Retired Detective Inspector Todd O’Loughlin had extensive experience of the life expectancy of a successful Godfather. ‘The reality is that none of these gangs last any longer than three to four years before the leaders are murdered and someone else takes over. PJ Judge was murdered and replaced by Marlo Hyland. He in turn was disposed of by Eamon Dunne. Now he too is dead. It is a tragically predictable cycle,’ he said.
‘People get involved in organized crime because there is big money to be made. Some people get in at the small end and suddenly it grows and they find themselves high up in the pyramid. These drug pyramids are effectively pyramids of death. They find that they are facing the possibility of being murdered because they have lost a drug shipment or haven’t paid for one or are under suspicion that they are talking to somebody,’ O’Loughlin continued. ‘Because CAB has been so effective, money is now being stashed in attics, in woods and other places. And inevitably money goes missing and this is a death sentence for the individual who has control of that money. This is one of the main reasons for most of the gangland murders I investigated.’
John McGroarty, former chief of the Drug Squad, agreed: ‘In modern times drugs underlie so much of the murder and mayhem that it is hard to find a [gangland] murder that isn’t attributable to drugs and internecine gang rivalries. They fall out, double-cross one another and steal each other’s shipments of drugs. The problem for a gang leader is to stay alive and as soon as he perceives somebody as being a threat to his operation or his life, well then something very definite and permanent is going to be done about it.’
Dr Liz Campbell of Aberdeen University studied Ireland’s new culture of gangland violence. Her paper, ‘Responding to Gun Crime in Ireland’, was published in the British Journal of Criminology in 2010. Dr Campbell stated: ‘Proportionately speaking Ireland has five times as many gun killings than in comparable countries like England, Scotland and Wales and there are legitimate concerns, particularly in relation to Limerick.’ In 2008, for example, she found that 38.2 per cent of murders and manslaughters committed in the Republic involved firearms; in the same year, gun killings in England and Wales accounted for just 6.8 per cent of the total. The respected academic argued, however, that tougher laws and harsher sentences were not a solution – and represented ‘an unduly narrow perspective’. Dr Campbell suggested that tough sanctions clearly didn’t deter the killers. Education and more police on the streets of urban black-spots was one of the solutions she offered. She commented: ‘It [gangland crime] is an intersection of urban deprivation, the drugs trade and also an expression of masculinity on the part of the individuals involved. This is certainly a male crime.’
In 1999, there were ten gangland murders in Ireland, which was the highest number yet recorded since the emergence of organized crime. By the end of 2010 the average annual death toll had doubled to 20 as more and more criminals expressed their masculinity – and set a trend which has plagued the streets of Irish cities and towns ever since.
On Sunday 9 January 2000, a couple strolling on the banks of the Grand Canal near Aylmer Bridge at Kearneystown in County Kildare made a gruesome discovery. The walkers were first drawn to a human hand, pointing up from the dark, freezing water. On closer examination they realized that there was a naked body of a man lying face-up in the still canal. With chilling symbolism, the body’s right arm had a tattoo of the Grim Reaper that had been partially eaten away by animals. It seemed like the corpse of the murdered young man had beckoned from his watery grave. When firemen pulled the body from the water they discovered a gaping gunshot wound to the right cheek. The area was immediately sealed off by Gardaí and Crime Scene Investigators were brought in.
The following morning a Garda diver, who was searching for a murder weapon in the canal, located the fully clothed body of a second man. He was lying face-down, in just over a metre of water, a short distance from where the first body had been found. His face had been blown off. He also had a second gunshot wound to the chest.
Reports of the gruesome crime dominated news coverage in Ireland and also featured internationally. Only once in gangland history had there been a double execution before 2000 – when drug-dealer Eddie McCabe and his innocent companion, Catherine Brennan, were ambushed in Tallaght, West Dublin in 1995 (see Chapter 18). But there would be many more in the following years. The double murder served to symbolize Gangland’s vision of the future.
The naked body was that of 19-year-old Patrick ‘Whacker’ Murray, a small-time hash-dealer from Ballyfermot, who was last seen alive on 29 December. The other murder victim was 21-year-old Darren Carey from Kilmainham, who was involved in the heroin trade in West Dublin. He was last seen on 30 December. His injuries were so horrific that he had to be positively identified by his moustache, hair and eyebrows.
