In early 1994, the Gardaí came as close as they would ever get to the heart of George Mitchell’s organization when he rented a yard and large lock-up building in Mount Brown in Kilmainham, West Dublin. The premises were perfect for what he had in mind. The lock-up was situated on a small lane, surrounded by a high wall and steel gate. Drug shipments, arms deals, armed robberies and hijackings were organized by the Penguin’s mob from the yard. The lock-up was used to store stolen goods and vehicles. Cash and valuables taken in various heists were also handed over to Mitchell there, who invested the loot in cannabis, ecstasy and firearms. The mob soon had access to an awesome arsenal of firepower. One Serious Crime Squad officer recalled: ‘It was a very efficient operation and the yard in Mount Brown was run like a central depot for a large legitimate business. There were about fifteen in the gang and they were up to everything.’
The existence of the Penguin’s crime depot first came to police attention during a routine investigation by the Drug Squad when they tailed a suspected drug-dealer there. It was decided to keep a discreet eye on the yard to see what was going on.
The discovery of the yard coincided with the appointment of Detective Chief Superintendent Kevin Carty as the new head of the Central Detective Unit. Carty, who had spent most of his earlier career as a Special Branch officer, was one of the force’s most talented officers, with an impressive reputation as a resourceful investigator. On one occasion he was awarded a Scott Medal for bravery when he disarmed and arrested a wanted IRA man. Carty was unarmed and off-duty at the time. He was an astute strategist who believed in taking a proactive, enlightened approach to criminal investigations. The new CDU boss disagreed with a policing policy which was driven by budgets and a reluctance to mount long-term, costly operations. Carty believed that to catch a criminal you had to invest time and resources to get the job done. He pursued a policy of recruiting informants in the underworld and using the latest sophisticated surveillance techniques.
Within days of his arrival in the summer of 1994, Carty and his new second-in-command, Det. Supt Austin McNally, convened a conference for detectives to assess the preliminary surveillance on the yard. It was obvious that it was a meeting place for George Mitchell, Johnny Doran, Frank Ward, John McGrail, Mickey Boyle, Danny Hamill and several other major-league villains, who had been spotted regularly visiting the yard. Members of the Drug Squad, Serious Crime Squad, National Surveillance Unit (NSU) and the Emergency Response Unit (ERU) were mobilized to take on the Penguin’s mob. Carty decided there was only one way to find out what the villains were up to – covert surveillance, using microphones and cameras. Late one night a team of surveillance experts, led by Detective Sergeant Pat Walsh, secretly gained access to the yard. Walsh was the resourceful and unconventional undercover investigator who’d recruited Liam Judge as an informant. Known as ‘Feshty’ to his colleagues, he was a legendary character among the ranks of Ireland’s thief-takers. Over a period of almost twenty years his work as a ‘spook’ led to the seizure of hundreds of millions of pounds worth of drugs and the conviction of dozens of underworld players.
The surveillance soon began to produce remarkable results. One SCS member recalled: ‘It was amazing. Not a day would go by without some crime being planned there. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. They were talking about all kinds of criminal activity. It was clear that they considered the yard a completely safe haven.’
As the operation continued into September, the SCS was gleaning an awesome amount of top-grade intelligence. The main problem for the investigation squad was how to deal with each crime without making it obvious that the yard had been compromised. If the gang abandoned it then the investigation would be over.
A month after the murder of Martin Cahill, the Gardaí had their first major break-through when Mitchell imported a cache of deadly machine-guns and automatic pistols for the IRA. The weapons – 9mm Heckler and Koch, MP5 machine-guns and Glock pistols – were smuggled into the country with a load of drugs in the back of a container truck organized by Liam Judge. It was the Penguin’s way of keeping the terrorists off his back. Carty’s team recovered two MP5s and five Glock pistols in a search of bogland near Clane, County Kildare. They also found a large amount of ammunition and drugs. In another search, two Armalite military assault rifles were found. It confirmed one chilling piece of information overheard through the hidden microphones – the gang members were prepared to shoot their way out of trouble if they were confronted by the police.
