The gangsters began leafing through magazines and newspapers, to pick a target. Among the short list of possible hostages was Susan O’Reilly the first wife of Independent Newspapers’ Dr Tony O’Reilly. Norma Smurfit, the ex-wife of business tycoon Michael, and Guinness heiress Miranda Guinness were also considered. Eventually they chose Jennifer Guinness, the wife of John Guinness, Chairman of the Guinness Mahon Bank. The couple lived in a mansion, Censure House, at Baily near Howth, North County Dublin. They were well known in the sailing world and participated in the Round Ireland yacht race. Cunningham had read a magazine feature about them and decided that they would have little difficulty raising a large ransom. However, he had picked the wrong Guinness family – the banker was not a member of the fabulously wealthy brewing clan.
In early March 1986, the three robbers began watching Censure House to monitor the family’s routine. They rented a number of safe houses, including a flat above a shop in Arbour Hill in Dublin and a fisherman’s cottage near Drumconrath, County Meath. Tony Kelly hired a hatchback car, in his own name, to transport their victim. The Colonel decided that they would kidnap either Jennifer Guinness or one of her two daughters and demand a £2 million bounty for her safe return. He was confident that if they convinced the Guinness family that they were the IRA, they would be too scared to call in the police. Cunningham obtained a hand-grenade, a replica Uzi and three handguns for the job. He also made up two devices to look like bombs, complete with ‘remote-controls’. The Colonel believed that a bomb would scare people out of their wits and focus their minds on paying the ransom.
On the afternoon of 8 April 1986, the three hoods barged into the Guinness family home and held 48-year-old Jennifer Guinness at gunpoint, along with her daughter Gillian, their housekeeper, Patricia Coogan, and her 15-year-old daughter. The four women were herded into a TV room, while the gang waited for John Guinness to come home. An unfortunate book-dealer, Simon Nelson, was also held when he called to the house.
The kidnappers deliberately gave their hostages the impression that they were from the IRA by referring to the ‘organization’ and their ‘fund-raising mission’. If everyone behaved then no one would be shot. Jennifer Guinness told the ‘terrorists’ that they had picked the wrong family. The gang said they were ‘following orders’ and addressed each other with military titles. Cunningham was the Colonel and his brother Michael was the Sergeant. While they waited, the gang took Jennifer’s jewellery, which was valued at £50,000.
When John Guinness returned home later that evening the Cunninghams pounced on him. They told him they wanted a £2 million ransom and brought him into the kitchen. They produced two bags containing the fake bombs. John Guinness tried to grab the Uzi which had been left on a table by the Colonel. Cunningham punched Guinness to the ground and pistol-whipped him. He cocked the weapon and fired a shot past the banker’s head. Cunningham then told him that the ‘bombs’ would be strapped to his wife and daughter and could be detonated from a half mile away. The banker, who was bleeding heavily from injuries to his eye and nose, was asked how long it would take to raise the money. He replied about a week. Cunningham told him he would phone him using the code word ‘Jackal’.
The gang opted to only take Jennifer with them after she convinced them that one hostage would be easier to control than two. The woman’s extraordinary strength and courage throughout her abduction would astonish even her abductors. When the kidnappers had left, Gillian managed to free herself and the other hostages and the Gardaí were called. Scores of detectives were mobilized, along with the Serious Crime Squad and the Special Task Force. A pre-arranged plan called the ‘National Cordon’, which had been devised after previous kidnappings, was put into operation, with checkpoints throughout the country.
The police had three objectives: the safe return of the hostage, the capture of the gang and the prevention of a ransom payment. The INLA and IRA were quickly ruled out as suspects when informants in both organizations were quizzed. The other obvious suspect was Martin Cahill, who had the capacity, personnel and resources for such a crime. Detective Inspector Gerry McCarrick of the Serious Crime Squad, however, quickly nominated the Cunninghams. He had picked up intelligence that the brothers and Kelly were planning something big in June, possibly a kidnapping. His surveillance team had also spotted John Cunningham meeting with a guns-for-hire dealer whom they had been monitoring. McCarrick took on the task of trying to track the brothers down.
