Cocaine Wars

by Mick McCaffrey

  Gray’s pub was not busy and there were only ten people present when the football kicked off. Warren and his two friends drank and played pool, and Warren occasionally spoke to the barman. The barman later recalled that ‘he was in good form. There was a good atmosphere, a normal atmosphere.’ At about 8.00 p.m., a man called Jonathan Mooney came into the pub with his girlfriend at the time. He looked at the other customers and noticed Paul Warren, whom he knew from around the area. Mooney was a criminal who had spent time in jail with Brian Rattigan, and who associated with known members of the Rattigan gang. Mooney took his girlfriend’s mobile phone and made a call. About ten minutes later, the phone rang. Brian Rattigan was on the other end, even though he was in a jail cell in Mountjoy Prison. Rattigan asked Mooney if Paul Warren was in the pub. When Mooney confirmed he was, Rattigan inquired as to what clothes he was wearing and where he was sitting in the bar. Customers noticed that Jonathan Mooney spent a lot of the night going in and out of the pub talking on the mobile. Paul Warren was playing pool while keeping an eye on the football – oblivious to the fact that the phone call Jonathan Mooney made had sealed his fate. Although Brian Rattigan had had to wait for a year and a half to avenge his brother’s death, he was determined that Warren would not walk out of Gray’s that night.

  ***

  Gary Bryan’s girlfriend, Valerie White, was looking forward to a quiet night in, when her boyfriend’s mobile phone rang at around 8.15 p.m. Gary Bryan never said where he was going, but assured her that he wouldn’t be long. While White sat watching TV, she was unaware that Brian Rattigan had phoned her boyfriend. A plot was being hatched to murder Paul Warren, who was in Gray’s pub, only a short drive from the flat Valerie shared with Bryan on the South Circular Road. Gardaí believe that Bryan went out to meet John Roche, and that the pair were in communication with Brian Rattigan, formulating how they would murder Paul Warren. After about forty-five minutes, Bryan came back to the one-bedroom apartment, went to the bedroom and, detectives believe, took a Magnum handgun, which he kept in the house, from the back of the wardrobe. He left again without telling his girlfriend where he was going, and she gave out to him for leaving so soon. It is believed that Bryan and John Roche spent the next hour or so deciding on how the murder would go down, while driving around in John Roche’s car deciding on the best route of escape after they had carried out the assassination. After this they went back to Bryan’s apartment. They had a pair of balaclavas and each man had a loaded gun. Phone records would later show that several calls were made between Bryan and Brian Rattigan, before the killing took place. Ten minutes before the murder, Gary Bryan rang Jonathan Mooney’s girlfriend and asked to speak to him. He double checked to make sure that Paul Warren was still in the pub. He made the call at 10.47 p.m., and it only took fifty-two seconds for him to get confirmation that the hit was still on. Bryan left his apartment with John Roche and drove the short journey to Gray’s in a stolen silver-grey Ford Mondeo. Just before 11.00 p.m., Bryan and Roche arrived at Newmarket Square, a quiet area with very few houses. It had been agreed that John Roche would do the shooting, but before they went into the pub, Gary Bryan said that he was taking over. John Roche was over 6 ft tall, Bryan at just 5 ft 8" was far smaller. They both put on their balaclavas and gripped their handguns bursting through the front door of Gray’s pub. Because Gary Bryan knew that Paul Warren was over by the pool table, he ran straight for him. Warren saw the movement, looked up and knew instantly that he was in serious danger. He ran to the opposite side of the pub, towards the toilets, just as Bryan opened fire with the Magnum for the first time, but the bullet missed its target. While Bryan went to take care of Paul Warren, John Roche covered the entrance to the pub. He shouted at the frightened customers: ‘Don’t move.’ Some of the dozen customers in the bar screamed in terror, and a couple ran towards the ladies’ toilets to hide, as they were at the opposite side of the bar to the men’s. The barman ducked into the cellar behind the bar, so as not to be caught in the crossfire. The execution was over in a matter of seconds. As Paul Warren ran into the men’s toilets, Bryan caught up with him. Bryan fired a shot at close range, which struck Warren in the back, just underneath the neck. Even though he had been fatally wounded, Warren kept going. He made his way into a cubicle and tried to push it closed, in the hope that the gunman would panic and leave the pub. Bryan stuck his hand in behind the half-open door and fired a shot into Warren’s face, hitting him in the right cheek. Bryan knew instinctively that his mission had been achieved, and he didn’t even stop to make sure that Warren was dead. According to witnesses in the pub, when Bryan ran out of the toilet, he said to Roche: ‘I got him. Let’s get out of here.’ Both Jonathan Mooney and his girlfriend were present when the murder took place, but left before the Gardaí arrived. As the two gunmen were making their escape, customers were already starting to recover from the shock of what had happened. Several went into the men’s toilet to check on Warren, but the large pool of blood that had flowed under the cubicle door and down towards the main toilet entrance told its own story. Paul Warren was dead.

