by John Mooney
Gilligan’s defence contingent sat to the right on the same wooden bench. Michael O’Higgins headed the defence. He was a barrister who had his feet planted firmly on the ground, having worked as a journalist writing on justice and social issues before deciding to study law. Of his many articles, his interviews with Martin Cahill stood out as the best. It was said that Cahill had given him great insight into the underworld because O’Higgins showed no airs, graces or pomposity. Although middle-aged, he possessed a youthful expression that belied a razor-sharp wit. When he spoke, his face became animated.
To his left sat Terence McDonald, a rather stern-looking barrister who practised at the Belfast bar. Always mindful to look sombre in court, in truth, he smiled and exchanged courtesies with just about everyone. Peter Irvine, a barrister, sat beside him. Rice sat on a wooden bench immediately behind the defence team. Tony Hickey, who arrived in full uniform, sat on the same bench, but at the opposite end.
And so the trial of John Gilligan began.
No sooner had Charleton started delivering his opening submission than O’Higgins jumped to his feet, objecting to any possibility that Bowden, Warren and Dunne take the stand. Charleton threw his eyes to heaven. O’Higgins proclaimed that the witness protection programme was tainted. The court, he said, had a duty to ensure its own process was not damaged. This, he said, was an essential part of justice, as in the moisture that hangs in the air.
And with that began another legal argument that effectively delayed the trial for two days. Bowden, O’Higgins asserted, was so impugned that he couldn’t give any credible evidence because he was a proven liar. The barrister, with one foot placed on the wooden bench, read from the verdict delivered in Meehan’s case. This found that Bowden had lied. ‘Does it follow that he’ll lie again?’ asked Judge O’Donovan. O’Higgins suggested he would. They retired till the next day when the court discounted the submission.
Charleton was back on his feet outlining the State’s case against Gilligan, whom he said controlled the minds of those who carried out the shooting. ‘Anyone who spoke out against him was subjected to threats and terror,’ he said. Gilligan, content in the knowledge that he would hear a lot more of this, never looked down. He assumed a more comfortable position, sitting with legs crossed, smiling. He never moved for the rest of Charleton’s speech, which seemed to encapsulate his entrance into the murky world of drug dealing, his meetings with Guerin, her murder and the destruction of his organisation—effectively chronicling the creation and fall of his drugs empire.
The trial got under way. Garda witnesses were called and cross-examined. Much of what they had to say was not controversial; it was simply evidence which had to be read into the court records for legal requirements.
Aware that he had everything to play for, Gilligan listened attentively to the evidence, for he knew he would pay dearly for any lack of concentration. Rather than allow his lawyers to run the case without contributions from him, he scribbled down notes. The prison officers handed these to his solicitor. It was all a desperate act. As the weeks passed by, Gilligan became noticeably more worried-looking. He stopped smiling, sat up straight and gazed forlornly as more damning evidence was given. When the court rose for the Christmas break, he looked somewhat relieved.
The trial resumed hearing on 12 January. It started in much the same way with O’Higgins and Charleton tussling over obscure legal points of law. The strategy chosen by the gangster’s lawyers centred on discrediting any evidence from the supergrass witnesses, which wasn’t particularly difficult to do. Bowden had told so many variations of what happened on 26 June 1996 that he was relatively easy to demolish. He represented no great threat.
O’Higgins zoned in on the fact that few of the people named by Bowden had been charged, as indeed had the supergrass himself with all the offences he’d admitted to. This question was asked of Detective Inspector John O’Mahony. O’Higgins made it clear that he would continue asking the same questions until he got a satisfactory answer. O’Mahony responded by saying the file was sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions, prompting O’Higgins to ask, ‘Do I hear the sound of a buck being passed?’ This line of questioning continued for several days. O’Higgins demanded to know why others named by Bowden had not been charged with the other offences he admitted to. He also made much of the fact that no member of Bowden’s family had been charged with any offence. Then he dissected Bowden’s statements with the skill of a pathologist. He read dozens of selected quotes, asking O’Mahony to confirm they were lies, which he did. It was a thorough cross-examination and one which Gilligan appeared to enjoy.
John Dunne became the first supergrass witness to take the stand at 3.25 p.m. on 23 January when he stepped into the witness box. He didn’t make eye contact with Gilligan, who eyeballed him up and down.
Dunne looked a hardened criminal. His head was shaven, and he looked lean but oddly pale. His skin pigmentation was off-colour from never being allowed outdoors.
His evidence appeared straightforward at first. He recounted the story of how he met Gilligan, how he joined Sea Bridge and got involved in the drugs business. O’Higgins listened attentively as Dunne told the court he had surrendered the money he made to the gardaí. ‘I decided to be truthful,’ he said without a hint of ambivalence.
‘Well then, why did you tell them that you only earned IR£30,000 to IR£40,000?’ asked O’Higgins, who pointed out there were 96 consignments in all between 1994 and 1996 and that Dunne had said he was paid on average IR£1,000 for each consignment. Dunne could think of nothing to say.