State Pathologist Professor Marie Cassidy found that both men had been executed with a shotgun blast to the head. The blast had fractured Patrick Murray’s right cheekbone. Shotgun pellets had sliced through the brain tissue and become embedded on the inside of the skull. The large amount of soot around the entry wound indicated that the gun was held close to his head when fired. Death had been instantaneous. The body was then dumped in the cold water, helping to preserve it. There were no other injuries on the body to indicate that Murray had been beaten or restrained before his murder. Nor did he have any defensive injuries.
Darren Carey had also been shot, twice at close range – in the chest and head – with a shotgun. Prof. Cassidy felt that Carey had first been shot in the head, with the blast aimed through the bridge of the nose. A large exit wound shattered the base of the skull. The second shot had been aimed at the left side of the chest. Forensic experts found traces of blood and bone tissue on the opposite bank to where the body was found. DNA analysis later confirmed that the tissue belonged to Carey. It confirmed that he had been murdered on the canal bank, while Murray was killed somewhere else.
The investigation of the Grand Canal murders was the largest underworld manhunt since the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin, less than four years earlier. The level of public revulsion and shock at the crimes ensured that it got top priority. The young desperados had crossed the Rubicon and had set a chilling precedent.
The officer in charge of the investigation was Assistant Commissioner Tony Hickey. All enquiries led back to the heroin trade, lifting the lid on the sordid underbelly of drug rackets in twenty-first-century Ireland. It was a world filled with desolate young addicts who had to endure constant violence and terror at the hands of the dealers who enslaved them. The finger of suspicion for the outrage fell on Mark Desmond, a brutal 24-year-old thug from Ballyfermot. A member of the M50 gang, Desmond got the nickname ‘the Guinea Pig’ after he volunteered to undertake clinical drug tests for money. It was the only time he ever attempted to earn an honest crust. After the double murders of Carey and Murray the media gave him a new nickname – ‘the Canal Butcher’.
Born in 1975, Mark Desmond had been involved in violent crime since his early teens. He was every bit as sinister and violent as the Westies. Desmond, along with heroin-dealers Derek ‘Dee Dee’ O’Driscoll and Seanie Comerford, had been one of the masterminds behind the notorious 1995 Gallanstown riots. Desmond sold heroin for O’Driscoll and also acted as the M50 gang’s enforcer, dispensing pain and terror. As part of PJ Judge’s network in Finglas, Desmond in particular showed that he was just as dangerous as the Psycho. When he was 16, Mark threatened other drug-pushers with a shotgun and stole their ‘gear’. He was also responsible for a string of shootings and stabbings. After Judge’s murder, Desmond and his pals were among those who swooped to fill the vacuum it created.
The M50 mob built up an extensive heroin-dealing operation. They also supplied a growing demand in provincial towns in the Midlands. Since the late 1990s, heroin abuse had spread and was no longer confined to the cities. Athlone, County Westmeath was one of the first towns to be hit by the plague.
The Canal Butcher inherited his pr
edilection for violence from his father, ‘Dinny Boy’ Desmond, who was a heavy for hire and had been involved in protection rackets since the 1960s. Dinny Boy sorted all arguments, even petty disputes, with his fists. The drunken bully terrorized his wife and children and they suffered the brunt of his fists when he was drunk or just in a bad mood. Despite the beatings, Mark Desmond idolized his father; his other role model was Martin Cahill, a close friend of Desmond’s father. The Guinea Pig aspired to become Gangland’s new General.
Desmond stood out from other up-and-coming young hoods. He had a fascination for guns and enjoyed inflicting pain, including on members of his own family. As a child he was a talented boxer, with a promising career in the sport until he dropped out. Instead he used his ‘talents’, and his father’s reputation, to push his weight around and beat up anyone who annoyed him. When he left school at the age of 13, Mark Desmond could barely read and write. During the Garda investigation into the Grand Canal murders, Desmond’s brother summed up Mark’s personality: ‘I have nothing to do with my brother; he is a header, a loner, a fucking psycho,’ he told cops. Desmond’s younger sister described Mark as a ‘mad bastard’ with a violent temper. She explained how once, when he was in a ‘bad mood’, he had smashed up the home of their mother, Elizabeth. His girlfriend, with whom he had a son in 1999, also told police about the horrendous physical and verbal abuse she had suffered from her lover. On one occasion he put a shotgun to her head and threatened to kill her.
