by John Mooney
In March, two summonses had been delivered to Jessbrook notifying him that he was to appear before Kilcock District Court on 14 May charged with the assault. On the morning of the trial, he arrived at the court accompanied by Geraldine and a gang of young men, all clutching mobile phones that rang incessantly.
In the months that followed the attack, Guerin developed an outright animosity towards Gilligan. The Operation Pineapple team and the IRA were not the only ones inquiring into his wealth. She had made it her business to learn more about him, his criminal organisation, his henchmen and the crimes they engaged in. Outside the courthouse, she came face to face with her attacker for the first time since he assaulted her. There were no words spoken but there was a sense of tension in the air. Turley had brought his wife to the courthouse along with a colleague from the Sunday Independent. Gilligan could not hide his contempt and eyeballed her. Geraldine was more direct in her approach; she walked up to Guerin and told her she would not forget her. All this went unnoticed in the hustle of the court sitting.
The case was adjourned when it came up for hearing due to a legal technicality. Judge John Brophy fixed a date for mentioning the case, 28 May. Gilligan walked away from the court a free man. It was at this point that he noticed a photographer taking his picture. He despised cameras, never mind photographers armed with telephoto lenses. The photographer took only one picture as he walked away. Gilligan stared back defiantly, not knowing whether to cover his face with his hands, or pretend he was innocent and walk away smiling. The media bothered him. Where would his photograph appear? Would his business acquaintances recognise him? He felt a deep sense of rage. Apart from members of his family and a select group of acquaintances, he had never allowed anyone to point a camera in his direction. Now his photograph could appear on the front of Irish newspapers alongside articles about how he attacked Guerin, threatened to rape her son and murder her family. He had spent the last few years trying to conceal his criminal background—the convictions, robberies and links to paramilitary outfits. He considered himself a businessman whose wife ran a highly successful riding school and socialised with the high flyers of Dublin’s social scene. In truth, he was a gangster, and Jessbrook represented the proceeds of crime. Now, the house of cards he had spent years cleverly constructing was about to be exposed for what it was.
Gilligan was deadly serious when he said he was not going to allow Guerin to destroy him. At a party held after his first court appearance, he stood in a corner surrounded by former inmates of Portlaoise. One joked that he would be back in his cell soon enough for beating Guerin. Gilligan was not amused. ‘I’m not going back to prison, no matter what. That bitch is going to be sorry she ever messed with me,’ he growled. Coercion had not scared her. Threatening to rape her son appeared not to have any effect. There was only one way to stop her as far as he was concerned.
What follows in the rest of this chapter is what gardaí believe happened and what a prosecution was subsequently to allege in the Special Criminal Court in the trials of John Gilligan and Brian Meehan.
A week after his first court appearance, Warren visited Gilligan in Jessbrook. Gilligan collected him at the Spa Hotel in Lucan. During the drive, they spoke about money laundering and the enduring success of the business, which was going from strength to strength. An invitation to Jessbrook was an important occasion for Warren, still a relative newcomer to the cartel. His criminal credibility was not particularly impressive, so when the opportunity arose, he bragged that he had broken into a house and stolen a motorcycle. This aroused Gilligan’s interest.
Warren recounted how he and one of his friends had been drinking in the Speaker Connolly pub in Firhouse on the outskirts of Dublin. His friend’s name was Paul Cradden. He lived on the Corrib Road in Terenure. When they left the pub, the two headed towards Dún Laoghaire where Cradden’s employer, Ian Keith, managed a large house on Royal Terrace. Keith was a motorcycle enthusiast. His most prized possession was a Kawasaki racing bike.
‘Paul showed me where the garage was. I jumped over the wall and got into the garage. I then opened the door. He pulled a cover off the motorcycle.’ Warren examined the bike. It looked valuable. He noticed a sticker affixed to its windbreak. It read Genuine Oxford Grip. They decided to take the bike. Warren had parked his small van in a nearby lane way and the two pushed the bike into the van. ‘We didn’t know where to go with it or in fact what to do with it,’ he said. He rang a friend, Steven McGrath, who lived on St Enda’s Road in Terenure. McGrath was a hackney driver and owned a garage. ‘We gave him some story about repossessing a bike.’ They brought the stolen bike to his garage and stored it there.
