by John Mooney
Anyone else would have been murdered for mixing in rival circles, but not Coyle. No one in the Irish underworld expected anything else of him. He had connections everywhere and was regarded as being good at his job. Therefore, it came as no surprise that he acquired 80 of the bonds to fence within weeks of the theft. Coyle was shrewd enough to know that he wasn’t capable of laundering the bonds single-handedly, so he enlisted Gilligan.
‘They didn’t really understand what they had. The whole thing was a non-starter. But Gilligan had what he believed was stolen gear worth IR£80 million, and he went around trying to get anyone to buy one of the bonds,’ explained an IRA source.
Laundering such valuable documents into the international banking system was a crime Gilligan simply didn’t have the intelligence to carry out. Instead, he tried to sell them to fellow criminals, fraudsters and the like.
‘He came to me with a photocopy of one of the bonds. That was proof that he had them. He wanted IR£10,000 cash for each one, then 10% of whatever they fetched when they were fenced. These things were for a million. No one could fence something like that, so no one did the business with him,’ recalled one fraudster who was offered the bonds outside the Four Courts building.
Gilligan then turned to Jim Beirne, a businessman with international criminal connections. Beirne was known as The Danger and came from County Roscommon. He specialised in fraud but would later enter into the world of international drug trafficking.
Beirne had the connections in the United States to launder the bonds. His connection came through John Francis Conlon. Born in Westport, County Mayo, Conlon was somewhat of an international figure in the intelligence community, having worked for the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad and the Central Intelligence Agency, as well as British Intelligence and US Customs and Excise. He moved between Norfolk, England and Miami, America. He was an associate of Monzer al-Kassar, the world’s biggest illegal arms dealer, who sold weapons to terrorists. He also sold arms to Colonel Oliver North, a deal that would later spark off the Arms-to-Iran crisis. Conlon was effectively a double agent. He came to prominence in the intelligence community during the Middle Eastern conflict.
Among the three men, a conspiracy emerged to smuggle the bonds to the United States, where Conlon felt his Mafia connections could launder anything. Gilligan and Coyle trusted Beirne’s credentials and left everything to him. All they would have to do was go along with his instructions. Fuelled by a lust to make it big, however, all the participants in the conspiracy let their guards down. With the exception of Conlon and Beirne, all were dabbling in unfamiliar territory and didn’t see the warning signs of informers in their ranks.
Arrangements were made to have the bonds smuggled to Miami on 29 May, the day Operation Starling scored its first blow. The official version of what happened is that Customs officers accidentally intercepted a suitcase full of bonds as a result of a random search and later arrested three men. The arrested men were Thomas Coyle, his brother-in-law Anthony Rooney and Edward Dunne, who had departed from Dublin Airport earlier that morning. Coyle had hidden the bonds in one of the group’s suitcases, which were all tagged to Dunne. Neither Dunne nor Rooney knew the bonds were concealed in the luggage. They were completely innocent.
Dunne’s flight went ahead as scheduled, whilst Coyle’s and Rooney’s was delayed. All three were due to fly to Heathrow where they would catch a connecting flight to Miami, for the purpose of buying a racehorse. But on his arrival, Dunne was stopped by Customs and taken into custody. Coyle and Rooney arrived shortly afterwards and were also stopped. An examination of Rooney’s baggage revealed 80 bonds. Rooney and Coyle said they had never seen the bonds, did not know what was in Dunne’s suitcase and told investigating police this was all a mistake.
The newspaper headlines the next morning announced that three men were due in court charged with attempting to handle the stolen bearer bonds worth IR£77.3 million. The names of the three were released and they were charged that on or before 29 May 1990 they attempted, within the jurisdiction of the Old Bailey, to handle stolen property, namely Treasury Bills and Certificates of Deposit, which if misused could have caused the owners a loss worth IR£77.3 million. The charges were made under Section 11 of the 1977 Criminal Law Act. Coyle and Rooney were charged separately from Dunne.