The Guinea Pig grew up with utter contempt for the police and let them know it at every possible opportunity. He regularly threatened to kill officers who crossed him and often followed individual Gardaí to their homes, in an attempt to intimidate them. One detective who knew him well recalled: ‘From the time he was a kid he was showing seriously violent tendencies. He really was a very nasty character who bullied and terrorized his neighbourhood. Everyone was afraid of him. We knew of several incidents in which he had beaten or sliced people up over petty disputes. He had shot at people; he tried to burn their houses. Desmond preyed on young drug addicts, who he used as slaves in his heroin business. They lived in constant terror of the man which is why it was impossible for us to get anyone to give evidence against him in court. He was psychotic and he left us in no doubt that he could easily shoot one of us.’
If he was questioned about a crime Desmond would do everything to distract – and frequently repulse – officers. One detective recalled his typical behaviour: ‘He would be totally unpredictable, a real bastard to deal with, just like Martin Cahill. Desmond would throw himself on the ground and begin screaming and taking off his clothes. He would pick his nose and then eat it in front of you. He would offer to share it with his interrogators in the hope that someone might get sick. He would fart and belch and spit. Then he progressed to rubbing his own shit across his face. He was a complete animal.’
The Guinea Pig had a natural talent for the savage new methods being used to run the drug trade. He controlled much of the heroin being sold on a patch that included Lower Ballyfermot and St Michael’s Estate in Inchicore. St Michael’s Estate was a Corporation flat complex that had become rundown and neglected. It was a popular centre for the wholesale dealing of heroin, making life utterly miserable for the residents who were trying to give their kids a decent upbringing. Heroin addicts from all over Dublin descended on the complex every day to buy their ‘gear’. One young drug addict who worked for Desmond told police that he was collecting up to €2,500 a day for his boss.
Desmond waged a campaign of terror on his patch. He controlled a large group of hopeless drug addicts who were totally dependent on him for their daily fix. Many of them were as young as 15 and they became his glorified slaves. A number of them, both male and female, would later claim to Gardaí that, in addition to horrific beatings from Desmond, they had been sexually assaulted and raped. The girlfriend of one of Desmond’s dealers described how the Guinea Pig seemed to get a ‘rush’ whenever he witnessed her being beaten by her boyfriend. If anyone stepped out of line they were severely beaten, stabbed or shot. The same treatment was meted out to anyone with the temerity to encroach on his patch. In a two-year period leading up to the murders of Murray and Carey, Desmond had been responsible for an astonishing catalogue of violent incidents.
The one-man crime wave shot and seriously injured at least five people who had crossed him. Drug-pusher Mark McLoughlin incurred the wrath of the Guinea Pig when he started selling ‘gear’ on Desmond’s turf. In January 1995 McLoughlin was abducted and taken into the Dublin Mountains. Desmond stripped him naked and tied him to a tree. Then he whipped McLoughlin with copper wire, before leaving him naked and injured on a mountain road in the freezing night air. McLoughlin survived the incident and made a complaint to police. Desmond was charged with abduction and assault but the charges were dropped when the victim was forced to flee the country. In another incident Desmond smashed a broken bottle into the face of a teenager who’d ripped him off for about €2,000. The boy’s father gave Desmond a beating. In retaliation, the Guinea Pig poured petrol over a horse owned by the man and set the animal ablaze.
Despite several attempts to bring him before the courts, Desmond’s campaign of terror ensured that witnesses and victims were too afraid to press charges against him. He was also very hard to catch in the act of handling drugs or guns. He was paranoid about informants and he beat and tortured anyone whom he so much as suspected of ‘ratting’. Like his hero the General, he was also obsessive about not leaving finger-prints or other forensic evidence on his drugs or guns. Desmond also regularly covered his face.
