Cocaine Wars

by Mick McCaffrey

  On 14 March, the day after Valerie White’s explosive statement, Gardaí obtained a search warrant for the Bryan family home at Brookview Crescent. The search took place at first light, just after 7.00 a.m. Officers found the remains of a fire in the back garden. After the search of the Bryan family home was completed, DS Declan Smith arrested Michael Bryan Snr, Gary Bryan’s father, under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act 1939, for the unlawful possession of information in relation to a criminal offence, the offence being the possession of firearms at Gray’s pub on the night of Paul Warren’s murder. He was taken to Kevin Street Garda Station. During his twenty-four hours in custody, Michael Bryan Snr was interviewed under caution on twelve separate occasions. During one of these interviews, he said that his son called to the family home on 1 March 2004 with a bag, and that he got petrol and burnt the bag in the back garden. Michael Bryan Snr denied having any knowledge of the murder or what was in the bag. He was released without charge. Four days after Michael Bryan Snr was released from Garda custody, Michael Bryan Jnr was arrested for being in possession of information about the fire-arm used in the murder. While in custody, he said he remembered his half-brother Gary calling to the house, and on the same night seeing glowing embers in the back garden and hearing three or four loud bangs. This confirmed what his father had told Gardaí. Michael Jnr was also released without charge.

  After Valerie White made her statement, Gardaí applied for and received records of all phone calls made and received by Jonathan Mooney and his girlfriend on the night of Paul Warren’s murder. They showed that he had been in contact with a number of people connected to the murder, namely Gary Bryan, John Roche and Brian Rattigan who had been communicating with the gang via mobile phone from Mountjoy Prison. Mooney had been interviewed after the murder as a potential witness, because he was present in the pub when it happened. The Gardaí did not know at that time that without Mooney’s help the murder could not have taken place.

  On the morning of 7 April 2004, Sergeant Mark Kelly arrested Jonathan Mooney for being in possession of information relating to the unlawful possession of firearms at Gray’s pub on the night of 25 February 2004. He was taken to the investigation headquarters at Kevin Street and was interviewed a total of thirteen times while in custody. During this period he made two statements to Gardaí. In his statements, Mooney gave officers a list of the people that were present in Gray’s pub before the murder, including Paul Warren. He then said that he received a phone call from an associate named Anthony Cannon while in the pub, but that Cannon rang his girlfriend’s phone. Cannon asked him questions about Paul Warren being in the pub.

  Anthony Cannon was a twenty-one-year-old from Robert Street in Dublin 8, who was climbing the ranks of the Rattigan gang and had a reputation as a hard man. Mooney then said he received several more phone calls from Brian Rattigan, even though Rattigan was locked up in a prison cell at the time. Rattigan asked him about Paul Warren, and enquired as to where he was sitting in the pub. He told Mooney that if Paul Warren got up and left, he should immediately phone him on his mobile in Mountjoy. Mooney admitted to detectives that he was aware that Paul Warren and Brian Rattigan were enemies. He also knew that there were suspicions that Warren had set up Joey Rattigan’s murder. Jonathan Mooney said he knew that giving the information about Warren being in the pub to Brian Rattigan would cause something bad to happen to him (Warren), but he claimed that he thought the worst that would happen to Warren would be ‘a few slaps’. Mooney went on to say that a few minutes before Warren was murdered, he received a phone call from Gary Bryan, who again asked him if Warren was still in the pub and still sitting in the same place. After Bryan and Roche went to the pub and murdered Warren, Mooney again got a call from Brian Rattigan, who asked, ‘Did Warrener get killed?’ Rattigan then told Mooney to make sure that he got rid of the mobile phone, so that it could never be recovered by Gardaí. He did as instructed. His girlfriend’s phone was never found. On the day that Mooney was arrested, a detailed search of the landing in Mountjoy that Rattigan called home was undertaken in an attempt to find the mobile phone he had used to communicate with Mooney and Bryan on the night of the murder. It was never found. It is suspected that Rattigan destroyed it. Gardaí were sure that Rattigan had been in phone contact from his cell, because Mooney had told them so, and when they triangulated the calls that he and Bryan had received, they were found to have originated from a cell tower close to the jail.

