. The O’Flynns, particularly Duckie, Bobby and their brother-in-law Crinnion, would have to be wiped out.

  Ahern turned to his friends in the Gilligan gang for help. Brian Meehan and Paul Ward were happy to oblige. The gang had a large arsenal of automatic weapons and Meehan was anxious to try them out on some real people. On 11 February 1995 they launched the first strike. That night three men, wearing balaclavas and overalls, burst into the Steeple Bar on Shandon Street. Crinnion, Bobby and Duckie O’Flynn had been drinking there all evening but had left 15 minutes earlier. Ahern and his accomplices called out their names and when they discovered that they were gone, ordered the patrons to get on the floor. They sprayed the walls and ceiling with bullets. No one was injured but the young drug-dealers s
ucceeded in sending a message to the O’Flynns – it was a declaration of war. In another incident a lone gunman fired a shot at Crinnion as a warning, and he also received death threats. The gang sent him a bullet in the post, but the enforcer laughed it off and let it be known that he wasn’t afraid.

  In retaliation the O’Flynn gang abducted one of Ahern’s associates on 28 February. They took him at gunpoint to Ballinhassig outside the city, where he was shot in the arm. He managed to get away before he was recaptured and finished off.

  The stakes were about to get even higher. Ahern and his mob decided it was time to murder Michael Crinnion. In March, Gardaí foiled a potential attack when they stopped two members of Ahern’s gang who were following the enforcer. A month later the gang were more successful. On the night of Saturday 8 April, Crinnion was working as a bouncer at the An Clannad Bar on Barrack Street, a short distance from a local Garda station. He regularly worked there and Duckie and Bobby O’Flynn were inside drinking. Crinnion was talking to the pub owner when a man walked by. As he passed Crinnion, the hit man suddenly turned and fired five shots into the enforcer, before running off. The gangland hard man collapsed and died in the pub doorway.

  On the day and night of the murder, Danser Ahern and his closest associate ensured they had a cast-iron alibi by staying in a hotel in Dublin. Gardaí later received reliable information that led them to believe that Brian Meehan was the gunman and that a number of other members of the Gilligan gang were in Cork that night. No one was ever charged with the killing.

  Michael Crinnion’s murder attracted considerable media attention on the crime family and the underworld scene in Cork. The killing was to herald a steady increase in gangland executions around the country, as the 1990s would see some of the worst violence yet in the story of organized crime. At his funeral, Fr Brendan Whooley berated the press for the ‘lack of mercy and compassion’ shown in their reports about Crinnion’s brutal career as a gangster. He warned journalists to ‘judge not, lest you be judged’. A half hour later, as the funeral cortège was leaving the church, Duckie O’Flynn and a mob attacked and seriously injured an RTÉ cameraman who was covering the event. When Fr Whooley, still dressed in his ceremonial robes, tried to intervene, the gang roughly pushed him aside.

  Over the following days the Cork Examiner and its sister paper, the Evening Echo, ran a campaign exposing the activities of the O’Flynns. Duckie O’Flynn and one of his associates, Martin O’Donovan, threatened to burn down Togher Post Office if it continued to sell the newspapers. They also threatened staff in a second store.

  Gardaí launched an investigation into the incidents and into the assault on the cameraman. O’Flynn and O’Donovan were both charged. The case was handled personally by Barry Galvin. Duckie O’Flynn was subsequently jailed for two years for the attack on the RTÉ man. Duckie and O’Donovan were also convicted and jailed for threatening the shop-owners.

  The murder of Crinnion and the imprisonment of several more members of the O’Flynn family left the gang weak and in disarray. Shortly afterwards Seanie O’Flynn was jailed for three years by a court in Malaga. But the O’Flynns were not the only Cork criminals who were having difficulties with the law.

  In March 1997 the newly formed Cork Divisional Drug Unit, headed by then Detective Superintendent Tony Quilter, had another major success against the Munster Mafia. They caught Judd Scanlan in the process of swapping £20,000 worth of ecstasy for six kilos of hash. Quilter’s squad couldn’t believe their luck. One of Cork’s Mr Bigs had decided to be hands-on in what was a relatively small deal for the mob. Quilter, who later became the head of the Garda National Drug Unit (and recently promoted to Assistant Commissioner) was the bane of local drug-traffickers. He’d led the investigation which resulted in the capture of Kieran O’Flynn and was also involved in targeting other members of the family, who tried to intimidate the cop but failed. Scanlan was convicted and jailed for 22 years on the drugs charges in 1999. It was one of the stiffest sentences ever handed down to a drug-dealer. Six years into his sentence Scanlan appealed his case on a point of law and was granted bail while a retrial was pending. In 2007 he was found dead at his home, after dying during a binge of booze and drugs.

  In the meantime the Divisional Drug Unit had scored a string of major successes against the Munster mobs. One seven-month undercover investigation, codenamed ‘Operation Blackwater’, was a combined initiative between Quilter’s unit, the GNDU and the National Surveillance Unit. It resulted in the seizure of millions of pounds’ worth of cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis. In one seizure alone Gardaí intercepted £500,000 worth of ecstasy and another £5 million worth of hashish, in a shipment organized by Danser Ahern and his mob. As a result Ahern moved his operating base to Portugal to stay out of harm’s way.