Anyone listening to Dunne was struck by his knowledge of the law. He appeared more than capable of answering O’Higgins’ questions about the witness protection programme. O’Higgins himself was struck by his apparent expert knowledge of the scheme that seemed a mystery to anyone other than the gardaí.
When the barrister asked Dunne if he thought the three-year sentence imposed on him for drug traffick-ing was fair, Dunne, speaking with the brazenness of a lawyer, said he thought it was. ‘There’s no point in me bitching about a sentence,’ he said before quoting case law to the lawyer, who seemed taken aback. The witness went further, detailing how he, Bowden and Warren, tried to secure temporary release by waging a war of attrition with the Department of Justice.
O’Higgins pressed him to talk about his future.
‘I will only get what I am entitled to, if you know what I mean. I’m happy with my deal.’
Gilligan certainly wasn’t.
Russell Warren was the next to take the stand.
McDonald handled his cross-examination. If his client was to beat the murder charge, it was critical that Warren’s testimony be dismantled, and this is exactly what happened. McDonald chose a simple strategy of asking Warren simple questions, which often caused some of the assembled spectators to throw their eyes up to heaven because there appeared to be no purpose to them. But there was. McDonald had fought and won supergrass trials in Northern Ireland.
Warren answered each question, but because he was still in a state of self-denial about his own role in the killing, he tried to distance himself from the murder. Warren maintained that he never knew Guerin was going to be murdered. He said Gilligan or Meehan had told him to go to Naas and look for a red sports car parked near the courthouse, which he did. He stuck rigidly to his story that he drove to Naas that morning in his blue van, a Toyota Liteace. When he arrived in Naas, he said he initially got lost. It got better. Speaking like a true liar, he said he parked his van outside another building, which he mistook for the court. He said he was walking into this building when he looked behind and saw a traffic warden walking towards his van. Warren said he turned back and ran to the warden shouting, ‘I’ll move it.’ According to his version of events, he moved his van to another location nearer the court. When the van was parked, he said he walked into a newsagent’s and bought a packet of crisps, a Cl
ub Orange and the Star newspaper.
He gave two different accounts of what happened next. In the first, he said he’d sat back into his van when he noticed Guerin’s car in traffic. According to his second version of the truth, he saw the car at a distance while walking away from the court. This evidence was the invention of his imagination working in tandem with his conscience.
His most blatant lie came when he said he recognised Guerin’s car because of the spoiler on its rear. He described to Judge Mathews what the spoiler looked like, gesturing with his hands to show how large it was.
McDonald said nothing, then asked him if he was sure. Warren affirmed his version of the events again. The barrister handed him a photograph of the vehicle. This showed there was no spoiler. Warren looked shocked.
The prosecution case continued to fall apart.
McDonald put it to the star witness that everything he said was ‘a complete fabrication, a total lie and out-and-out lies’. Warren, at one point, agreed he was a perjurer.
As the days passed, he rambled through more of his evidence, giving further contradicting testimony. He said he’d followed Guerin as she drove in the slow lane. Then after the killing had been executed, he said he drove his van from the fast lane of the Naas Road, through the slow lane to escape via a slip road.
McDonald pointed out to him that none of the other witnesses saw a van near the scene. The slow lane was also blocked. But they did see a blue Volvo car driving away at breakneck speed. Warren said he didn’t notice it, leaving many observers to conclude that he was the driver and Bowden was a passenger. A theory developed that Bowden had watched Guerin from the roof of the Naas District Court. Warren’s story about talking to a traffic warden was also shown to be no more than a figment of his imagination. The traffic warden gave evidence of having no such conversation. Gilligan’s defence team compromised his entire testimony but, most importantly of all, discredited his version of the conversation that took place between the witness and Gilligan immediately after the murder.
Warren said he rang Gilligan a couple of minutes after witnessing the murder and told him that ‘somebody’s after being shot’.
‘He said, “Are they dead?” and I said, “I suppose so, they were shot five times.” He said, “Did they get away?” I said, “Yes, they drove off.”
‘He said, “Tell your friend that the same thing will happen to him if anyone says anything about the bike.”’
The phone records produced to the court showed that this conversation, if true, lasted ten seconds.
He kept lying. He proclaimed that Gilligan had told him to go to Naas on the day of the murder.
McDonald asked him why he didn’t mention this detail in his statement made to gardaí three months after the murder. The statement, Warren said without a hint of irony, contained some lies. He continued to exaggerate, saying he was in constant mobile phone contact with Gilligan after he travelled to Naas and spotted Guerin’s car.
McDonald suggested that Gilligan had not told him to go to Naas. Warren replied: ‘I know he told me to go to Naas. It was the morning or the evening over the phone.
‘He said, “Do what Brian Meehan wants you to do, go to Naas.” It was the evening before or the morning before the murder. Those were my instructions.’
McDonald said nothing about this piece of evidence. He pressed him further, causing the criminal to break down saying, ‘I only drove the woman to her death. I only sent the woman to her death.’
The court adjourned for five minutes to allow him to compose himself. When he returned, he told the three judges: ‘I am very sorry about that.’
Bowden’s evidence was of the same calibre. He claimed that although he’d loaded the gun, he never realised she was going to be shot.
