Badfellas

by Paul Williams

  Eamon Dunne decided he had played the part of the loyal lieutenant for long enough. As his boss became a liability Dunne saw his opportunity to stage a coup and joined forces with Cronin. Dunne approached Marlo’s loyal henchmen who’d carried out the Paddy Harte hit. They were still waiting for the €50,000 Hyland had promised them; they were also facing serious drug charges and long jail sentences. Dunne had little difficulty convincing them that the Godfather had to be terminated.

  Gardaí picked up intelligence that Hyland was a marked man and warned him that his life was in danger. The suspicious gangster had become very nervous about his personal security and moved to live with his niece, Elaine Hyland, and her family at Scribblestown Lane in Finglas. Eamon Dunne and his co-conspirators decided to hit Hyland at the house.

  On 12 December, Marlo woke up with a headache. He asked his niece for painkillers and went back to sleep. Around 8.54 a.m. plumber David Murphy and his 20-year-old trainee, Anthony Campbell, arrived to repair a number of radiators. Campbell had only been working with Murphy a few weeks and was happy to be making some extra money before Christmas. Elaine Hyland left the house to bring one of her children to school. Around the same time Murphy went to pick up some parts, leaving Anthony working alone.

  Marlo’s henchmen had been watching the house and reckoned that it was empty when they saw Elaine Hyland and the plumber leaving. The hit men used a key to get inside. When they discovered Anthony Campbell in the front room, one of the killers held him at gunpoint. The other hit man crept upstairs to Marlo’s bedroom. He fired two shots from an automatic pistol into the back of the gangster’s head, as he lay face down in the bed. He fired four more rounds into Marlo’s back for good measure. When the killer returned to the terrified young plumber he decided he didn’t want to leave a witness. The hit man raised his gun and fired a single shot at Anthony Campbell, who put his hands up to protect himself. The bullet passed through his arm and hit him in the side of the head. Anthony fell to the ground beside the radiator he had been repairing. Gangland had claimed another completely innocent victim.

  Six minutes after they first entered the house, the two killers left in a black Volkswagen Passat that had been stolen in County Kildare ten days earlier. They drove in the direction of Tolka Road. Eamon Dunne, who had been patrolling the area keeping watch for the police, followed in a second car. He picked up the hit men on Glasilawn Lane in east Finglas after they’d set fire to the getaway car. Dunne drove them away and disposed of the murder weapon.

  The murder of Anthony Campbell sparked fresh public outrage and revulsion. The fact that it came so soon after Baiba Saulite’s death added to the gravity of the situation. There was a real sense that organized crime was out of control. And the blood-letting didn’t stop there. Another three men were gunned down in the last two remaining weeks of 2006. Two of the victims had been murdered as part of yet another feud, this time in the north inner-city, which had been sparked when drug-dealer Christy Griffin was exposed as a paedophile. The murders pushed the gangland death toll to 24, making 2006 the bloodiest year ever in the history of organized crime.

  Over the following months over 1,000 people were interviewed and 600 statements were taken as part of the investigation into Marlo’s murder. The investigation team worked in tandem with their colleagues on the Saulite murder. Detectives had soon compiled a detailed picture of both crimes and who was involved. A number of individuals gave Gardaí important information which could only be acted on if the informants were prepared to stand up in court. But no one would testify against Gangland’s new overlord – Eamon Dunne – and his killers.

  Early in the investigation detectives were tipped off that the stolen car used in the double murder had been parked at the basement garage of the Linnbhla Apartments, in Ballymun, North Dublin. The car had been parked there from the end of November until 12 December. When Gardaí examined the basement they discovered that it had been used as a secret depot for Marlo’s gang. They located two stolen cars, both fitted with false plates, which had been taken in North Dublin the month before the murders. Gardaí also discovered a van which had been registered to a fictitious company. The vehicle had been specially adapted to transport large quantities of drugs. The search also opened a direct link with the ongoing investigation into Baiba Saulite’s murder. One of the recovered cars had been stolen from the same address – and at the same time – as the one used by Baiba’s killers. A loaded Israeli assault rifle was discovered in the boot of another car, the number plate of which was found in the garage.