Their case went to trial in February 1991 before Knightsbridge Crown Court in London but collapsed on a legal technicality. The prosecution had claimed the bonds were part of the stolen IR£291 million haul from the mugging. Coyle and Rooney maintained their defence, claiming they didn’t know what was inside the case. Rooney certainly didn’t. He was innocent. But after hearing several days of evidence, both Rooney and Coyle were freed when their trial judge instructed the jury to acquit them because they hadn’t handled the bonds in a British jurisdiction. Coyle couldn’t believe his luck. The Crown Prosecution then offered no evidence on a conspiracy charge. The prosecution case against Edward Dunne fell apart after it emerged that he had not signed the docket accompanying his baggage, which he was legally required to do. He was freed.
In an interview with the Sunday World after the acquittal, Coyle said the cockroaches in his cell were as big as mice. ‘I feel very hurt that at this stage in our lives we had to spend months inside for something that we knew nothing about. For fellas like us, who had never been in prison before, you can imagine what it was like to be thrown in with murderers, child molesters and peeping toms.’
Rooney described his ordeal. ‘I made the tea for all the officers and Thomas was the head cleaner. We had to do something to get out of that cell, otherwise we would have been behind bars for 23 hours a day.’
Coyle concluded the interview, saying: ‘Our biggest fear was that we would be arrested again. We just couldn’t trust the British system, and the feeling when we touched down in Ireland was just unbelievable. At last we knew we were home safe and sound.’ Years later, Coyle would boast of his escape. He even purchased a racehorse which he named 77 Mill.
The police assigned to Operation Starling went on to intercept more bonds. In Cyprus, 80 bonds were retrieved whilst the FBI in Miami intercepted more. But it was the manner in which these were intercepted, or the story behind them, that proved dangerous for the criminals involved. Those responsible for the delivery of the bonds to Miami said they were working with the Provisional IRA and were filmed saying this by the FBI.
Acting on intelligence, US Customs agents intercepted the 71 British bonds worth $18 million inside a package being sent on an outbound Air Perú flight destined for Lima. The bonds were concealed inside two hollowed-out phone books.
The sheer scale of the theft had naturally aroused the interest of the British media, and it wasn’t long before allegations of IRA involvement made it into the press. What caused the upset was the linking of the Provisional IRA to loyalist paramilitaries, from whom earlier consignments of bonds had been seized. Television programmes proclaiming the IRA were involved with the UDA were broadcast, whilst newspapers in Britain started saying the IRA and UDA were co-operating to launder the bonds. The IRA launched an inquiry that led straight to Gilligan. One of his interrogators wanted to shoot Gilligan, but was overruled by his superior who ordered that Gilligan be released.
‘I think our own people realised it was all a non-starter. Here were a group of Dublin criminals trying to launder IR£80 million, which was way out of their league. When it emerged that they had been telling people that they were working with the IRA, then that was different. At one point it got way out of hand, the British press were running wild with stories about our involvement with the bonds. The truth was that we had never gotten them.’
As was usual in Gilligan’s criminal career, he was not brought to court for his role in this serious crime but instead went down for receiving stolen tools worth a mere IR£3,000.
The goods had been stolen from Bolger’s Hardware and Builders Provide
rs in Kilcannon, Enniscorthy, County Wexford, months earlier. The warehouse gang had been busy and had cleared out the family business. The goods were recovered days later by the gardaí, following a surveillance operation that resulted in Gilligan’s arrest.
Gilligan was charged before the Special Criminal Court where Judge Robert Barr described him as being ‘involved in serious crime for many years’. Gilligan, whose address was given as Corduff Avenue, Blanchardstown, Dublin, was found guilty of receiving assorted hardware items worth IR£3,000 between 26 and 28 January but was cleared of the theft of IR£15,000 worth of stolen goods. The court was told that Gilligan had been arrested after gardaí had staked out a lorry parked on the Ballymount Road in Dublin. The lorry contained the proceeds of the Wexford robbery, and Gilligan and three others were seen removing the goods from it in two vans.