‘I thought myself that there would be an attempt to warn her off or an attempt to shoot her to warn her off,’ he proclaimed with a degree of smugness. He couldn’t account for his movements on the day of the murder. This reinforced the opinion that he was present at the scene of the killing and had participated in Guerin’s murder.
The defence proceeded to question everything. Garda witnesses conceded they had returned money which had been seized to Dunne, Warren and Bowden. McDonald cross-examined Detective Bernie Hanley in this regard. Hanley said in evidence that he gave Warren IR£1,920 before Christmas 1996 and another IR£1,000 in April 1997. This was Warren’s own money, from his industrial cleaning business, and he was returning it to him after it had been seized by gardaí.
‘There was no question of payment for infor-mation,’ Detective Hanley said. If he had wanted to pay Warren for information, Garda procedures existed, which he could have followed.
Baltus had agreed to give evidence, linking Gilligan to dozens of arms imports, but suddenly refused to travel to Dublin. He claimed someone had tried to kidnap his daughter. He would not risk her life by testifying. The truth was that he didn’t want to give evidence. There was no kidnapping attempt reported to the Dutch police because there was no kidnapping attempt.
And so after 43 days of evidence from 200 witnesses, including the three supergrass witnesses, it was over. Eamonn Leahy delivered the final closing submission. He said it was not the prosecution’s contention that Gilligan was present at the Naas Road when Guerin was shot dead by the pillion passenger on a motorbike who fired six bullets from a .357 Magnum into her body. But it was the prosecution’s contention that Gilligan played a leading part in a prearranged plan to shoot Guerin and was therefore complicit in the murder and guilty in law.
O’Higgins delivered the closing submissions for the defence, which lasted four days. He said he would not use the description ‘supergrasses’ or ‘protected witnesses’, but he thought a fair description was ‘compromised witnesses’. The relationship that existed between these witnesses and the State was such that the witnesses were ‘utterly compromised’.
‘It threatens to compromise the entire criminal justice system as we understand it,’ he added. Bowden’s evidence, he said, did not ‘pass muster’. The court should ‘effectively disregard everything he said’.
When he finished, Justice Diarmuid O’Donovan said the court would have to take some time to consider every aspect of the case. Gilligan stood up and said, ‘Thank you very much’ before being led from the dock.
On 15 March, Gilligan was welcomed to the Special Criminal Court with a much greater reception than even he could ever have predicted. The media were everywhere. There were vans with giant satellite dishes pointing at the heavens, ready to relay the court verdict to the world the second that it was delivered. Radio journalists spoke into microphones attached to complex devices. Newspaper reporters hustled together in small gangs, engaging in idle chat, some offering bets on what sentence Gilligan would get. They had all gathered for one thing—to witness Gilligan’s ultimate demise.
Outside the court building, Joe Rice and Peter Irvine stood and watched the circus. But the lawyers remained quietly confident of winning the case, although just about everyone else was assured of Gilligan’s guilt. Minutes before 11 a.m. they walked inside to find a courtroom packed full to capacity. O’Higgins was already sitting down but on his own. Illness had caught McDonald. When every seat was occupied in the gallery, a bell rang to signal that the judges were about to enter and deliver the verdict.
At that moment, Gilligan’s head appeared from an underground tunnel, which leads from the court cells to the dock. He looked relaxed and smiled at the judges, at the same time trying not to show any fear or even acknowledge the crowd that had turned out to hear his future. Gilligan’s world was about to change, although at that moment in time he had no idea how.
Judge O’Donovan addressed the court. His colleagues, Judge Mathews and Judge Hamill, remained silent, never uttering a word, as a strange subterranean silence enveloped the court. The learned judge outlined the prosecution�
�s case against Gilligan, then the defence adopted by the accused.
Gilligan looked as if he had prepared for the worst, trying not to allow the judge’s scathing remarks about Warren, Bowden and Dunne to lift his spirits. ‘The Court recognises the danger of convicting an accused person on the uncorroborated evidence of an accomplice, and that principle has been to the forefront of the mind of the Court when considering the evidence tendered by Messrs Dunne, Bowden and Warren,’ he read.
Gilligan hadn’t anticipated that his case would be assisted by the strict application of the law. But as Judge O’Donovan continued to read the verdict, the unbearable realisation that nothing was going according to plan began to dawn on the police. As the judge continued to read, the gaping holes that were the hallmarks of the prosecution’s case were exposed. The judge criticised the return of cash seized from the supergrass witnesses. Bowden and Warren, the star witnesses who had milked the gardaí for all they could get, became liabilities. The court described them both as liars.
Then, in a kind of apocalyptic message from the court, Gilligan was found guilty of the drug-related charges because Dunne’s evidence had been corroborated.
By now, Gilligan was staring at a fake skylight affixed to the ceiling in an act of defiance against the verdict which Judge O’Donovan continued to read aloud. Then he heard he was acquitted of importing weapons. He looked around to see if his mind was playing tricks on him. It wasn’t; he had beaten the weapons charge because the gardaí had not documented evidence found in the office unit at Harold’s Cross when they first raided it. If Baltus had testified, this outcome may have been different.