  At around 11.00 p.m. on 25 February 2004, Garda Caroline Mulpeter of Garda Command and Control, based at Harcourt Street, received a 999 call informing her that there had been a shooting at Gray’s pub. Gardaí Joseph Duignam and Deirdre McMenamin were dispatched, and arrived at the pub, just one minute later. Dublin Fire Brigade had also been informed of the incident, and firefighters Phil Evans, Terry Dent, Liam Anderson and Ian Duffy arrived at the scene in two Dublin Fire Brigade ambulances. They tried to administer first aid to Paul Warren, but he was already lying dead in the toilet cubicle. GP Dr Lionel Williams officially pronounced him dead at 11.55 p.m.

  The following afternoon, when Gardaí had finished the technical examination of the pub, Warren’s body was taken from the scene to the Dublin City Morgue in Marino. That evening, Warren’s father identified his son’s body to Detective Inspector Gabriel O’Gara from Kevin Street Garda Station. DI O’Gara, an experienced murder detective, was the Garda in day-to-day charge of the case. Within minutes of the shooting, a murder inquiry was launched from Kevin Street. Over the next forty-eight hours, a number of case conferences were held that were attended by local Gardaí and detectives, as well as specialist plain-clothes officers from the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NBCI). Because Gardaí from Crumlin and Sundrive Road had been investigating Paul Warren in relation to Joey Rattigan’s murder, it soon became apparent that Warren was murdered in revenge for his role – or perceived role – in that killing. Over the next few months, Gardaí from Kevin Street, Sundrive Road and Crumlin would work very closely together: comparing notes, information and anything they learned from talking to ‘touts’ on the streets. All Gardaí involved in the murder were acutely aware that tensions between the Rattigan and Thompson gangs would be unbelievably high, and that revenge attacks were not just possible, but inevitable.

  Warren’s funeral was a tense affair. There was a large number of Gardaí, both plain-clothes and uniformed, on duty, to ensure that it passed off peacefully. A tradition had developed in Crumlin and Drimnagh that when a person died in a gangland incident, the funerals should be big occasions. They were generally more like show funerals, with massive floral tributes and old-style hearses pulled by horses.

  Many shops and pubs in the area either closed out of respect to the dead, or were intimidated into closing their doors. Members of the Garda Surveillance Unit routinely photographed mourners at the feud funerals. The pictures gave Gardaí a good understanding of which people were affiliated with which gang. This was invaluable, especially after the first few murders, when individuals could and did change allegiances. In several funerals the priest officiating used the pulpit to plead for an end to violence, and for members of the community to assist the Gardaí in their investigations. On more than one occasion, gang members actually walked out of the church in disgust upon hearing this.

  In the weeks after Paul Warren’s murder, armed Garda�
� patrolled the streets of Crumlin, Drimnagh and the south innercity, to try to keep a lid on what was a powder keg just ready to explode.