  The day after Mooney’s arrest, DS Adrian Whitelaw detained his girlfriend for possession of information. She was interviewed eleven times at Kevin Street Garda Station. She made a statement, saying: ‘I asked him [Mooney] who rang that night, and he said “Brian Rattigan”. He said that Brian Rattigan asked him to point out Paul Warren to the fellas coming into the pub that night and he said “Yeah.” I asked him why he said yeah and he said, “I don’t know.” I then asked him what it was over and he said that Paul was supposed to have set up Brian’s brother two years ago.’

  By admitting to setting up Paul Warren to be killed – whether he knew it was going to happen or not – Jonathan Mooney walked himself into a lengthy prison sentence. Although he was released without charge on 9 April, a file would be prepared and sent to the DPP. Gardaí had no doubt whatsoever that they would be told to charge him in relation to the phone call informing Rattigan and his gang that Paul Warren was enjoying a quiet pint and game of pool in Gray’s. This is exactly what happened in July 2005. Gardaí initially recommended that Mooney be charged with the murder of Paul Warren, telling the DPP: ‘Jonathan Mooney played an integral part in the murder of Paul Warren. He had the mens rea (Latin for ‘guilty mind’, basically meaning the intent). When he was disclosing Paul Warren’s whereabouts he knew Mr Warren would be attacked. He also knew the attack was in revenge for Paul Warren’s involvement in the murder of Joey Rattigan, so he knew the degree of attack would be serious. Brian Rattigan is one of the most vicious criminals in Dublin at the moment, and Jonathan Mooney is aware of this. Any revenge attack orchestrated by him will be serious. It is recommended that Jonathan Mooney be charged with the murder of Paul Warren.’

  Although the DPP declined to charge Mooney with the Warren killing, they did charge him with assisting an offender and withholding information. Jonathan Mooney was sentenced to five years in prison, after pleading guilty to assisting an offender. He also pleaded guilty to withholding information in relation to the murder, and was handed another five-year term. The twenty-three-year-old was present in court to hear that his sentences would run concurrently and would be backdated to June 2004. Prosecuting counsel Paul Coffey told the court: ‘Mr Brian Rattigan masterminded the shooting from Mountjoy Prison.’ Coffey added that Gardaí had established that Mr Rattigan made six calls to Jonathan Mooney between 10.23 p.m. and 11.06 p.m., with five of the calls occurring before the murder, and one following the execution of Warren. Detective Inspector Gabriel O’Gara told the court that Mooney knew Brian Rattigan, because he spent time with him in jail, and also knew the two men who had carried out the murder. O’Gara said that Mooney claimed that he gave Brian Rattigan information about where Warren was drinking in the pub and the type of clothes he was wearing, because he was ‘in fear’ of him. The court also heard that Mooney and his mother were threatened with fatal consequences if he said anything untoward about Brian Rattigan. Defence counsel Mary Ellen Ring said that Mooney ‘expressed his regret for the shooting of Mr Warren’.

  Jonathan Mooney was born on 16 May 1982. He lived with his mother at Thomas Court Bawn in Dublin 8. His father died two years before the murder. He had been involved in a long-term relationship with his girlfriend, but this ended following the murder. He was unemployed and collected unemployment benefit each week. Mooney was regarded as a petty criminal; he had chalked up twenty-four previous convictions for minor offences, mainly road traffic breaches. He had two convictions for larceny, one for assault and one for breach of the peace. All had been dealt with at the less se
rious District Court level, and Mooney only served jail sentences of a few months at a time. Unfortunately, he met Brian Rattigan during one of those jail stints. Foolishly, Mooney had kept in touch with Rattigan and other gang members when he was released.

  By mid-April 2004, Gardaí finally had all the evidence against Gary Bryan collated. The DPP had decided that he should be arrested and charged with the murder. On 21 April, DS Adrian Whitelaw arrested Bryan, under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act, for unlawful possession of a firearm at Gray’s pub on the night of the murder, just under two months previously. He was held for twenty-four hours, which is the maximum time allowed under law before an extension has to be granted by a Chief Superintendent. This permission was given by Bill Donoghue from Pearse Street, which meant that Bryan could be held for a further twenty-four hours. Two days under police interrogation was nothing to a criminal as seasoned as Bryan, however, and in the thirteen interviews, he refused to answer a single question. When he was preparing to walk out the door of Kevin Street on 23 April, Bryan may well have allowed himself a smug grin, thinking that he had beaten the murder rap. Little did he know that detectives had already been in touch with the DPP and had been given permission to charge him. Bryan was out of Kevin Street for less than twenty seconds when he was re-arrested, taken inside and handed a charge sheet, which informed him of the news. Needless to say, he was not happy. Gary Bryan was taken straight to Dublin District Court where he was formally charged with the murder of Paul Warren.

