Badfellas

by Paul Williams

  Austin Higgins never regained consciousness and died some hours later in hospital. Hostage John Condron, who was hit by one of the rounds from the Garda guns, never fully recovered from his injuries and was left partially disabled. Loughran was also left disabled from his injuries and as a result never stood trial. Emergency surgery saved Thomas Tynan’s life and he later recovered. Tynan, Walsh and Gardiner were subsequently sentenced to 12 years each.

  The infamous Athy incident caused some controversy when it was discovered that the ERU had done all the shooting and the gang hadn’t fired a single shot. The gangsters’ weapons were, however, found cocked, loaded and ready for use. But the controversy faded within days as the public showed overwhelming support for the police action. There was little sympathy for gangsters who wanted to fight back.

  The dramatic debut of the ERU made them a household name overnight and they were commended for their courage and professionalism. The bank staff, customers and even the family of the injured bank official, paid tribute to the Gardaí who took on the Athy Gang. An internal inquiry later found that the Winchester pump-action shotgun, responsible for most of the collateral injuries, was not suitable for confrontations in built-up areas. A new system of communication was also introduced for such situations and ERU training methods were modified. As news of the Athy gunfight spread, the three-letter abbreviation burned itself into the minds of the criminal gangs. For the first time the cops had shown the gun gangs that they were more than a match for them. Armed robbery was becoming an extremely dangerous business.

  On May Day 1990 a seven-member IRA gang from Dublin raided the AIB in Enniscorthy, County Wexford. Armed with two sawn-off shotguns, three handguns and two replica weapons, the gang got into the bank by climbing through an upstairs window after scaling scaffolding. They tied up bank staff on the first floor and then forced staff and customers downstairs to lie on the ground. But the inexperienced Provo thieves spent too long in the bank. A member of the staff, who was on the phone when they burst in, managed to raise the alarm.

  At the local Garda station Superintendent Michael Murphy issued a machine-gun and three revolvers to four uniformed officers: Thomas Millar, Thomas Dunphy, Michael McGinley and John Barron. The armed officers arrived at the bank as the raiders were getting into a getaway van. As they tried to drive off, the IRA unit fired three shots at the Gardaí. The four cops returned fire, hitting the driver, Kenneth Bolger, in the head. The raiders threw out their weapons and promptly surrendered. Bolger, who was from Sandymount, Dublin, underwent a number of operations and survived his injuries. Dominick Adams, Brian Kenna, Pamela Kane, Anthony Beggs and Patrick Lavin were each jailed for ten years after they took the unusual step of pleading not guilty but admitted through their counsel that they had taken part in the heist. The seventh member of the crew, Gerard Kearns from Tallaght, received a 12-year sentence. When Bolger recovered from his injuries he was jailed for eight years. It was another stunning victory for the police.

  Just over two months after the rookie IRA unit pulled their ill-fated robbery, two more hardened and reckless gangsters decided to take on the law. Their names were Thomas Wilson and William ‘Blinkey’ Doyle.

  During Christmas week 1989, while the Athy Gang were planning more armed robberies, Thomas Wilson was enjoying his first taste of freedom in 12 years. Originally from Ballyclare, County Antrim, the 38-year-old had been involved in petty crime from the age of 14. After joining the IRA, he spent most of his adult life behind bars. In July 1972, a month before his twenty-first birthday, Wilson was convicted of two cases of armed robbery and jailed for three years. Shortly after his release, he was caught again and charged with attempted armed robbery in Belfast. For that he got a ten-year stretch in October 1975. In prison, Wilson went on hunger strike and later escaped from hospital. He was recaptured in 1977, after doing another heist in Belfast. In 1978 he was sentenced to 18 years for that robbery, to run consecutively with his earlier sentence. The school drop-out decided to knuckle down in prison and do something constructive. He received a degree in mathematics and was considered a model prisoner. He left the North shortly after his release and moved to live in Dublin. But instead of using his maths degree, Wilson went back to doing what he knew best – robbing banks.