  While Gardaí were actively trying to catch Paul Warren’s murderer, Gary Bryan was busy covering his tracks. When the murder was completed, Bryan and John Roche went back to Bryan’s apartment, where they spoke for a while, before Roche left. Gary Bryan changed his clothes and put them in a bag at the back of the wardrobe. He then stayed up until the early hours taking cocaine with his girlfriend. He eventually told her that he had killed Paul Warren. He woke up the following afternoon, and after carrying out a few errands, he took the bag from the back of the wardrobe and travelled by taxi to his family home at Brookview Crescent in Tallaght. He then spoke to his father, Michael. Bryan then went to the back garden, got some petrol and burnt the bag containing the clothes that he wore while carrying out the assassination. There is no evidence to say that Bryan spoke with his father or anyone else about what he did. Another bag lay in the wardrobe containing spent cartridges from the Magnum and one of the balaclavas, the one worn by John Roche during the murder. Bryan realised he would have to get rid of them, so he asked Valerie White if her sister Elaine would take the bag in her house and hold on to it for him. Elaine didn’t know what was in the bag, but she agreed. On the evening of 9 March, they drove to Elaine’s house in nearby Weaver’s Square, and left without the bag. Valerie White was not happy to be getting involved with covering up a murder. She certainly didn’t want to get her family dragged into it, but she desperately wanted to help her boyfriend, who she deeply loved. So she went along with Bryan’s pleas to get Elaine to hold on to the bag. As the pair left Weaver’s Square to go back home, they failed to notice the two unmarked Garda cars that had been following them for the last few days.

  The Garda investigation was progressing well. Senior detectives agreed that the two gunmen had prior intelligence that Paul Warren was drinking in Gray’s. All the customers present in the pub at the time of the murder were interviewed, including Jonathan Mooney and his girlfriend. Statements given by some of those drinking confirmed that the gunmen had prior knowledge about where Warren was in the bar. The barman told detectives: ‘When he [the gunman] came into the pub, he just looked straight at Paul and ran for him. He seemed to know exactly where he was.’

  Officers received their first break just days after the murder, when a confidential informant told them that Gary Bryan was the man who had shot Warren. Gary Bryan was well known to members of the District Detective Unit at Kevin Street, who were aware that he was involved in the drugs gang controlled by Brian Rattigan.

  ***

  Gary Bryan was born on 11 December 1975 to Michael Snr and Veronica Bryan. From an early age Bryan was nicknamed ‘Tipper’. He was brought up in Tallaght and was from a large family. He got involved with a bad crowd in his early teens and drifted into drugs and criminality. He was a drug addict, using a variety of illegal substances, including cocaine, heroin and codeine. He was trying to kick his drugs habit, and was receiving methadone each day at a drug treatment clinic in Pearse Street.

  Bryan had amassed seventeen criminal convictions, by the time he was just seventeen years old, the first in October 1993 and the last on 20 May 2003. Most of the convictions were for relatively minor offences, such as driving without a licence, having no insurance, dangerous driving, unauthorised taking of a vehicle and a number of offences for theft. On 16 December 1998, he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for aggravated burglary, and an extra six years for possession of firearms with criminal intent and false imprisonment. The following June, Bryan received another four years for attempted trespass. Bryan never had a steady job and collected social welfare each week. While in prison he met Brian Rattigan and other members of his gang. When he was released, he began to associate with them and gradually got sucked more and more into the murderous feud that had recently developed. Bryan wasn’t like a typical member of Brian Rattigan’s gang. He didn’t have any day-to-day involvement in the shootings and other criminal incidents that frequently happen because of the feud. He tended to keep himself to himself, and only got involved when John Roche or Shay O’Byrne called upon him. He was a drug dealer but worked for himself, and was not supplied by Rattigan. Gardaí always thought that Bryan was more of a hired gun than a central gang member. He was now the main suspect in the Paul Warren murder. The cold precise manner in which that execution had been carried out made detectives certain that Warren was not the first man that Gary Bryan had murdered.