The Penguin’s newest recruit, Frank Ward, had been using the yard to store guns and stolen getaway cars. He was already back on the list of the Serious Crime Squad’s most wanted criminals. In December 1992 officers had raided an apartment used by Ward in upmarket Dublin 4. During the search they found a number of disguises, including wigs and false beards. They also discovered detailed notes of surveillance carried out on a bank official in County Meath, as well as on the movements and transport used by the distinguished Senior Counsel Adrian Hardiman (now a Supreme Court judge). Gardaí suspected that Ward and his associates were planning to abduct the two men. There was insufficient evidence with which to charge Ward, but the police arrested the robber and let him know that they were on to his scam. The plot was immediately aborted.
Ward recruited his 26-year-old nephew, David Lynch, into the gang. Lynch was also from Sligo and was every bit as violent as his uncle. Lynch, who had served time with Ward in Portlaoise Prison, was released from jail in 1994 after a five-year stretch for armed robbery. He wasted no time getting back to business. On 8 April 1994, Ward and Lynch robbed the Bank of Ireland in Nenagh, County Tipperary. They later crashed their getaway car, hijacked a Telecom Eireann van at gunpoint and escaped. Over the following months Ward and his nephew did at least four similar jobs together. But their days were numbered.
The officers listening in on the yard heard that Ward and Lynch were planning another robbery. During the covert operation, Carty’s men had also planted tracking devices on a number of the stolen cars. On 23 October, a major operation was mobilized when the electronic tracking system alerted the cops that one of the cars was on the move. Officers followed as Ward parked the car, fitted with false plates, in the car park of the Children’s Hospital in Crumlin. Members of the NSU stayed in the area and waited for his next move. The officers in charge of the operation were aware that this was a potentially dangerous situation. They were aware of Ward’s extremely volatile personality and knew he would have no compunction shooting Gardaí if they intercepted him. Carty’s team also didn’t know what bank or town he intended to hit. They were anxious to avoid a confrontation similar to the one with the Athy Gang four years earlier.
The following morning a large team of detectives shadowed Ward as he left the hospital car park. He took a meandering journey, through country back roads, heading west. The surveillance and back-up teams stayed out of sight because Ward was always on the look-out for the police. An Air Corps’ Cessna spotter aircraft, equipped with tracking equipment, was scrambled to monitor his progress. Eventually Ward made his way to Longford Town, where he met Lynch off the Dublin train. Lynch was carrying a .357 Magnum and a sawn-off shotgun in a hold-all bag. They put on bullet-proof vests, drove down the town and parked outside the Ulster Bank on Main Street. Seconds later they burst through the front door, threatening to shoot customers and staff. In less than a minute they took £10,000 in cash. They ran to the getaway car and sped out of town, towards Mullingar.
The local Garda station was alerted to the raid and officers arrived at the bank within a minute. The surveillance and SCS teams heard the call on their radios and headed in the direction of the tracker signal. Ward took to the back roads but was being tracked all the way by the spotter-plane. The pilot relayed the raiders’ progress to the SCS and the other units closing in on the ground, while an ERU team set up an ambush. When Ward spotted the road block he tried to reverse away but crashed. At the same moment an ERU officer threw a stun-grenade under the getaway
car to prevent the robbers opening fire. The two men were arrested following a violent struggle. Officers later discovered that the raiders were wearing bandages on their fingers and palms to avoid leaving prints behind them. They also wore wigs, false moustaches and make-up to obscure any chance of identifying them on the security video. Ward and Lynch were charged with the robbery, possession of firearms and an earlier heist.
Despite Garda objections, Ward was subsequently released on bail. But the SCS learned that Mitchell had agreed to help him flee the country. The notorious robber had obtained a legitimate passport, under a different name. They re-arrested Ward and his bail was revoked. In 1996 he pleaded guilty to two counts of armed robbery and was jailed for 11 years. Lynch was also convicted and sent to prison for eight years.