After they arrived at the equestrian centre, Warren walked the land with Gilligan who gave him a guided tour of the arena and livery facilities. Workmen were installing seats in the show-jumping arena. Gilligan brought up the subject of the bike. He seemed interested in it. ‘Just keep it,’ he told Warren. ‘Don’t do anything with it, I may need it,’ he said.
John Traynor was encountering similar difficulties with Guerin. Their relationship had turned sour, if not bitterly hostile. In talking about Gilligan, the Coach had unwittingly implicated himself in the drug business, though not by design. In due time, she realised that virtually everything he had told her was lies. With Traynor, she concluded, it was impossible to distinguish between the truth and lies. Yet what seemed most dreadful to her were his sexual perversions, which she accidentally learned of. Finally seeing Traynor for what he was, she decided to write about him. She made one mistake though—she kept her line of communication with him open.
There is no doubt that she thought this was a shrewd manoeuvre. Rather than lose what was clearly a good source of information on Gilligan, she continued meeting him, but recorded each conversation using a tiny dictaphone she carried in her pocket. Traynor certainly knew the type of reprisal Gilligan’s gang had planned for Guerin and, with a degree of irony, hinted as much to her in an obscure way during their last meeting. For the first time since the two had met, Traynor warned her about Gilligan. ‘Even last week, when you were saying about Gilligan and what he’s capable of, and trying to stop me going to court, it makes me more determined. It’s the way I am,’ she told him.
He said: ‘If he never done anything, at the back of your mind, you know what he’s capable of.’
The Coach’s engagement in the narcotics trade caught Guerin by surprise. But once she had ascertained his specific role in Gilligan’s operation and the cannabis trade, he became a legitimate target for her investigations. Her mistake was to tell him about what she knew and that she intended to name him in the Sunday Independent. There is a suspicion that he toyed with the idea of murdering the journalist himself. The windows of her car were smashed around this time in what appeared to be an act of vandalism. Traynor, however, admitted responsibility and paid for the damage. Guerin confided that she suspected that Traynor was testing the car windows to see if they were bullet-proof. But rather than resort to violence or use intimidation, he turned to the courts.
On Thursday, 13 June, Traynor arrived at the offices of Michael E. Hanahoe on Parliament Street, a solicitors’ firm, where he spoke to Michael Hanahoe, one of the most respected solicitors practising in Dublin. That day he displayed all the hurt of an innocent man who was about to be wronged. He said Guerin had called him to say she was preparing a story for publication that would link him to the drugs trade. The article was due for publication the following Sunday, 16 June.
Traynor, who had a noteworthy ability to charm, said he was at the end of his tether with Guerin. She had threatened and tried to cajole him—legal redress was his only solution. The lawyer listened attentively and in proper fashion advised an injunction. Traynor accepted his opinion and told him to do whatever was necessary. Hanahoe picked up the phone, called the law library and arranged a consultation.
Traynor explained his predicament once more. Wha
t he told his lawyers was a mixture of lies and half-truths. For obvious reasons, he denied any association with the ‘narcotics trade’ as he called it. He concocted a story about how Guerin had, two weeks earlier, lunched with him in the Greyhound bar in Harold’s Cross in Dublin. Minutes into the meeting, he said, Guerin announced that her editor had received a Garda report together with a photograph from a Garda file. The photograph was of him. The report, she suggested, linked him to Thomas Mullen and another criminal, two heroin traffickers from Dublin, though he didn’t mention either by name. ‘This confidential report was never produced to me, nor was it ever offered to me, nor was it ever subsequently forwarded to me at any stage by her, or by anybody,’ he said. By that afternoon, he had secured the injunction impeding the publication. Traynor kept Gilligan fully briefed on his case, which the latter viewed as a good way of disseminating black propaganda against Guerin. Anything to damage her reputation would do.