Over the following seven days Jennifer Guinness was moved between three different locations while efforts were made by her family to raise the ransom, which, after negotiations, had been reduced to just £300,000.
On the evening of 15 April, McCarrick’s surveillance team discovered that the Cunninghams were holding the hostage in a house on Waterloo Road, South Dublin and the Gardaí decided to surround it. As squad cars containing armed police raced there, John Cunningham got a call at the house warning him that they were on the way. Minutes later members of the STF were knocking at the front door. When the kidnappers tried to get out through the back they were met with more detectives and there was a brief exchange of gunfire. Kelly was arrested and the brothers retreated inside. They dragged Jennifer to an upstairs bedroom and threatened: ‘We will blow her fucking head off if you don’t get out of the house.’
A ten-hour stand-off followed, during which John Cunningham threatened to blow himself up with a hand-grenade. As police negotiators tried to convince them to surrender, the brothers discussed killing themselves. The Colonel’s wife, Mary, was due to give birth to his first child and in a telephone call she urged him to think of his unborn baby. The kidnappers finally agreed to give themselves up, unloaded their weapons and put them on the floor. They shook hands with Mrs Guinness and gave her back her jewellery. As they walked out of the house to the waiting police Michael opened the door and smiled to Jennifer Guinness saying, ‘Ladies first.’ It was 6.24 a.m. on 16 April and the kidnap drama had ended, along with the Cunningham brothers’ aspirations to the big time.
As he was being brought away by police, detectives asked the Colonel if he really believed he could pull off the crime. ‘We wouldn’t have done it if we didn’t think that we were going to get the money. Two million was only a starting figure … it was going to be the big one but it all went wrong,’ he replied ruefully. Instead of the large ransom, John Cunningham received a hefty 17-year sentence. His brother and Tony Kelly were each jailed for 14 years.
Jennifer Guinness’s courage made her a national heroine and her resilience was universally admired. Within two weeks of her ordeal she and her husband took part in the Round Ireland yacht race. Tragically John Guinness was killed two years later while mountain climbing. For many years she devoted her energies to helping the victims of crime.
The capture of the Cunningham gang and the long jail terms they received did not act as a disincentive to other criminal gangs. Instead, they just chose to target less high-profile victims, for more realistic ransoms. In the six months before the Cunninghams’ court appearance in June 1986, there had already been 14 unreported abductions. Then, in 1987, the country was struck by another extraordinary kidnap drama. This time the mastermind was a sadistic, mass-murderer called Dessie O’Hare, aka ‘the Border Fox’.
Even by INLA standards, O’Hare, from County Armagh, was one of the worst killers to emerge from its stable of psychopaths. Born in 1958, he joined the IRA at 16 and quickly proved himself a ruthless killer. In 1979 he joined the INLA and that same year was sentenced to nine years for possession of a firearm by the Special Criminal Court. When he was released in October 1986, O’Hare told Gardaí that he had become a pacifist after studying the works of Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and Owen Sheehy-Skeffington. But his pacifism didn’t last long.
Based on first impressions, baby-faced O’Hare came across as an inoffensive, gentle soul who would be more at home running a crèche than a blood-thirsty terrorist gang. But in reality he made his comrade Dominic McGlin
chey look almost normal.
On New Year’s Eve 1986 he attacked a Protestant neighbour in Ballymacauley, County Armagh. He was a member of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), a controversial, part-time military unit which backed up the security forces. O’Hare wounded the soldier before turning the gun on his victim’s 72-year-old mother, whom he shot and killed.
The murderer also immersed himself in a ferocious blood feud between two INLA factions. Martin Cahill’s bomb-maker, Thomas McCarton, was the first to be killed and in early 1987, 13 terrorists were gunned down by former comrades. The Border Fox claimed responsibility for four of the murders. In one incident he shocked even his psychotic comrades when he abducted INLA member Tony McCloskey in Monaghan. O’Hare used bolt-cutters to cut off McCloskey’s ear and some of his fingers. Then he and a female companion took turns pumping bullets into McCloskey’s mutilated body. He later told a newspaper that he was happy to give McCloskey a hard death. O’Hare was also a suspect for the murder of McGlinchey’s wife, Mary. In January 1987, two men shot her nine times – including seven in the face and head – in front of her two young sons.