A month later, on 28 November 1994, Mitchell’s trusted sidekick, Johnny Doran, and 24-year-old David Lindsay from Baldoyle, North Dublin collected 50 kilos of hash from Liam Judge in Kildare. Lindsay was one of the new breed of young gangsters and he had greatly impressed the Godfather. As the two villains drove back to the yard, along the M50 motorway, they were intercepted by the SCS who tried to pull them over. Doran drove off at speed and the police gave chase. In his bid to get away Doran rammed one of the squad cars but lost control. A second squad car collided with the rear of his car and sent it spinning into a fence. Doran and Lindsay were arrested by the same team who’d nabbed Ward the previous month and charged with drug-trafficking offences. But the Penguin was anxious that his protégé didn’t take the rap and convinced Doran to put his hands up and accept responsibility. Doran was subsequently jailed for 12 years.
On two occasions other members of the gang came tantalizingly close to being caught red-handed. In one nail-biting episode, John McGrail, Danny Hamill and other gangsters were shadowed on their way to ambush a security van in Blackrock. A flat-bed truck had been stolen and brought back to the lock-up, where the gangsters had welded a large, sharp, metal girder to it, to smash open the doors of the security van. The Gardaí had watched the crew carry out surveillance on the movements of the security van over a number of weeks. On the morning of the job the gang set off with the truck and a number of getaway cars, one of them carrying weapons. As the gang drove towards Blackrock, a large force of detectives shadowed their every move. But the stolen truck was recognized by a friend of its owner. The man had phoned the Gardaí and started tailing the truck in his van. The conscientious citizen then blocked in the truck, while waiting for uniformed Gardaí to arrive. McGrail and his hoods immediately jumped out and ran away, to the absolute horror of the watching cops. There was nothing they could do and the sting operation was aborted.
The police made a number of other significant arrests but their main target, the Penguin, proved to be an elusive adversary. Mitchell decided to vacate the lock-up shortly afterwards, as he knew there was a chance that the recovery of the truck could lead police back to the yard. The gangsters had no idea how close they had come to a long stay in Portlaoise Prison.
By the mid-1990s Mitchell was one of the biggest suppliers of ecstasy to the Irish market. He bought the drugs in Holland, where they were made in huge, underground factories. When Mitchell visited one of these plants he decided that it would be much more profitable if he cut out the middleman and set up an Irish manufacturing operation. As Mitchell’s pals were being arrested for drug-offences and armed robbery he began putting his plan together with the Munster Mafia. Mitchell and Alan Buckley used another former Catholic priest, who was also a senior member of the IRA and a major crime figure, to buy a tablet-making machine for them in Liverpool for £1,000. The machine was then shipped into Ireland and stored in County Kildare. It had the capacity to make 62 tablets a minute. That minute’s production was worth £620 based on the average street price at that time. In full production the little factory had the capacity to churn out over £37,000 worth of the drug an hour – £300,000 per day or £2 million each week. It was a licence to print money.
Buckley approached Dubliner Terence Fitzsimmons to organize the day-to-day running of the operation. The Cork antiques dealer supplied him with money to rent various premises and buy chemicals. He also introduced Fitzsimmons to English chemist Brian Cooper, who would mix the chemicals for the tablets. In turn Fitzsimmons recruited 36-year-old Raymond Jones from Blanchardstown, whose job as a spray-painter and panel-beater meant that he was familiar with chemicals and the companies that supplied them. Using a false name, Jones then rented a warehouse in an industrial estate in Mulhuddart, West Dublin for £240 per month. Buckley gave Jones a list of the chemicals needed. To avoid arousing suspicion Jones convinced legitimate companies that he was involved in the manufacture of a steroid for Spanish bulls. He claimed the steroid reduced the amount of pain the bull felt and enabled it to fight longer.