  He joined the gang led by former INLA men Tommy Savage and Michael Weldon. The terrorist partners-in-crime had moved on to the Irish Peoples Liberation Organization (IPLO), which was a breakaway group that emerged from the ashes of the INLA feud in the late 1980s. And, like the INLA, it attracted only the dregs of republicanism. In addition to their ‘political’ struggle, Savage and Weldon were also operating a thriving drug business and organizing armed robberies to raise money for further shipments of cannabis and heroin. They ran a tightly knit, well-organized group and worked closely with a number of other criminal mobs, particularly the one led by Gerry Hutch and Eamon Kelly.

  The Savage/Weldon gang included two other former INLA members from Northern Ireland. Thirty-one-year-old Danny Hamill from Portadown – nicknamed ‘the Rabbit’ because of his prominent front teeth – was as violent and unpredictable as his Dublin comrades. In 1981 he appeared before the Special Criminal Court on kidnapping, explosives and firearms charges. On another occasion he was jailed for five years for robbing a jewellery store. He was classified by Garda Special Branch as ‘a dangerous armed criminal’. Patrick Pearse McDonald, a professional barber from Newry, was also enjoying his freedom. He’d been released from Portlaoise Prison in August 1989 after serving a sentence for kidnapping and firearms offences. According to his associates, he was the IPLO’s second-in-command in the South. McDonald was as colourful as he was brutal, and was an incorrigible womanizer. Soon after his release he set up a hairdressing salon in Marino, on Dublin’s north-side and earned the nickname ‘Teasy Weasy’, after a famous London coiffeur to the stars.

  The gang operated in groups of between two and four members, concentrating on banks on the northern fringe of Dublin. Like most robbery teams, they were creatures of habit. They preferred stealing getaway cars from car parks at train stations. On 5 March 1990, Wilson and Hamill were arrested when they were caught stealing a BMW from Bray Railway Station, County Wicklow. During a violent confrontation, the two terrorists assaulted and seriously injured an unarmed officer with a concrete block. Wilson and the Rabbit were charged and remanded in custody.

  While on remand on B-Wing in Mountjoy Prison, Thomas Wilson met William ‘Blinkey’ Doyle, a former graduate of the Dunne ‘Academy’, who’d been caught with over £200,000 worth of heroin in 1983, along with Mickey Weldon. When the Drug Squad warrant was found to be defective and the charges were dropped, Doyle had continued his involvement in the drug trade and armed robberies.

  On 1 February 1990, Doyle was arrested and charged in connection with an armed hold-up at a bank in Celbridge, County Kildare. While being questioned, he admitted taking part in five other heists across West Dublin in January. But members of the gang suspected that he had been sharing a lot more information with the police and accused him of being a tout. Their suspicions had been aroused the previous October, when Doyle had been charged with a similar job in Newbridge and detectives had recovered the money and guns. Another notorious armed thug from the north inner-city, Larry Cummins Senior, was also charged with the Newbridge job. While awaiting bail, Doyle was attacked by Cummins’s associates and his face was slashed with razors. Blinkey had received over a hundred stitches.

  Doyle was released on bail on 20 June and immediately joined up with Wilson and his associates. During the next 16 days the gang robbed 5 banks in Meath and Kildare. At 10.15 a.m. on 26 June, Doyle and Wilson hit the Bank of Ireland in Leixlip, County Kildare. They considered it such an easy target that they returned again on 6 July. The raiders, who were carrying three firearms – two pistols and a shotgun – parked their getaway car outside the front door and ran inside, leaving the engine running. The same car had been used by a four-man gang two days earlier, in a robbery i
n Dunshaughlin. In the bank they ordered staff and customers to lie down and one raider vaulted the counter. They left a few minutes later with just over £3,000 in cash. Outside they jumped into the getaway car and sped back towards Dublin. By then the Gardaí had been alerted and specialist squads from the ERU and STF were heading for the area.