The event which ultimately led to the Grand Canal murders took place on 3 December 1999. Patrick Murray and another Ballyfermot youth, 18-year-old Gary Kelly, were arrested in Dublin Airport carrying a kilo of heroin between them, worth over €200,000. The drug mules were bringing the ‘gear’ back from Amsterdam for Desmond when customs officers pulled them over for a search. The Guinea Pig’s gang had decided to buy their heroin directly from Holland. There they could buy it cheaper and cut out the middlemen, like Dee Dee O’Driscoll. One of Desmond’s partners was Darren Carey, who, coincidentally, was living with the daughter of veteran heroin drug-trafficker Martin Kenny, the one-time associate of the Dunnes.
Desmond and Carey had flown to Holland to establish a contact for the drugs. Then they recruited the two hapless mules to do the run for them. Murray, who was not an addict, had been selling small amounts of hash for Desmond and Carey. But his stash had been stolen and Murray owed the monster almost €4,000. Desmond said he would halve the bill if the mule brought the heroin back from Amsterdam. Murray and Kelly made their fatal mistake when they decided to take a direct flight from Schipol Airport to Dublin. Desmond had instructed them to travel by boat, via the UK. When the bedraggled pair stepped off the plane, they were instantly tagged by Customs. The teenagers were searched and arrested by Gardaí. They were charged under the Misuse of Drugs Act.
When he heard the news of the bust, Desmond flew into a blood-curdling rage. The violent drug lord questioned his two couriers about what they had said while in police custody. The two mules admitted that the detectives had been particularly interested in Desmond, but they went to great lengths to convince him that they had given nothing away and were prepared to do time for the drugs. The Guinea Pig informed Murray that he now owed him €38,000 as punishment for losing the drug haul. Desmond also warned Kelly: ‘Keep your mouth shut, do your time and you’ll be okay. I don’t take prisoners.’
In the days leading up to Christmas it appeared that Desmond had decided not to take any further action against his couriers. On Christmas night he illustrated his festive spirit at a family party, when he stabbed and seriously injured his cousin Jonathan Desmond – no charges were pressed.
A few days later, however, the Guinea Pig contacted Carey and told him to set up a meeting with Murray to ‘sort out’ the drug-bust issue. Desmond had got paranoid that Murray might agree to be
come a witness for the State. On 29 December the nervous drug mule went to meet Desmond. Murray was never seen alive again.
Investigators would later discover that Murray was murdered a short time after he went to meet Desmond. They were satisfied that the murder had taken place somewhere other than the canal and had probably been witnessed by Carey, who then panicked. There was phone evidence that Carey made several attempts to contact Desmond the following day. That evening Carey travelled with Desmond and another gang member, Noel ‘Fat Boy’ Foy, a nephew of the General’s brother-in-law, to dump Murray’s body. When the naked body was dumped in the canal, Carey was shot in the face and then the chest. Before he was murdered Murray had told Desmond that Carey had been ripping him off. The paranoid Canal Butcher was also fearful that Carey, who was upset by the murder, would go to the police.
The Garda investigation into the double murder unearthed a horror story that even shocked some of the most hardened detectives on the job. A number of witnesses, including Jonathan Desmond, gave Gardaí full statements about the double killing. Mark’s cousin also showed detectives where Desmond had hidden two stolen shotguns and a rifle, under a garden shed in Ballyfermot. A member of the public had also found another shotgun hidden in a hedge in Clondalkin. Forensic tests later showed that the weapon, a Churchill double-barrelled shotgun, had been used in the murders. Forensic examination linked the Churchill and the other weapons and cartridges to those used in the murders. The guns had been stolen by drug addicts from Athlone, County Westmeath. The junkies took the weapons during burglaries throughout the Midlands and bartered them with Desmond for heroin.
In the meantime the Canal Butcher had fled to England, where he was being kept under surveillance by the police. In March 2000 he returned to Ireland and was arrested on an outstanding warrant for a three-month jail sentence for road traffic offences. While Desmond was inside, the Gardaí built their case against him.
Badfellas Page 47