While Guerin was a brilliant journalist in many ways, she was ignorant of the criminal psyche. She did not understand the danger Traynor represented, or his ability to double-cross. The likelihood of Gilligan mounting an attack had crossed her mind, but she saw her own well-founded fears as a weakness in herself. This was her first mistake. Her second oversight was that during one of her many casual conversations with Traynor she told him she was due before Naas District Court at 11 a.m. on 26 June to be judged on a speeding offence.
One of Gilligan’s inherent character flaws was a preference for the company of fools. He and Meehan discussed shooting the journalist, yet neither could see the inevitable chain reaction it would cause. On the contrary, Meehan agreed with Gilligan’s general outlook—he too reckoned Guerin had to go. Meehan steadfastly agreed with Gilligan’s thwarted view of his predicament. He possessed neither conscience nor intelligence. A more ambitious criminal would have seen Gilligan’s return to jail as something of a probability rather than a possibility, and as an opportunity for him to take control without sparking off a bloody feud. Whether it was lack of self-confidence or devotion to his boss, he stood firm behind Gilligan, believing the business would certainly fall apart if the boss was jailed for the assault. This was the worst scenario imaginable for Meehan. Without Gilligan to organise regular cannabis deliveries from Holland, he saw his career as effectively finished. This encouraged Meehan, who saw no distinction between attempting to murder Foley and assassinating one of Ireland’s best-known public figures. On the contrary, he thought such an act would heighten his standing in the underworld. He had not the slightest comprehension of the consequences his actions would have, no matter which way he rationalised the situation. Gilligan also had a passionate hatred for Guerin. He despised what she stood for; his business was no business of anyone else’s. This was his rationale.
On 19 June, Gilligan rang Warren asking whether he had possession of the stolen motorcycle. ‘Do you still have it?’ he enquired of the bike. Warren confirmed he did. ‘Is it where anyone would see our faces? I have Brian Meehan with me.’
Warren sensed the urgency in his voice. He said the bike was in his friend’s garage at the rear of St Enda’s Road. ‘No one will be around, you can have a look,’ he promised. They arranged to meet in the car park of the Terenure House.
Thirty minutes later, the two gangsters arrived. Warren sat in Gilligan’s car and directed them to the garage. He looked over his shoulder to see if he was being followed. They pulled up outside the garage and scuttled in. Parked inside was the powerful-looking Kawasaki.
Working like a mechanic, Meehan commenced an examination of the bike, methodically checking its suspension, brakes, indicators and balance. He saw the keyhole on the fuel tank had been drilled to allow a refuel. The back indicator lights were also broken. Some farings were missing. Should the bike break down, it would mean certain trouble.
Warren couldn’t help but wonder why Gilligan was on edge. His body language was that of a man possessed. Never before had the little man seemed so distracted. But the months Warren had spent working under Gilligan’s tutelage had given him an unnatural ability to keep his mouth shut and not to ask questions that he didn’t want to know the answers to.
Happy with his cursory examination, Meehan said the bike would do. Gilligan then ordered Warren to fit it out with new plates and indicators. They left in Gilligan’s car. He offered to drop Warren back to the Terenure House where he had left his car. Gilligan drove, Meehan sat in the front passenger seat and Warren sat in the back. Then, out of the blue, Gilligan turned to Warren and in a matter-of-fact way said: ‘I have been told not to trust you, but I will.’
Warren was astonished. Gilligan then said he would murder him, his family and parents if he ever made a statement against him. Warren thought it was a joke, but Gilligan didn’t smile. Neither did Meehan, who looked directly at him with an expressionless face. His voice steady, Warren mustered up the courage to ask if he had done anything wrong. ‘Just keep it in mind,’ answered Gilligan. ‘Just keep it in mind. Don’t think I won’t do this. No matter where you are I’ll get you.’
He dropped Warren off and said he’d be in touch. Warren immediately returned to McGrath’s house and started repairing the bike. Warren bought two new rear indicators for the bike in a motorcycle shop for IR£16. He purchased new number plates. He also got petrol. Finally it was fitted with modern Euro plates.