  The robbers were spotted by an ERU officer as they drove near the Hole in the Wall pub, beside the Phoenix Park. One of the most reckless car chases ever seen in Dublin began when the Garda tried to stop Doyle and Wilson. Over the next 15 minutes the two desperados reached speeds of up to 100 miles per hour, as they tried to shake off the squad cars closing in on them. Wilson, who was the passenger, fired several shots through the side window, as the police tried to hem the car in. Bullets bounced off the pursuing cars as the chase continued along Ratoath Road and then onto Griffith Avenue. When the robbers drove onto the dual carriageway in Finglas, there were up to ten police cars on their tail. A squad car driving ahead of the getaway car tried to prevent them from overtaking. Doyle attempted to ram it out of the way. When he couldn’t get past, he swung over to the other side of the carriageway and sped off towards Glasnevin against the oncoming traffic, forcing drivers to swerve out of the way. Wilson fired more shots at the squad cars which were keeping abreast of them on the correct side of the carriageway.

  The high-speed convoy caused havoc in the morning traffic, as it continued through Botanic Avenue and onto Richmond Road. Pedestrians and motorists were stunned by the real-life ‘cops and robbers’ drama as Wilson hung out of his window, firing more shots in the direction of the convoy of blue lights and wailing sirens. The robbers then sped into Fairview Avenue, which is at the centre of a warren of narrow side streets. The getaway car collided with a parked car and spun around, facing back at the convoy of squad cars which had stopped behind it.

  Doyle drove back in the direction of the police and mounted the pavement to get past the first car, while Thomas Wilson fired more shots. One of the detectives fired back. The car careered another 50 feet down the street before ramming into the side of another squad car, trapping the four unarmed officers inside. One of the raiders could be seen lifting a weapon to open fire on the cops. Two members of the ERU, one of whom was armed with an Uzi submachine-gun, fired a burst into the getaway car. Doyle was hit by five bullets while Wilson died from a gunshot wound to the head.

  It had been another fatal day for criminals who thought they could still fight the law and win. What became known as the Fairview shoot-out had provided more food for thought for the community of blaggers. The deaths of the two men in July 1990 marked the first year of the third decade of organized crime. It would ultimately be remembered as the end of an era for armed robbers.

  15. An Evil Empire is Born

  Portlaoise Prison has been Gangland’s premier educational academy for over twenty years. The heavily fortified prison complex, on the edge of the Midland town, is the underworld’s Alma Mater; and its alumni include some of the best-known gangsters in Ireland and Europe. In the early 1990s the future direction of organized crime was mapped out behind the grim, stone walls which are patrolled by heavily armed soldiers. The E1 wing was where contacts were made, plans laid and gangs formed. The gangland equivalent of a university atmosphere prevailed as criminal concepts were debated, new trends explored and experiences shared. The most popular subject on the curriculum was learning from the mistakes that had won the ‘students’ their State-sponsored ‘scholarships’ in the first place – and how to avoid them in the future. Another area of debate was how dangerous the business of armed robbery had become since the bloody shoot-outs in Dublin, Athy and Enniscorthy. Ireland’s maximum-security prison is where the story of modern Gangland begins.

  Up to the late 1980s, Portlaoise was almost exclusively used to house members of the IRA and the INLA. In the annual prison report of 1988 the average daily population in the prison was 196, 40 of whom were so-called ‘non-subversive’ prisoners. They were mostly petty criminals and drug addicts from Dublin, who received 50 per cent remission in their sentences in return for working as glorified servants for the terrorists, who refused to do domestic chores. In November 1973 the decision had been taken to send all republican prisoners to Portlaoise, following the escape by helicopter of three senior Provos from Mountjoy. Terrorists were also moved from other detention facilities because the authorities deemed Portlaoise, which was built in 1830, to be the most secure institution in the country.

  But the Provos soon proved them wrong. In August 1974, 19 IRA prisoners escaped when they overpowered prison warders and used explosives to blast open a gate. Soldiers who were guarding the perimeter of the prison fired warning shots to prevent the rest of the inmates from also making a run for it. The 19 Provos got to the main Dublin Road, where cars were waiting to whisk them away. While most of the escapees were recaptured, the incident was hugely embarrassing for the Government, which was desperately grappling to contain the terrorist threat to the State.