  The case against Gary Bryan was very strong. When Detective Garda Tom Carey recovered a bullet covered in Paul Warren’s blood on the floor of the men’s toilet of Gray’s pub in the hours after the murder, it was obvious that this was a vital piece of evidence. This proved to be exactly the case. When officers recovered the Taurus .357 Magnum handgun, along with six rounds, from Bryan’s home on 10 March, it was hoped that the bullet used to murder Warren would match the Magnum. It had already been determined that a Magnum handgun was the murder weapon. When the gun found at Bryan’s apartment was test fired, it was found that the bullets used in the murder and the test had the same characteristics, but he could not give a conclusive match. The Puma bag recovered during the search of Elaine White’s house on 12 March contained twelve spent cartridge cases. Detective Garda Carey compared them to the cases, which he test fired using the Magnum handgun found at Bryan’s apartment, and found that eight of the twelve cartridge cases exactly matched the ones he test fired from the Magnum. Also, five rounds found in the Magnum handgun were Federal .38 specials and were found to be of the same manufacture and head stamp as the four spent cases found in the Puma bag taken from Elaine White’s house. There was also fingerprint evidence linking Gary Bryan to the murder. Detective Garda John Grant examined the plastic bag in which the Magnum handgun was found wrapped for fingerprint evidence and found fingerprint impressions on it. Those impressions turned out to match the fingerprints that Gary Bryan gave to Gardaí when he was arrested and taken to Kevin Street. DG Grant also examined the Puma bag and found Bryan’s fingerprints on an O2 booklet and a Meteor SIM pack box. The Nokia phone and SIM card found in the Puma bag would later be confirmed as the number that rang Jonathan Mooney’s girlfriend’s phone ten minutes before Paul Warren was murdered. There was also a large amount of telephone traffic between his girlfriend’s phone, which was used by Jonathan Mooney, and Brian Rattigan and Gary Bryan’s phones. Witnesses at the pub said that the two gunmen wore balaclavas, and a balaclava found at Bryan’s apartment had his DNA on it. The evidence against Bryan was strong, but the icing on the cake was Valerie White’s witness statement implicating him in Paul Warren’s murder.

  Detectives prepared for the trial in the hope that the outcome would be a murder conviction. However, things took an unexpected turn when the case came to trial in February 2006. The case started promisingly with prosecution counsel Paul Coffey outlining the evidence to the jury about how Gardaí had linked all the pieces together and were in no doubt that Gary Bryan was Paul Warren’s murderer. The Central Criminal Court heard how two men wearing balaclavas and carrying guns entered Gray’s pub, and that one of them chased Paul Warren into the toilets and fired three bullets into him, with the victim dying less than an hour later. Mr Coffey told the court: ‘The prosecution case is that the second gunman who fired all three shots and the second shot that killed Paul Warren is the accused, Gary Bryan.’ However, less than two hours later, the trial was to collapse amid farcical scenes. Valerie White took to the witness stand and said that she would not stand over anything she said in her sworn statement to Gardaí because she was high on cocaine on the night of the murder and could not remember anything. She said that she made her statement and volunteered detailed information to Gardaí because she thought it was what they wanted to hear. Without Valerie White’s evidence the case against Bryan was not compelling enough to risk taking before a jury and getting a not guilty verdict. Paul Coffey told the judge that the state had no choice but to enter a nolle prosequi, which meant that it would not be proceeding with the prosecution. Mr Justice Paul Carney then excused the jury of six men and six women and there were celebrations from Gary Bryan who was present in court with a large group of friends and relatives.

  Gardaí were furious with Valerie White for not standing over her evidence. There were strong suspicions that she had been warned not to give evidence but there was nothing that they could do for the moment. She had signed a deal, whereby she was given immunity from prosecution for cooperating with Gardaí, but had rubbed their noses in it at the eleventh hour. A nolle prosequi meant that the state could prosecute the case at a later date, if they so chose, but without any new evidence, it seemed unlikely that the DPP would risk another public humiliation – not to mention the tens of thousands of euro that had been wasted on the aborted trial.