  ***

  After the tip that Gary Bryan was the shooter, detectives immediately placed Bryan’s apartment under surveillance. Inquiries and intelligence from Sundrive Road Garda Station had determined that he shared the flat with Valerie White, a twenty-nine-year-old originally from Crumlin. On the night of 9 March 2004, Gardaí observed Gary Bryan and Valerie White leaving their apartment. Bryan was carrying a white Puma bag. They drove to Valerie’s sister Elaine’s house, and when they left, detectives observed that the bag, which they had taken into the house, was not with them any more. The pair drove back to their apartment, and a few minutes later Bryan left again. Gardaí later arrested Bryan in Tallaght in relation to a separate offence. Detectives knew that Bryan would not crack under pressure. They wanted to build evidence against him before he was detained and questioned about the Warren murder. With Bryan in a cell in Tallaght, early the following morning, Gardaí obtained a search warrant for his apartment. There they discovered a Taurus .357 Magnum handgun, with six rounds of live ammunition wrapped in a blue and pink plastic bag. They also recovered a black balaclava. Valerie White was present during the search, and at around 4.30 p.m. DI Gabriel O’Gara arrested her on suspicion that she had information in relation to the Paul Warren murder. This was later amended to the unlawful possession of a firearm, and White was detained for twenty-four hours. She was interviewed a total of twelve times while in custody. She was released without charge the following day, 12 March, after refusing to comment during her round of interviews. Nevertheless, Gardaí had recovered a firearm. They hoped that ballistics tests would confirm that it was the weapon that was used to murder Paul Warren.

  On the day that Valerie White was released without charge, her sister Elaine was arrested. Gardaí were aware that Gary Bryan had left a bag at Elaine White’s apartment. On 12 March, after securing a search warrant, a team led by Detective Sergeant Adrian Whitelaw searched the premises. The Puma bag was found and it contained four live rounds and twelve spent cartridges from what appeared to be a handgun. A Nokia mobile phone and a Meteor SIM card were also recovered. A mobile phone manual was also found in the bag, as well as a black balaclava.

  Witnesses in the pub said that the gunmen had both been wearing balaclavas, and detectives were confident that they had now recovered both of these. Elaine White was detained for possession of information in relation to an unlawful offence and was taken to Kevin Street. She made a statement and told Gardaí that she received the bag from Gary Bryan on 9 March. She was able to describe what was in the bag and told detectives of the dilemma she faced: whether to contact them and tell them about the bag or to just dump it. She didn’t want to have any hand, act or part in whatever Gary Bryan had got himself involved in. She was then released without charge.

  The investigating detectives were very pleased with the work they had done over the last twenty-four hours. As well as the Magnum, they now had both balaclavas and the phone they believed was used to plan the murder of Paul Warren. The case was steadily starting to come together, but Gardaí got an unexpected and spectacular boost the following day when Valerie White turned up at Kevin Street and said that she wanted to tell the truth about what happened on the day of the murder.

  Valerie White was furious – and felt very guilty – when she found out that her sister had been arrested for agreeing to hold Gary Bryan’s bag. After being cautioned about her legal rights, White made a signed statement to Detective Sergeant Adrian Whitelaw and G
arda Linda Williams. She gave a graphic, comprehensive and damning account of her boyfriend’s role in the slaying, and by the time she had completed her statement, the case against Gary Bryan was effectively sewn up.