On the evening of 21 June, some members of the gang assembled in Meehan’s apartment in Clifton Court. They often met there on Friday nights to discuss business; how much money they had made and the events of the past week. Gilligan rarely attended these criminal conferences. Shay Ward, Bowden, Meehan and Mitchell sat around the table. Meehan got straight to the point. ‘The little fella,’ he said, was ‘pissed off.’ They all knew what he meant by this. ‘Gilligan’s upset about her, something’s going to have to be done about her. If he’s sent down for the assault, the whole operation will fall apart,’ he said with authority. ‘He’s the only one that knows the people to get the gear.’
Bowden said nothing. Mitchell nodded in agreement. They left it at that. Bowden shrugged it off. He’d heard such talk before. Every second week, either Meehan or Gilligan would plot someone’s murder. The conspiracy, however, would inevitably be made redundant within a few days. ‘It was,’ as he would later remark, ‘the way they went on.’
Except this time the gang was deadly serious. A reputable assassin had already been hired. Meehan had in fact offered to carry out the shooting, but they decided against this; Meehan had already botched Foley’s execution. If Guerin survived, it would be a disaster. However, Meehan would oversee the assassination and was entrusted to arm, collect and deliver the killer to the scene.
That weekend, the gang met to finalise their plans. Meehan drove towards the Phoenix Park, up the back roads along the Liffey Valley into the Strawberry Beds. The talk was of cannabis and guns. Meehan asked Bowden where the Magnum was. He said he’d searched the hiding spot, in a grave in the Jewish cemetery, but it wasn’t there. ‘I told him that we were using more than one grave,’ Bowden would later say. He directed Meehan to another grave.
At 10.30 a.m. on Tuesday, 25 June, Gilligan attended what was to be his last appearance before Kilcock District Court. He arrived in the company of his solicitor, Michael Hanahoe. It was supposed to be a routine fixture where Judge Brophy would mention the case as arranged. It lasted no more than a few minutes. After Judge Brophy had finished dealing with the case, Hanahoe emerged. The trial now looked as if it would proceed sometime in July. The solicitor was concerned about aspects of the case. If he familiarised himself with Jessbrook, he could get a clearer picture of what happened with his own eyes. Could he go there at once to look around? Gilligan said he’d take him there. The two drove in Hanahoe’s car to Jessbrook where the lawyer viewed the scene and its surroundings.
Gilligan, always the opportunist, said he had to catch flight EI 608 from Dublin Airpor
t leaving at 3.35 p.m. for Amsterdam. He had purchased the ticket to depart nine days earlier. Rooney was flying with him. Hanahoe offered him a lift. He was heading back to Dublin anyway and was just being courteous by offering the lift.
That night Meehan, accompanied by Mitchell, arranged to meet Warren in the car park of the Terenure House. They collected Warren and drove to St Enda’s Road. Meehan wanted to test drive the Kawasaki. They arrived as it got dark. In one arm, Meehan carried a new motorcycle helmet.
‘We drove up to the end of the lane. I went to the garage and Brian joined me later. Brian had a new silver full-face helmet and gloves. He put those on and drove the bike away for a test drive,’ said Warren.
The bike was ready as ordered; Warren had fitted it out with new lights and false plates should any passing police car notice it. But Mitchell wasn’t impressed. ‘It wouldn’t be my first choice but it will have to do,’ he said.
While Meehan was gone, Gilligan called Warren on his mobile phone. Warren was due to fly to Schiphol the next morning to deliver money. Even before he could ask where in Amsterdam Gilligan wanted to meet, he was interrupted and told that he was needed in Dublin instead. ‘I want you there,’ said Gilligan. His words came as a complete surprise. Now he knew that something serious was going on.
Meehan returned minutes later. When he dismounted, he asked Warren if he knew what Veronica Guerin looked like. Warren said he didn’t. He said nothing as Meehan gave him a description. ‘He said that she was between 30 and 40 years old, small build and I think he said greyish short hair. I didn’t know who she was and he didn’t mention anything about her being a journalist or anything to do with papers,’ he recalled. Warren felt he was sinking into a mire, but he remained clear-sighted. He listened to Meehan attentively and said goodbye. As soon as they left, he took a can of petrol and wiped the bike of his fingerprints.