  The Munster Mafia’s old enemy wasn’t having much luck either. When Seanie O’Flynn was released in April 1998, he set about reorganizing the family business. He moved to the city of Utrecht in Holland and began dealing with a major Dutch ecstasy supplier. Back in Cork, the Divisional Drug Unit began liaising with their Dutch colleagues in a bid to catch the dangerous gangster again. As a result of the co-operation between the two police forces, a trap was set for O’Flynn by undercover Dutch cops. They had been tapping his phones and keeping him under surveillance for weeks when they struck gold. They were aware that he had done a deal for 25,000 ecstasy tablets, which were to be smuggled back to Cork. O’Flynn agreed to pay £45,000 for the haul, which had a street value of £250,000. Seanie’s potential profit from the deal was at least £100,000 – and this was just one of several deals he had successfully organized. At 5 a.m. on 15 August 1998, the police watched as O’Flynn met his Dutch contact and handed over the cash. The officers made their move when they saw Seanie putting the tablets in the boot of his car. He was charged and put in custody.

  Seanie O’Flynn’s first trial appearance on the drugs charge was adjourned when he went berserk in court. He was enraged by the sight of an RTÉ camera-crew who had been given permission to record the proceedings. Seanie began screaming and grabbed court documents to shield his face. ‘I’m not taking part while the camera is around,’ he shouted at the judges. O’Flynn refused to recognize the court and fired his lawyers as he was led back to the holding cells.

  When his trial resumed, O’Flynn claimed that he had not been involved in trafficking but had only agreed to transport the drugs. On New Year’s Eve 1998, he was convicted on the drugs charge and given a lenient two-year sentence. With a third taken off the sentence for good behaviour and the four months he had already been in custody, O’Flynn was facing only a year behind bars. He couldn’t believe his luck. The presiding judge said he took into account the fact that Seanie’s privacy had been violated by the presence of the TV cameras and that he had no previous convictions in Holland. When the judge finished delivering the sentence O’Flynn smiled and thanked him. When asked if he wanted to appeal the sentence, the Cork gangster shook his head and replied: ‘No, no, definitely not.’

  The Dutch prosecution service appealed the sentence, however, on the grounds that the jail term was too short. In July 1999, the Amsterdam Court of Appeal ruled that he should serve three years. The judges said that they were satisfied that O’Flynn was a drug-trafficker. One of Cork’s most notorious Godfathers had to spend a further eight months behind bars, but if he’d been caught for the same offence in Ireland he would have been facing at least eight years.

  When he was released from prison in 2000, O’Flynn moved to Spain and was a lot more careful about how he conducted business. But there were more problems in store for the crime family. In Cork, his brother Kieran had established his own drug-distribution network which, according to local sources, had caused a bitter falling out with Seanie in Spain. But Kieran’s operation would not last for long.

  At 11.15 p.m. on the night of 7 June 2001, Kieran O’Flynn was watching a movie called The Hitman when there was a loud knock on the front door of his home at Thorndale Est
ate, in Togher. As the 40-year-old was about to open the door, a gunman fired two shots through the glass, hitting the drug-dealer in the throat and chest. As the drug-dealer fell back into the hallway, the hit man stepped inside and finished him off with two more shots. O’Flynn choked to death on his own blood, as his partner and children looked on in horror.

  Seanie O’Flynn didn’t show up for his younger brother’s funeral. It was a quiet affair, reflecting the fact that the family had lost their power in the gangland jungle. In 2010, the dissident republican group the Real IRA claimed responsibility for the murder. It also declared it had carried out four other murders in Cork and Dublin which had been classified as gangland executions. The group claimed it had carried out murders to protect communities from the ravages of drugs. But the truth was the total opposite. The Real IRA, like the INLA, is nothing more than a criminal organization. It murdered O’Flynn because he refused to give them a cut of the action, and claimed the kill to scare other drug-dealers into paying protection money. No one was ever convicted of Kieran O’Flynn’s murder, which brought an end to the family’s dominance of the local drug trade. Duckie and Christy O’Flynn both died separately from what were described as natural causes.

  Seanie O’Flynn continues to live in Spain, but his one-time enemy, Danser Ahern, also came to a gruesome end, in Portugal. From his base in the Algarve, Ahern had established a huge multi-million-Euro business, shipping high-quality cocaine to gangs in Dublin and Cork. In 2005 the GNDU targeted the gang and made a number of major cocaine seizures in Dublin, including a cocaine-mixing factory, and a number of people were charged. The busts caused a rift in the gang and Ahern was blamed. In September 2005, he was snatched near his home in Lagos outside Albufeira. He was beaten, stabbed and shot four times in the head by his partners. Portuguese police found the Cork villain’s body stuffed into a freezer. His killers were planning to cut up the corpse to get rid of it. Four Irishmen, three of whom were from Cork, were acquitted of Ahern’s murder but convicted of perverting the course of justice.