  She said that she came voluntarily to Kevin Street Garda Station to ‘tell the truth’ about the night of the Paul Warren murder because her family was ‘getting dragged into it’. White described how she and Gary Bryan had moved into the flat on the South Circular Road in September 2003 and how the first few months went brilliantly. At that time, Gary wasn’t associating with members of the Rattigan gang like Joey Redmond and Shay O’Byrne. However, he gradually began to talk to them on the phone and Shay O’Byrne visited the flat in early December 2003. Gary then started to see more of the criminals, and, on the night of his birthday, on 11 December, he came back with €250 worth of cocaine, which Shay O’Byrne had given him as a present. Valerie said that both she and Gary used the drugs and then started to take cocaine more regularly. She described that first night as ‘the death of us’. Soon afterwards, Gary brought a gun into the flat and showed it to his girlfriend. He said it wasn’t his and that he was just holding it for somebody. Valerie was an honest woman and a law-abiding citizen and was disgusted that her house was being used to store a gun. She told Gary to get it out of her sight and they had frequent arguments about it over the next few weeks, but nevertheless, Gary kept the gun hidden in the wardrobe of their bedroom. Gary then started to get sucked more and more into the Rattigan gang, and Shay O’Byrne and Joey Redmond would regularly ring Valerie’s phone looking for Gary. Brian Rattigan would also contact him from his prison cell. Then Bryan started leaving the flat for several hours at a time and wouldn’t tell Valerie where he was going or who he was with. In early 2004, things settled down again until the night of the Paul Warren murder. At around 8.00 p.m. that night, Gary got up and left without saying where he was off to. He came back about a half an hour later and went into their bedroom for about ten minutes, before leaving again. When Valerie asked where he was going, he replied simply: ‘Out.’ Gary Bryan didn’t arrive back until about 11.00 p.m. and headed straight into the bedroom without saying hello to Valerie. She knew that something was up and picked up some washing off the radiator and went into the bedroom, but Gary was there with another man. Valerie described him to Gardaí as ‘a tall, fairly stocky fella with short brown hair. I know now his name is John Roche, from Drimnagh, ‘cause Gary told me his name later on that night when he was gone’. Valerie looked on the bed and was shocked to see two guns. One was the same weapon that Gary had been holding in the wardrobe, while the second was smaller and was black in colour. When she saw the guns, she dropped the clothes and went straight back into the sitting room. A few minutes later, Gary came in and spoke on the phone to somebody while pacing between the bedroom and sitting room. He asked the person for money, and, when he got off the phone, he arranged for a local drug dealer to sort him out with some cocaine. John Roche had left the flat by this stage. Gary and Valerie left the flat and went to a nearby flats complex to pick up four bags of cocaine from the dealer. He told them that the Gardaí were everywhere because Paul Warren had just been shot. Valerie said that Gary looked at her and that she ‘knew by his manner, the way that he was going on, that he had something to do with it’. They went back to the flat and started to take the cocaine, and Valerie asked Gary if he was involved in the murder. At first he wouldn’t answer her and then asked if she would think any less of him if he was involved. She told him that she wouldn’t, but she had already vowed to herself that their relationship was over. Bryan then opened up and went into detail about the murder he had just committed. Valerie told the two detectives: ‘He started to talk to me then. I asked him what they did. He told me John Roche stood at the door of the pub. He said that Roche wanted to do the shooting but he done it himself. I asked him what gun he used, and Gary told me, ‘The Magnum.’ I asked him how he knew he was in the pub. Gary told me that Johnner Mooney had made the call from the pub to let them know where he was.’ Valerie then really started to quiz Bryan about what had happened, but he became angry, telling her to shut up. Before they went to bed for the night, he started to talk a bit more. Valerie said: ‘I remember asking Gary did Paul Warren see them coming in. Gary told me that he was standing at the bar, saw them coming in and tried to run. Gary said he fired a shot at him in the pub, but he didn’t know if he hit him or not ‘cause there was a pillar or something. Then he ran into the toilets, sat down and tried to hold the door closed. Gary said he put his weight on the door to get it open and just put his arm in and shot him. Gary didn’t tell me any more than that.’ The following day, Gary headed over to his father’s house in Tallaght. After that, they didn’t leave the house much, but the day before Paul Warren’s funeral, Gary went out to get some coke. As he arrived back to the flat, he was approached by three men in a BMW. One of them opened fire with a gun, but Gary escaped and made it back to the safety of the flat. He was white and shaking with the fright and started to wear a bulletproof vest from then on. Bryan knew that there was a contract out on his head, and the couple went to stay in a hotel for a few days because he feared for his life. Valerie then went on to tell Adrian Whitelaw and Linda Williams about going to her sister Elaine’s house because Bryan wanted to leave a bag there. She said that he stayed only a short while and then left. After signing her statement, she left the Garda station.