When the chemicals were delivered they were moved to Wentworth House in Lucan, where Cooper made MDMA, the base chemical compound used in ecstasy. Buckley and Mitchell picked the remote location because of the chemical mix’s noxious odours. If the highly volatile chemicals were not mixed correctly they were also liable to explode. The MDMA was then to be transported to a rented farm shed at Spricklestown, near Ashbourne. Buckley promised Laurence Skelly, the owner of the farmhouse, a bonus of £5,000 when the first 9,000 tablets were made.
Mitchell and Buckley had no idea that they were under the eye of the newly formed Garda National Drug Unit (GNDU) and its chief, Kevin Carty. At the time Garda management had begun the process of finally modernizing the various detective units in the force. The old CDU had been reorganized as the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NBCI), which included the Serious Crime Squad, and the Fraud Squad became the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation. The NBCI was placed under the command of Tony Hickey, who was then a cheif superintendent. The new units were much larger. New drug squads were also being mobilized and trained in every Garda division and district in the country.
Carty and Det. Supt McNally had learned of the Penguin’s plot to establish the first E factory in the country from Liam Judge and the surveillance operation at Mitchell’s yard. In March 1995 an investigation, codenamed ‘Operation Barbie’, was launched. Over the following months the GNDU and SCS monitored the preparations from a discreet distance. The main objective of Operation Barbie was to catch Mitchell and Buckley on the production line. They observed the two crooks visiting the farm on a number of occasions to review the preparations. The Penguin was anxious to get things up and running but full production would take another three months. In the meantime he had some pressing problems to deal with.
George Mitchell’s main business associate in the UK underworld was one Peter Daley, the leader of a powerful South London gang. Daley’s organization was locked in a bloody feud with the Brindles, another notorious South London crime family. It was one of the worst gang wars seen in London since the days of the Richardsons and the Krays in the 1960s. The war broke out in August 1990 when armed associates of the Brindles walked into the Queen Elizabeth pub in Walworth, which was owned by John Daley. They demanded protection money and threatened Daley by placing a gun in his mouth. The following month Daley’s gang struck back. Ahmet ‘Turkish Abbi’ Abdullah was a member of a third feared South London crime family, the Arifs. The Arifs were major drug-traffickers, associates of Peter Daley and sworn enemies of the Brindles. Thirty-year-old Turkish Abbi, a convicted killer, walked into a drinking club and shot Brindle henchman Stephen Dalligan seven times. Dalligan survived the attack.
The war escalated in March 1991 when Turkish Abbi was shot dead by two gunmen in a South London betting-shop. Twenty-seven-year-old market trader Tony Brindle and his brother Patrick were charged with the murder. While they were out on bail their younger brother David visited Daley’s pub and began throwing his weight around. He was severely beaten by James Moody, one of Daley’s enforcers. The 52-year-old mobster was a former member of the Kray gang. The Brindles threatened to have Daley and Moody murdered.
; A few weeks later, in August, David Brindle was shot dead in The Bell pub in Walworth when two hit men burst in and sprayed the place with machine-gun fire. One of the killers shouted: ‘This one is for Abbi.’ Another innocent drinker, a grandfather, was also killed in the attack and five others were injured.
In May 1992 the trial of the Brindle brothers made British legal history. Jurors and witnesses were screened from the public gallery and the dock. The jurors were also given armed police protection for the duration of the trial. One witness who managed to make it to the stand told the judge that he could not give his evidence because he feared for his life. The Brindles were acquitted.
Over a year later, in June 1993, a man walked into the Royal Hotel pub in Hackney where James Moody was holding court, and ordered himself a pint. He took a long gulp, produced a handgun and shot James Moody four times in the head. Then in August 1994 another contract killer murdered two innocent men in a devastating blunder. The victims had been mistaken for Peter Daley and one of his henchmen. As the murder rate escalated the Daley gang decided they had to take more drastic action – and turned to George Mitchell for help.
Badfellas Page 41