  Detectives then discovered that Eamon Dunne and a close associate, Brian O’Reilly from Ballymun, were registered directors of Shelneart Security, the company hired to ‘protect’ the apartment block a year earlier. A finger-print uplifted from one of the stolen cars also matched one of Marlo’s former associates. Gardaí later froze the Shelneart bank account, which they believed was being used to launder drug money.

  Eamon Dunne, O’Reilly and several members of Marlo’s gang were subsequently arrested and questioned about the double murder of Hyland and Campbell and about Baiba’s murder. However, no one was ever charged with either crime. Gardaí in Swords submitted a file to the DPP recommending that Hassan be charged with conspiracy to murder his wife. However, the DPP decided not to proceed with the charges. Hassan Hassan was released from prison in March 2010 and immediately left the country, under the watchful eye of the Gardaí.

  The vacuum Hyland left behind was quickly filled. Marlo is still remembered in Gangland as the boss who got out of his depth. ‘He was a great bloke, very good to people loyal to him but he just got too big and brought down too much heat on everyone else and that’s not on. The lads who took his place are cuter and they are a lot more ruthless,’ one former friend remarked.

  Eamon ‘the Don’ Dunne was already earning notoriety as the underworld’s most bloodthirsty crime boss.

  26. The Don’s Downfall

  Eamon Dunne kept his head down in the months following his successful coup and prepared the ground work for a new order in Gangland. As Gardaí unravelled the truth behind the most significant underworld assassination since that of Martin Cahill, they expected more bloodshed as gang members sought either revenge or vied for supremacy. But most of Marlo’s once loyal henchmen had no stomach for retribution and simply switched their allegiances to the Don. Several of Hyland’s former associates who had been caught in Operation Oak were also exiting the stage – for long prison sentences. In addition, Dunne had the all-important support of Christy Kinahan and his powerful syndicate. Veteran villain Eamon Kelly also emerged as Dunne’s mentor and adviser. They were regularly spotted holding clandestine meetings around Dublin. Another powerful figure in the background who approved of the new arrangement was Kelly’s former protégé, Gerry ‘the Monk’ Hutch. Those who didn’t like the new regime were either pushed aside or given no option but to co-operate. In Gangland, loyalty is dictated by profit, not personality.

  In the immediate aftermath of the murder there was speculation that Dessie O’Hare and Dutchie Holland might avenge their former benefactor. But the cruel truth was that Marlo’s demise had been a necessary sacrifice to protect the interests of the wider gangland community. Dutchie was a pragmatist and moved to England after Hyland’s murder, where he ‘worked’ as a hit man for hire. In May 2007 he was charged with conspiring to commit a kidnapping and was subsequently jailed for eight years. The 70-year-old contract killer defied the laws of the gangland jungle in 2009, when he died peacefully in his sleep in Parkhurst Prison.

  O’Hare, who claimed to have found God, had no moral qualms about joining forces with his friend’s killer. After all, the Border Fox had plenty of experience when it came to butchering former comrades. Dessie O’Hare was also a close associate of Eamon Kelly. The INLA and Kelly’s other protégé, Declan ‘Whacker’ Duffy, were equally comfortable with the new order.

  In August 2007 evidence of Dunne’s working relationship with the INLA was discovere
d by the anti-terrorist Special Detective Unit (SDU). Following a tip-off, the SDU and ERU raided a house in Cushlawn Drive, Tallaght. Inside they found Dunne and Declan Duffy in the process of torturing a drug-dealer. Dunne, Duffy and seven other hoods were arrested and questioned, but they were never charged. Their victim was too terrified to make a complaint against them. Duffy and the INLA had also become embroiled in the Crumlin/Drimnagh feud, which resulted in a further escalation of the violence. Garda intelligence learned that Duffy had accepted a €100,000 contract to murder ‘Fat’ Freddie Thompson.

  The Don stayed out of the feud and instead completely restructured his gang’s drug-trafficking business. This was soon reflected in a quantitative reduction in seizures. From the start of his reign Eamon Dunne ruled with an iron fist. His policy was to deal swiftly and severely with any potential challengers. As a result he became one of the most blood-soaked Godfathers in the history of organized crime in Ireland.