O’Hare’s gang robbed a string of banks in towns along the south of the Border, during which unarmed Gardaí were fired on. He even robbed weapons from a Provo arms dump in South Armagh and attempted to murder Official Unionist MP Jim Nicholson. The Provos were concerned that the Border Fox’s unpredictable behaviour was jeopardizing their own operations in the area. They told the INLA that if they did not do something about O’Hare then the Provos would do it for them. On 11 September 1987, O’Hare was expelled from the organization and immediately set up his own mob, which he called the Irish Revolutionary Brigade. But he needed cash to run his killing machine and decided that kidnapping was the best way to get it.
His gang consisted of fellow ex-INLA men Fergal Toal from Armagh and Eddie Hogan from Cork, both violent, reckless thugs. Jimmy McDaid was a Dublin INLA man who’d first suggested a kidnapping campaign. Another member of the team was Tony McNeill, a young militant republican from Belfast. McNeill in turn recruited the help of a 45-year-old barber called Gerry Wright from Parkgate Street in Dublin. Wright agreed to help organize safe houses in the city. O’Hare eventually chose his target – Dr Austin Darragh.
The doctor was the wealthy owner of a medical research company in Dublin and O’Hare planned to snatch him in October 1987. But in the weeks before the abduction, O’Hare was showing the signs of a man going completely out of control. He even executed Jimmy McDaid. The INLA man signed his death warrant when he refused to take part in the kidnap, which rendered him a traitor in O’Hare’s eyes.
The erratic terrorist’s plan was in disarray from the start. When the gang stormed into Dr Darragh’s mansion in Cabinteely, South Dublin, on the night of 13 October, he had not lived there for four years. Instead it was the home of his daughter Marise and her husband, dentist Dr John O’Grady.
Unperturbed by his error, the Border Fox decided to kidnap John O’Grady instead and demanded a £1.5 million ransom. It was the beginning of an intensive six-week manhunt during which O’Hare managed to stay one step ahead of the security forces. At one stage he chopped off the dentist’s two little fingers and left them in an envelope behind a statue in Carlow Cathedral, to show the family how serious he was.
The kidnap crisis ended on 5 November, when detectives arrived at a house in Cabra, West Dublin on a routine enquiry. Toal, Hogan and McNeill were there with O’Grady when the Gardaí knocked on the door. In the confusion that followed Eddie Hogan shot Detective Garda Martin O’Connor in the stomach, seriously injuring him. The three kidnappers escaped but were later captured and John O’Grady was rescued.
Detective Garda O’Connor later underwent six major operations to save his life. John O’Grady also spent two weeks in hospital after his dreadful ordeal. O’Hare, who’d been away from the house arranging the collection of the ransom money, was arrested three weeks later, on 27 November. He drove into an ambush set up by Irish Army snipers in County Kilkenny. The Border Fox was critically injured when he was hit several times with high-velocity bullets. His companion, Martin Bryan, was shot dead. O’Hare’s survival was nothing short of miraculous.
On 13 April 1988, Dessie O’Hare and his gang were convicted of the O’Grady kidnapping in the Special Criminal Court in Dublin. He was jailed for a total of 40 years for the false imprisonment and the malicious wounding of O’Grady. Eddie Hogan also received a total of 40 years for false imprisonment and the attempted murder of Detective Garda O’Connor. Fergal Toal was given 20 years for the kidnapping charge and a 15-year concurrent sentence for possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life. Toal had already received a life sentence in March for the murder of a man in Dundalk. Tony McNeill was given 15 years for kidnapping and possession of a firearm. Gerry Wright got seven years. Handing down the sentences, Mr Justice Liam Hamilton described the crime as ‘one of the most serious cases to come before the courts of this State’.
O’Hare then made a ten-minute statement: ‘The time has come for republican freedom-fighters to turn their guns on members of the Irish Establishment, particularly the judiciary, members of the prison service, the Navy, the Army and the Gardaí for carrying out their dirty work which will determine their fate in years to come. It is morally wrong for republicans to eschew retribution against figures in the South. It will always be justifiable and morally right for Irishmen and women to slay those who collaborate with British rule.’
