Gary Bryan looked like a total innocent as he walked out of the court onto Dublin’s north quays. With his short hair and conservative glasses, he looked more like a computer technician than a cold-blooded assassin – but Gardaí knew better. Bryan smiled at investigating detectives as he left a free man. He told one detective: ‘The song goes, “I fought the law and the law won,” but I fought the law and I won.’ He didn’t know it, but seven months later he himself would die as a result of the feud, which was now threatening to get totally out of control.
7
Freddie Hits Back
PAUL WARREN’S MURDER was a revenge of sorts for Brian Rattigan, who was intent on wiping out as many of Freddie Thompson’s gang as possible. Although Warren wasn’t a key member of the Thompson gang, he had been murdered by the rival group, so there was little doubt that another fatality would have to be notched up on the Rattigan side to balance the body count. The wild desperation of the Thompson gang to get even was clear just two days after Paul Warren’s murder during an incident at Lansdowne Valley in Drimnagh. A man was set upon by four people with baseball bats and was told, ‘You’re dead’, before being given a good hiding that resulted in serious injuries for which the man needed hospital treatment. While he was being mercilessly beaten, one of the attackers shouted: ‘He’s not one of them’, before the group sheepishly left the scene.
Garda inquiries ascertained that the injured party and a friend of his had helped to push-start Shay O’Byrne’s car earlier that day, and O’Byrne had been seen by a rival gang member. So keen were they to attack Shay O’Byrne that they didn’t even bother to make sure they had the right man before they waded in swinging baseball bats. Gardaí never determined who carried out the assault.
While Brian Rattigan was serving his sentence in Mountjoy, he wasn’t letting time go to waste. On 13 April 2004, Detective Garda Eamonn Maloney was contacted by a man who told him that his brother, who was in Mountjoy, had been threatened in the jail by Rattigan and a number of his friends. The man who approached DG Maloney had been due to give witness evidence in an upcoming case against Eddie Redmond, who had had been accused of assault causing harm and false imprisonment. The witness claimed that his brother had been told that if he turned up in court, he (his jailed brother) would be murdered in Mountjoy. Gardaí and the prison authorities immediately investigated the claims, but the man in prison was not prepared to make a statement. The case against Eddie Redmond did not proceed because Gardaí could not get any witnesses to go to court, as they were too afraid. The rest of 2004 saw the Rattigan gang on the back foot, and members kept their heads down because they knew that a revenge attack was inevitable. Gardaí were on high alert, and successfully managed to keep a lid on the tension. In early 2004, Detective Inspector Brian Sutton, who had arrested Declan Gavin for trying to take the 100,000 ecstasy tablets in Ballymount Cross in August 1999, was transferred to Crumlin and was now in day-to-day charge of policing the feud. He replaced Tom Mulligan who had transferred after being promoted. Sutton was an experienced investigator, who made it his business to keep in constant touch with the two gangs and their families to try to convince them to end the feud. Sutton and his boss, Detective Superintendent Denis Donegan, had studied the history of the feud in great detail and believed that proactive policing was the only way to keep the bodies from piling up. The two feuding sides were generally surprisingly receptive to Sutton and a number of young detectives he had brought with him, such as Detective Sergeant John Walsh, Detective Gardaí Barry Butler, David Finnerty and Ronan Lafferty. It was a new departure for the gang to be met by Gardaí who spoke to them on a human level, rather than trying to arrest them every second of the day.
Although Brian Rattigan had been charged with the Declan Gavin murder, things were not going well behind the scenes. The DPP had had possession of the Garda file in relation to the case since February 2002. However, the order to serve the book of evidence to Rattigan’s legal team had not been complied with by the DPP’s office. Superintendent John Manley wrote to the DPP on four occasions, looking for clarification about the book of evidence, without receiving a satisfactory answer about the reason for the delay. Because the state had not given a valid reason for the delay in serving the book of evidence and full disclosure of all the evidence against him, his legal counsel applied to the courts to have his murder charge struck out, and this order was granted. In such cases the normal process would be to re-enter the charge against the accused, but despite pleas from the Gardaí, the DPP still did not furnish the book of evidence.