  The first gangster to make the mistake of moving against Eamon Dunne was John Daly, a former key member of Marlo’s gang. Daly was a volatile, loud-mouthed bully, who was also a psychotic killer. In May 2007, he became a household name when he phoned the Liveline radio programme to attack this writer. He caused upheaval throughout the prison system when it was discovered that he’d contacted the show on a mobile phone from his prison cell in Portlaoise. As a result of the public furore there was a universal clamp-down on phones in prisons, which seriously disrupted the operations of gangsters like John Gilligan.

  Daly spent the remaining four months of his sentence for armed robbery in isolation in Cork Prison. As his release date in August 2007 approached, Daly began making plans for his freedom. He had already contacted a number of Hyland’s associates, looking for money that he said the Godfather had promised him upon his release. When he was ignored, Daly began issuing death threats.

  As soon as he arrived back in Finglas, he began to throw his weight around. The Gardaí warned him that there were at least three or more contracts out on his head. He told them to ‘fuck off’. Daly also made it known that he would not be bending the knee for anyone, and especially not the Don. He was going to set up his own gang and made no secret of the fact that he intended to shoot Dunne. But Daly was too arrogant to realize that there was a new order in the gangland jungle where he was once a feared predator. He was also isolated as many of his equally psychotic pals had already died. In underworld folklore it was claimed that Daly and his ‘Filthy Fifty’ gang cronies had been the subject of a gypsy’s curse, after they’d murdered a young man some years earlier: two committed suicide, two others died of natural causes, another accidentally blew his head off; and others were murdered.

  In the early hours of 22 October 2007, Daly became the thirteenth victim of the gang to fall under the ‘curse’. He was getting out of a taxi at his home in Finglas when a lone gunman shot him five times, at close range. Eamon Dunne was a firm believer in striking first. The murder of Daly served to reinforce the Don’s fearsome reputation.

  But ten days later, Dunne ran into trouble. He was one of seven men arrested as they were about to ambush a security van containing almost €1 million in cash in Celbridge, County Kildare. A major Garda undercover operation had been put in place when they learned of the plot. Dunne was charged two days later with conspiracy to commit robbery and was remanded in custody. Strenuous objections to bail meant that he spent Christmas and the New Year in prison. On 15 January 2008, he was finally granted bail. The Don was confident that he was going to beat the rap. He commenced High Court proceedings to have the charges against him thrown out, on the grounds that his detention was unlawful.

  Dunne also fought for his continued dominance of Gangland. On 17 July 2008, Finglas criminal 34-year-old Trevor Walsh, a close friend of John Daly, was released from prison. The Don saw Walsh as another potential threat. He decided to strike before the former prisoner had a chance to take revenge for Daly’s murder. On the night of Walsh’s release a gunman shot him four times as he walked home from the pub at Kippure Park in Finglas. A month later, on 23 August, two gunmen walked into the Jolly Toper pub in Finglas, where drug-dealer Paul ‘Farmer’ Martin was drinking with mourners after a funeral. Thirty-nine-year-old Martin was a convicted armed robber who was also suspected of the gangland murder of taxi driver James ‘Gonty’ Dillon in 1999. Farmer was a close friend of both Marlo Hyland and John Daly, and had openly challenged the Don’s authority when he refused to stop selling drugs on Dunne’s patch. Dunne also feared that Martin was plotting to have him murdered. When Farmer spotted the gunmen, he made a dash for the door. One of them opened fire, hitting him in the back. As he lay on the ground, the same gunman finished Martin off, with four more shots in the head.

  Meanwhile the alliance between Michael Cronin and Dunne hadn’t lasted very long. A bitter dispute flared between the two drug-dealers and they vowed to kill each other. Cronin escaped two gun attacks in 2008 and then went looking for the Don, armed with a grenade. But he threw the bomb away when he spotted a Garda surveillance team. The Don then hired Christy Gilroy, a 35-year-old drug addict from the inner-city, to sort out his difficulties with Cronin. Gilroy, who was facing armed robbery charges, had been hiring himself out as a contract killer. The drug addict had been buying drugs from Cronin and had no difficulty luring him into a trap.