When Gilligan was convicted, Detective Sergeant Felix McKenna told the court that Gilligan had 12 previous convictions and was the leader of the gang. Barr sentenced Gilligan to four years. Although the conviction was a huge success, it would have unforeseen consequences. No one standing in the courtroom that day could have predicted that Gilligan was about to undergo a metamorphosis, transforming himself from a street wise thief into a career criminal. This transformation occurred in the maximum-security wing of Portlaoise Prison over the next three years, with unimaginable consequences for the system that put him there.
[1] Interview with the author.
Chapter 5
Portlaoise
‘He was a natural-born networker.’
BRIAN KENNA, FORMER OFFICER COMMANDING OF THE PROVISIONAL IRA PRISONERS HELD IN PORTLAOISE PRISON, TALKING ABOUT GILLIGAN
The video footage shows a small man smiling at the camera, shaking hands with some of Ireland’s most infamous gangsters. He is cordial and is greeted with respect; the type shown by sons to their fathers. He looks nervous in front of the camera, ill at ease about being filmed, but manages to continue smiling as if he has not a care in the world. John Gilligan was networking. He shouts at Dessie O’Hare. The INLA gunman, forever known as the Border Fox, is walking through the frame looking solemn.
‘Dessie . . . Dessie . . . Dessie . . . come here.’
O’Hare ignores him, stares straight ahead, and walks away. Gilligan runs towards him and embraces him whilst cajoling him into smiling at the camera. Then he’s off, shaking hands with other prisoners, patting them on the back, congratulating some on playing well whilst commiserating with others. He is everyone’s friend.
The inmates of Portlaoise Prison had just organised an inter-prison soccer tournament, the final of which had been filmed on video for posterity. Below the barbed wire and watchtowers, soccer teams drawn from the prison population competed against each other to secure a place in the cup final. Because he was not a good footballer, Gilligan was nominated to provide a running commentary on the qualifying matches as they were filmed. That his vocabulary was limited and his words were spoken in guttural tones that seemed to melt into one another didn’t dissuade his appointment. Some of his commentary when later played was impossible to decipher. Oddly, at times when O’Hare was playing he spoke with clarity—although he repeated himself constantly.
‘The Border Fox has the ball. Good kick by Dessie O’Hare, the Fox to Hippo Ward . . . Nice pass to Larry Dunne . . . Larry Dunne. Good man, Larry.’
It was late in the summer of 1991, and Gilligan had just begun serving his sentence in Portlaoise Prison, yet he was the centre of attention—greeted like a patriarchal figure. In the grey confines of the prison, Gilligan had the power without the throne. He slept in the same type of cell as the other prisoners, ate the same food, awoke at the same time and was told when to go to bed. The only thing that set him apart was his ability to network. It was here that he created a coterie of trusted sidekicks who would later give him the muscle to become a major player in the world of crime. Far from rehabilitating himself for society, Gilligan metamorphosed from a thief into a gangster.
Gilligan arrived in Portlaoise Prison courtesy of the Special Criminal Court on 7 November 1990. The prison itself was built in 1850 and lies in the centre of Portlaoise town in County Laois. The jail is divided into two wings—D Block and E Block, each wing four storeys in height. D Block holds delinquents jailed for car theft and other such misdemeanours. E Block is a prison within a prison and is partly reserved for those the system deems a serious threat to the security of the State.
The ground floor of E Block is called E1 and is home to a select group of criminals, some of whom the Department of Justice regards as being involved in organised crime. The second floor is called E2. The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) used to share this floor with the Provisional IRA volunteers whose ranks also accounted for the cells on E3 and E4. Gilligan lived on E1, and it was here that he evolved in criminal terms.