Chief Superintendent Joe McGarrity took charge of the Dublin Metropolitan Region South district. He instructed his new Detective Inspector, Brian Sutton, to review all outstanding murders in the Crumlin ‘G’ district to see if the original investigators had overlooked any lines of inquiry. Brian Sutton undertook this task with gusto with the assistance of his key men, John Walsh, Barry Butler, Dave Finnerty and Ronan Lafferty. The team identified several fresh avenues of investigation and Detective Superintendent Denis Donegan submitted a new file to the DPP that eventually led to Rattigan being recharged. There was relief all round that the murder charge had been sustained and that Rattigan would eventually be forced to have his day in court. There was no mistake with the book of evidence this time either, and it was served on Rattigan almost immediately. There was now no way that he could worm his way out of this one.
On 26 September 2004, Gardaí became aware that Ritchie Rattigan’s life had been threatened. The following day, DI Sutton called to Cooley Road and informed Ritchie and his mother, Dinah, about the information that had been received: that both of them were in danger of being shot by the rival group. He gave them security advice and advised them to review their personal security arrangements. In the course of the discussion, Ritchie Rattigan said that he had received a phone call the previous day stating that there was a contract out on his head. He refused to say who had made the threat but did say that it was to get at Brian in prison. Rattigan also told Sutton that his girlfriend was pregnant, and the two of them would soon be moving to a corporation house in West Dublin. Over the following weeks, Sutton ordered ongoing patrols around the area to make sure that nobody carried the threat out. Gardaí knew that Joey Rattigan’s murder had driven Brian as close as he could get to the edge without cracking up. If any more of his family were hurt, he would completely lose his mind, and there was no telling what might happen in those circumstances. In any event, the extra Garda presence made sure that no assassination attempts were carried out on either Ritchie or Dinah Rattigan.
Bringing further Rattigan family members into the dispute was bound to be an incendiary move. The inevitable retaliation came on 7 December at around 4.00 a.m., when two men on a high-powered motorcycle discharged four shots into the front window of Freddie Thompson’s mother’s house on Loreto Road. Elizabeth Thompson was asleep in bed at the time and was uninjured. A further two shots were shot into a van that had been parked in the driveway of the house. ‘Fat’ Freddie was still in jail, and was apoplectic with rage when he found out that his innocent mother was being dragged into a feud, which she had never had any involvement in. Thompson was released only days after the attack on his mother. Revenge came three days before Christmas, when the front door of Joey Redmond’s apartment was kicked in by unknown intruders. Redmond lived there with his girlfriend. The couple were not home at the time of the break-in. His girlfriend discovered what had happened when she arrived home the following day. She rushed to Sundrive Road Garda Station and reported what had happened to Detective Garda Jonathan Kelly. She was terrified, and Kelly got the impression from her that what had happened was an attempt to exacerbate the feud. Gardaí believe that the break-in was an attempt to kidnap Joey Redmond, but luckily he wasn’t home. It was well known that Joey Redmond was a major target. He had already been warned that his life was in danger, and his girlfriend had her house shot up the previous January.
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Things then s
ettled down until March 2005, when the feud escalated in what turned out to be a very busy month. On the first day of the month, Eddie Redmond was outside his house on Cooley Road, when he was approached by a masked man carrying a semi-automatic handgun at around 7.30 p.m. Redmond saw the gunman in time, and ran through a number of gardens, avoiding three or four shots. He succeeded in hiding in an adjoining garden and the gunman fled, because the sound of shots fired had brought a number of neighbours out of their homes. The gunman escaped in a waiting car. Gardaí are still unsure as to who carried out the attack, although it was clear that a member of the Thompson gang was responsible.
Five days later, twenty-year-old Joey O’Brien from Crumlin Park was chased on foot in the Dolphin’s Barn flats complex by Freddie Thompson and a number of his associates. O’Brien had loose links to Brian Rattigan. He was regarded as a small-time player, and Thompson and his crew wanted rid of him, but O’Brien managed to escape. He was well able to handle himself both inside and outside prison.