  On 7 January 2009, Gilroy arranged to meet Cronin and his associate James Maloney in Summerhill, in Dublin’s north inner-city. Minutes after getting into the back seat of Cronin’s car, Gilroy shot each man twice in the back of the head. The drug addict had just added two more murders to the Don’s mounting death toll. As Gilroy fled the scene he panicked, leaving vital evidence behind including the murder weapon, a jacket and a mobile phone. Forensic tests later showed that the gun had also been used in the attempted murder of another Finglas hood, Michael Murray, in the summer of 2008. Murray had accepted a contract from John Daly’s associates to assassinate Dunne, but the Don hired Gilroy to strike first. However, Gilroy wasn’t successful on that occasion – Murray was wounded in the shoulder and recovered.

  Immediately after the double murder, Dunne arranged for Gilroy to go to Puerto Banus, Spain, where he joined Kinahan sidekick Gary Hutch. Gilroy was admitted to a drug treatment clinic in Marbella, which was paid for by the Don.

  Less than two weeks later, Dunne’s paranoia led to even more bloodshed. This time the victim was one of his closest friends, Finglas criminal Graham McNally. Dunne lured McNally into a trap in a cul-de-sac at Coldwinters, off the Old Ashbourne Road in Finglas, on 20 January. The thug, who had just returned from a holiday in Thailand, had no reason to suspect anything was wrong. But the Don feared that McNally was secretly plotting against him. A few days after the Cronin and Maloney murders, Gardaí had intercepted two associates of Farmer Martin in Finglas. It was believed that they were on their way to shoot Dunne. The Don suspected that McNally was also in on the plot. As a result, he shot McNally six times in the face and head. Clinical, merciless executions were the hallmarks of Dunne’s bloodlust.

  The day after the McNally hit this writer made contact with Dunne by phone. The bloodthirsty crime lord was furious about the ongoing media coverage of his activities and at my intrusion into his privacy and grief. When I put questions to him about McNally’s murder, he was typically defensive and evasive. He denied any involvement and refused to make any comment at all about the Cronin/Maloney hits.

  ‘I feel that I am now a target over all of this. I feel unsafe. I don’t know anything about anyone getting clipped [shot],’ Dunne moaned. When asked if he was aware that his name had been linked to the various murders, Dunne angrily replied: ‘I didn’t murder anyone. What do you mean my name is coming up everywhere as a suspect? I am aware that I am hurt and upset over my friend being killed. I think it is very insensitive of you to be ringing me today after my friend has been killed.

  ‘I am fearful for myself and my family. I don’t want my friends or his [McNally’s] family
to think that I had something to do with it. No one has come to me and said to my face: “I am accusing you.” I didn’t clip anyone. I did not murder my friend Mr McNally. He was a good personal friend of mine. How did you get my number and where did you get all the information about me?’ Dunne ranted down the phone. I explained that I couldn’t reveal my sources lest they suffer the same fate as Cronin, Maloney, McNally and all the others.

  Dunne was slightly more talkative in relation to the incident involving Farmer Martin’s associates. ‘I heard that an attempt was supposed to have been made. One guy was released after being caught in a car with a loaded shotgun and the other one was not detained. The police didn’t come to me and say there was a threat on my life. I heard McNally was a target as well and the police didn’t inform him and he wound up dead. I don’t know who shot him. You would know more than I would. Do me a favour and leave me alone for the next few days while I grieve for my friend.’

  Dunne agreed to a face-to-face meeting with this writer but he never turned up. A few days later, he went to the courts seeking an injunction to stop the Gardaí leaking stories about him to the media. Dunne, who had a keen interest in studying the law, claimed that there was a conspiracy between the press and the police to damage his ‘safety and integrity’. Meanwhile the murders continued.

  In February 2009, Christy Gilroy discharged himself from the Spanish detox clinic. Unfortunately for Gilroy, the Don had become increasingly concerned that the hit man would spill the beans if the Gardaí got their hands on him. At the same time detectives had been making frantic efforts to encourage Gilroy to give himself up. His survival depended on who got to him first.