It is said that Gilligan could always make people feel comfortable. He might smile at them, give them space when required, talk to them as if they were his best friend but, most important of all, listen without interrupting. He possessed an ability to pay attention; he had a knack of listening to monotonous conversations without appearing bored. It was this talent he used to full effect in the prison, making friends with criminals that would be of use to him on his release. His secret was giving off the impression that he was just another criminal. No one who encountered him during this period considered him anything but a thief. He was a small man who smiled continuously, knew a few tricky businessmen and looked forward to his wife’s visits. Gambling was his only character flaw.
In prison, he gambled on everything. Whether he was on the prison landings or in the exercise yard, he would produce a deck of cards to passers-by. He would bet on two flies crawling up a wall. ‘Pick a card, buy a Crunchie,’ he would say, holding out a shuffled deck. Two cards would be drawn. Whoever chose the lowest would be obliged to buy a Crunchie in the prison tuck shop. But this was a front, a persona he created for life behind bars.
With perfect cunning, Gilligan managed to become a central figure on E1, effectively representing the prisoners to the authorities but at all times staying in the background. He nominated others to approach the Governor on issues relating to their living conditions.
Brian Kenna was the then Officer Commanding of the Provisional IRA volunteers gaoled in Portlaoise at the time. ‘Gilligan became like a spokesman for the prisoners down in E1. In a lot of cases others would go and argue with the Governor, but it was under the direction of John Gilligan. The others didn’t seem to be bothered one way or the other. They didn’t seem to care who represented them or whether they were represented at all. If they had a problem, they would go see the Governor themselves. Gilligan seemed to be the main mover,’ he said.
In other words, Gilligan directed manoeuvres from a discreet distance. This was an indication of Gilligan’s organisational skills. ‘You could see him getting organised; he was also clever enough to keep a distance between himself and the Governor so that he wasn’t seen to be rocking the boat,’ said Kenna.
By fighting for better conditions in the prison, Gilligan ingratiated himself with his fellow inmates. Because he was a natural-born networker, he devoted his energies to getting to know everyone inside. If this was part of some grand plan to build a coterie of accomplices around him, it is known only to him. But this is exactly what happened.
Prison prepared him for a life of organised crime and drug trafficking. Housing violent criminals in Portlaoise Prison alongside the likes of Gilligan was, Kenna says, a recipe for disaster.
‘Men like Gilligan were the nearest thing Ireland had seen to organised crime—they had the gangs, contacts in the gardaí, prison system, social welfare, the courts, basically extensive networks on the outside. Or, in some cases, they had the ability to develop networks. They were career criminals.
‘Gilligan was introduc
ed to strong or hard men in Portlaoise, men he was able to manipulate. A lot of these were in awe of Gilligan. It was easy for him to manipulate these people, who frankly mightn’t have had an awful lot between their ears. They were just fellas who got involved in crime but would never have made much money. But when these were introduced to people like Gilligan, who could scheme long term, the prison system effectively gave him foot soldiers,’ he added.
While Gilligan resisted joining an established criminal gang, he certainly learned from them, particularly the concept of how to run a paramilitary organisation. He watched the INLA and how they operated, and listened to Dessie O’Hare’s ramblings about revolutionary and guerrilla warfare. Although most of what he heard was defunct nonsense, Gilligan did gain insight into how groups like the INLA hand-picked men to perform certain tasks. He also learned about how to structure a criminal organisation into cells.
‘The top criminal brains were housed on the one landing, and so they compared notes. That’s where Gilligan came into his own. He sat back and identified people in any particular area, whether it be someone with a van, someone with a yard, someone who could get registration numbers checked. He met them in Portlaoise and recruited them,’ explained Kenna.
It is easy to conjecture how this happened. Kenna saw Gilligan as having a remarkable ability to learn from others. ‘He could pick everybody’s brains, even without having to talk to them, by just sitting there and listening to them. He used everyone’s skills. He was like a personnel manager, for want of a better word. He was good at managing people on a one-to-one basis for a bigger picture. And he obviously did that very effectively.’