The following day on Kilworth Road, Garda Ciaran Nunan stopped and searched a silver Renault Laguna which was being driven by Eddie Redmond. Redmond had been acting suspiciously and was pulled over. There were two passengers in the car with him – a twenty-nine-year-old from Dublin 8 and a thirty-two-year-old from Mulhuddart in Blanchardstown. A search revealed that all three men were wearing navy bulletproof vests and that they were travelling in a convoy of two cars. The other car was a navy Volkswagen Bora, which was being driven by Joey Redmond’s girlfriend. Joey Redmond was the front-seat passenger. The two men in the first car were acting as bodyguards for Redmond. The fact that they were going around in convoys and wearing bulletproof vests obviously meant that they knew that something was being planned by the rival group. They were spot on.
At around 12.15 a.m. on 9 March 2005, John Roche was walking towards his apartment on Irwin Street in Kilmainham, having returned home in his Fiat Punto after visiting a girl he was seeing. Little did he know that the rival gang had been holed up in an apartment that overlooked Roche’s for the last few days, after receiving a tip-off that he was living in Kilmainham. He had moved into the apartment three months previously, and his brother Noel was even staying with him. It was unusual that the pair would risk being seen together. The rival group had spent several days carrying out surveillance of his movements, using an apartment that a close associate of Freddie Thompson coincidently happened to be renting. Because of the ongoing threats to the lives of individual members of the two feuding gangs, it was commonplace that people would regularly move from house to house and never stay in the same place for too long – in case the other side discovered the address. This was especially true of people like the Roche brothers, Freddie Thompson, Darren Geoghegan and Paddy Doyle. They were all young and had no real ties, so they used rented apartments and houses all across Dublin in an attempt to keep one step ahead of the rival gang. Several detectives have said that the senior members of both gangs would rarely lay their heads on the same pillow for two consecutive nights – such was their paranoia that their address would become known. John Roche knew that he was a marked man because of the Paul Warren murder, but didn’t have a clue that his location had been compromised. As he walked up to the front door of the apartment complex, a lone gunman wearing a balaclava came out of the shadows and fired five shots in quick succession from a shotgun. Roche was hit three times in the chest. The fourth bullet entered the window of a nearby flat, and the fifth round also missed the target. The gunman then jumped into a waiting Saab and sped away in the direction of Heuston Station. Roche had tried to run when he saw the gun being pointed at him, and his adrenaline carried him 200 yards before he collapsed on the pavement outside Murray’s Bar at Bow Bridge. A number of witnesses later told Gardaí that twenty-five-year-old Roche cried out: ‘Help me, help me’, as he staggered down the road. Other witnesses also told detectives that they heard what they thought were cheers coming from an apartment, just seconds after the shots rang out. It is thought that members of the Thompson gang had witnessed the murder from the apartment they were scouting from, and celebrated after the job had been done. Gardaí and an ambulance arrived at the scene within five minutes, and Roche was rushed to the nearby St James’s Hospital, but he died from his injuries at around 3.00 a.m. John Roche was well known to Gardaí. He was born on 27 September 1979, and spent most of his life living in Drimnagh, although when his parents sold the house he moved between several different addresses. Roche first appeared in court in 1996 for stealing a car. He had several criminal convictions for theft, drink-driving, road traffic offences, possession of an offensive weapon and threatening behaviour. In June 1998, Roche had walked into a trap set by Gardaí under Operation Cleanstreet, when he sold heroin to an undercover detective at Davitt Road. Operation Cleanstreet was a GNDU anti-drugs initiative aimed at reducing the sale of drugs in some of Dublin’s worst trouble spots, including Ballymun, Finglas, Rialto and Inchicore. When Roche was arrested and taken to Dublin District Court, he was not alone. Another nineteen drug dealers appeared in court alongside him, all having fallen for the same Garda trap. He was charged with the sale and supply of controlled substances and was later convicted.