The dangerous psychopath was eventually released from prison in 2006, when he joined forces with one of the country’s largest criminal gangs.
13. Crime Incorporated
On 9 April 1985, a secret dossier on the activities of Martin Cahill and his gang was forwarded from the Serious Crime Squad (SCS) in Harcourt Square to Garda HQ. It was the culmination of a year-long, undercover investigation which had commenced shortly after the General and the Provos went to the brink of war over the O’Connor’s heist. It was the first time that such a methodical, comprehensive investigation of the gangster’s operation had been undertaken. It detailed the General’s crimes, his associates and how powerful he had become. It even focused on the money trail – something unheard of at the time.
The report made for disturbing reading, so much so that the detective who wrote it was hauled up before the top brass and accused of ‘empire building’. It was then buried by a management ideologically opposed to more imaginative methods of tackling the growing threat of organized crime. Twenty-five years later it was resurrected during research for this book.
For the 12 months running up to April 1985, the Squad collated every surveillance report, enquiry, sighting and piece of confidential information received about the gang, in the dossier. The investigation revealed that the General’s mob was carrying out at least two armed robberies or aggravated burglaries every week. The report described an extremely well-organized crime syndicate. It listed the names of over thirty members of the Cahill organization who were active at that time but did not include his brothers John and Eddie, and other members of the gang who were serving prison sentences. The list was a ‘who’s who’ of organized crime’s future Mr Bigs.
The report stated: ‘Cahill has gathered a substantial core of trusted and hardened criminals, from all areas of the city, around him. Cahill instils a deep-rooted fear in all the people who associate with him. This, coupled with the blood relationships of a lot of its members, and his ability as an organiser, seem to ensure loyalty to him. All the members of his gang are ruthless thugs who, when confronted in particular circumstances would not hesitate to maim or murder civilians or members of the force. Their crimes are planned meticulously and carefully. High-powered motorbikes and/or cars are used. Radio-receivers tuned to Garda frequencies are used and monitored. Disguises and protective clothing are worn (such as) bullet-proof vests. An array of firearms is always carried. The targets of these crimes are well surveyed beforehand. Safe houses and flats are used as p
ick-up and drop-off points. They use gullible or blackmailed couriers to their own ends. This, taken with other reliable information received, accounts for a considerable portion of serious crime over the last decade.’
The report also exposed a secret that Martin Cahill managed to take to the grave with him – he was a drug-trafficker, involved specifically in the supply of hash. The Squad discovered that one of Cahill’s closest associates, Noel Lynch, was regularly dispatched with large bank drafts to Manchester, where members of the Quality Street Gang organized shipments. The hash was then smuggled into the country by couriers. Cahill sold the drugs to loyal members of his gang but never came into contact with the actual shipments. Martin Foley and armed robber Thomas Tynan were identified as being among the gang’s dealers. It was noted that they regularly called to Cahill with large amounts of cash.
The investigation team also focused on the General’s business and property interests. They verified his investment in the Jetfoil pub and a number of shops, which were in the names of associates and family members. The investigation discovered that he’d opened a petrol station in Ranelagh with Noel Lynch, through which stolen fuel was sold. The gangsters even set up an oil company in Kildare and used an alcoholic technician to take the dye out of cheaper agricultural ‘red’ diesel which was then sold as more expensive ‘white’ diesel. When things went wrong the man was shot and injured.
The dossier also made it clear that the Gardaí had no powers to uplift sensitive financial information from the banks, which had simply refused to co-operate with the discreet enquiry. A criminal’s bank accounts could not be frozen or seized but the State did have some powers to go after dirty money. In the 1983 Financial Act, Ireland became one of the only countries in the common law system with powers to tax the proceeds of crime. There was no record of this power ever having been used, however, until the establishment of the Criminal Assets Bureau 13 years later. In the 1980s the Government was reluctant to use the legislation because making criminal activity taxable could be seen as legitimizing it.
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