  Gardaí had also discovered an underground tunnel, dug from outside, a month earlier. On 17 March 1975, 18 Provo inmates attempted another mass breakout, during which they used more explosive charges to blast their way through a locked steel door and a gate into the recreation yard. At the same time, IRA members positioned outside the complex opened fire on the troops standing guard on the prison rooftops. A truck that had been specially modified to act as a battering ram smashed through a closed gate. It drove in the direction of the prison wall, where the inmates were waiting on the other side. The plan was to ram a hole in the wall but the improvised ‘tank’ ground to a halt when the wheels became entangled in a wire fence. Its crew was arrested. In the meantime soldiers fired several warning shots and forced the prisoners to retreat back into the building. One IRA member, Thomas Smyth from Dublin, was killed when he was injured by the ricochet of an army bullet.

  As a result Portlaoise was transformed into a maximum-security prison and is still one of the most impregnable in Europe. The ratio of prison officers to prisoners was the highest in the country and they were backed up by a large number of Gardaí. An air exclusion-zone was ordered around the complex and a detachment of 120 troops, armed with rifles and anti-aircraft machine-guns, patrolled the perimeter walls and rooftops and others manned watchtowers. The complex bristled with CCTV cameras and sensors, both above and below ground; and lines of tank-traps stood guard around the prison’s entire boundary. There were no further escapes.

  From 1988 onwards, it was decided that hardened criminals who were convicted by the Special Criminal Court would also be sent to Portlaoise. It was deemed the most suitable facility to accommodate the increasing number of dangerous villains being jailed as a result of the Tango Squad and other offensives against organized crime gangs. The new category of high-risk, violent prisoners was a reflection of the changes that had taken place in Gangland. On the E1 wing they were segregated from their republican neighbours, who didn’t see themselves as gangsters. In less than two years, the wing became home to a fearsome collection of Ireland’s most dangerous drug-dealers, robbers and killers.

  The long-stay residents on E1 included most of the General’s gang – his brothers, John and Eddie Cahill, and trusted lieutenants Eugene Scanlan, Albert Crowley, Noel Gaynor, John Foy, Eamon Daly and Harry Melia. Seamus ‘Shavo’ Hogan was moved from E1 to the prison’s segregation unit in October 1990, after the gang accused him of being an informant and tried to slice off the tops of his ears. Also in residence were the three surviving members of the Athy Gang, and ‘Factory’ John Gilligan, Dutchie Holland, Larry Dunne, Brian Meehan and his close pal Paul Ward. Another resident shifted to E1 was John Cullen, a notoriously brutal Dublin pimp, who was serving life for the triple murders of prostitute Dolores Lynch, her mother and her aunt in 1983. Cullen burned the women to death as they slept in their home. Dessie O’Hare and Fergal Toal were also moved to E1 after being ejected from the INLA’s wing.

  In January 1992, they were
joined by Christy ‘Bronco’ Dunne, who arrived with a hefty 11-year sentence. At the age of 53, the Godfather who had ushered in a new era of crime in Ireland had finally been forced into retirement by his hated enemies, the police. Dunne’s last crime was a typically nasty and cowardly one. It completely debunked Bronco’s claims that he was an ordinary, decent criminal. He had been convicted of holding Finglas postmaster Rocco Cafolla and his family hostage, before forcing Rocco to take £80,000 from his post office and hand it over to the gang. During the terrifying ordeal in December 1988, the family was held at gunpoint overnight and the following morning a ‘bomb’ was strapped to Cafolla’s back when he was sent to collect the cash. Bronco had organized the crime to look like a paramilitary operation and he recorded instructions which Rocco Cafolla had to follow. Afterwards he gave his three accomplices £24,000 to divide between them and kept the rest for himself. From his point of view the ‘job’ had been a complete success. But the irony was that heroin, which Bronco had avoided, would play a major role in his downfall.

  A clear sign of the suave Godfather’s decline was that he’d been forced to recruit two of his teenage nephews for the job and they were both junkies. Isaac Turner and Ryan Dunne looked up to their Uncle Bronco, who filled their heads with nonsense about forming the new generation of the powerful Dunne ‘family’. Turner was the 18-year-old son of Christy’s sister Anne. His brother, Abraham, a convicted killer and drug-dealer, and his mother were also heroin addicts. Seventeen-year-old Ryan Dunne was the son of Bronco’s brother Robert, who was serving a sentence for armed robbery. Ryan and his father were also junkies. The third recruit, 27-year-old Raymond Roberts from Dolphin House Flats, was also a drug-abuser.