***
On the night of the murder, Gardaí immediately arrested a female relation of Freddie Thompson, as well as one of her female associates, under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act on suspicion of withholding information. Detectives believe that it was Thompson’s relation and her friend’s apartment that was used to carry out surveillance on Roche. Gardaí worked under the assumption that a lookout had seen Roche leave his apartment in the early evening, while the Thompson gang put a plan in place to assassinate Roche when he returned home from his night out. The murder was planned, and the fact that a gunman was hiding in bushes close to where Roche parked his car showed that he might have been under sustained surveillance.
The murder investigation headquarters was at Kilmainham Garda Station and the probe was led by Superintendent Eddie Quirk, with Detective Inspector Gabriel O’Gara in day-today charge. O’Gara had been in charge of the case that led to Bernard Dempsey being given a life sentence for the murder of former kick-boxer Jimmy Curran in the Green Lizard pub in the Liberties, which took place the month after John Roche was shot dead. That case was blighted by murder threats against witnesses and jury-tampering efforts, and O’Gara was widely praised for the way he handled the investigation. O’Gara and his Crumlin equivalent, Brian Sutton, were hard-nosed policemen, who closely co-operated with one another in jointly tackling the two feuding gangs that resided across both their districts. Because the feud had spread to his ‘A’ district, O’Gara familiarised himself with the intricacies of the feud and was well acquainted with both sides. He was regarded as a top operator and with his right-hand man, Detective Sergeant Adrian Whitelaw, and key staff, Detective Gardaí Dessie Brennan, Gavin Ware, Ken Donnelly, Ritchie Kelly, Con Cronin, Bernard Thornton and Willie Brown, was well able to keep up with the likes of the Thompson and Rattigan mobs. They had simply been unlucky that the Warren murder never reached a successful conclusion.
Twelve people were arrested in the course of the investigation into the Roche murder, including former Thompson associate Michael Frazer. Two of those detained were car dealers Sean McMahon from Tallaght and Brian Downes from Greenhills Road in Walkinstown. The pair were best friends and were involved in laundering drugs cash for criminals; ‘clocking’ cars, which is reducing the number of miles shown on the clock; and ‘ringing’ cars, which involves changing the number plates and filing down the identification numbers on the chassis. They also imported vehicles from the UK, didn’t pay the Vehicle Registration Tax (VRT) and sold them on to unsuspecting owners. They were suspected of supplying the Saab that was used as the getaway car in the Roche murder, and which was later found burnt out near the murder scene. Both men would later be murdered in separate gangland incidents.
Gardaí believe that three members of the Tho
mpson gang were involved in planning and carrying out the murder. The suspect for pulling the trigger is a twenty-nine-year-old from Dublin 12. This man subsequently fled the country. He has not returned since, and there is a warrant out for his arrest in relation to the Roche murder. Darren Geoghegan is suspected of being the getaway driver, while the third main suspect is Freddie Thompson himself, although he is suspected of planning the murder, not actually carrying it out. Aidan Gavin was also arrested as part of the murder investigation, although he was released without charge, due to a lack of evidence against him.
John Roche’s murder resulted in serious political pressure being put on Minister for Justice Michael McDowell. In November 2004, a criminal from Blanchardstown, twenty-three-year-old Paul Cunningham, had been gunned down, while his young child and girlfriend slept next to him. Following the savage murder, McDowell told journalists that he didn’t believe that gangland crime in the capital was getting out of control. He infamously went on to call the murder: ‘The sting of the dying wasp’. This ill-advised statement came back to haunt him and would regularly be used as a stick with which to beat him. For exactly one year after he uttered the statement, seventeen people had been murdered in gangland-style killings. Crime went to the top of the political agenda, and after Roche’s shooting, Fine Gael’s spokesman on Justice, Jim O’Keefe, said: ‘This is a worrying recurrence of gangland-style killings in which summary justice is being meted out on our streets.’ In response to the political pressure after Roche’s killing and other similar slayings, Michael McDowell announced a special Garda operation, codenamed ‘Anvil’, which was designed to tackle Dublin’s rising gun-crime rates. Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy was given 15,000 extra hours of overtime each week, so that his force could ‘strike at the heart’ of crime gangs, such as the two that were causing death and mayhem in Drimnagh and Crumlin.
Cocaine Wars Page 13
