After the fiasco, there was no further contact between the Gilligans and the UVF. In Portlaoise John Gilligan continued his Machiavellian manoeuvring and spent his time plotting his next move. When John Traynor returned to Dublin in 1992 and visited Portlaoise, Gilligan shared his future plans with him. The Coach had already come to the same conclusion about the drug trade and he was delighted to get on board. Traynor was back in business again, after sorting out some problems of his own.
Traynor had hated every day he’d spent in custody in England since his incarceration in July 1990. He soon started working on a cunning plan to get himself out as quickly as possible. The conniving fraudster was a model prisoner and soon got moved from Wandsworth Prison to a more relaxed regime in Highpoint Prison in Suffolk. He then started working on becoming eligible for temporary release so that he could go home and see his family. But before he could make his move Traynor had a few things to deal with first – especially his relationship with Martin Cahill.
In 1992, the compulsory sale of the Jetfoil pub to the Port and Docks Board was finalized for £180,000, half of which Traynor organized to be paid to the General. Cahill forgave his old pal and sent word to England that the Coach would not find himself nailed to anything when he came home. Cahill also organized money for Traynor’s wife and children, who were finding it difficult to make ends meet.
Once Traynor had that difficulty out of the way, he still had to sort out the problem of the outstanding charges against him for receiving stolen cigarettes. He couldn’t face the prospect of another stretch in prison. Traynor contacted a detective attached to the Central Detective Unit who, by coincidence, had moved into the same cul-de-sac where Traynor’s wife and kids lived in Rathfarnham, Dublin. The officer had befriended Traynor’s family and helped the kids to collect vouchers for cheap flights, so they could visit their father in prison. Traynor greatly appreciated the kindness and invited the officer to visit him to discuss where he stood on the outstanding criminal charge. When the detective reported back to his superiors, the Coach’s invitation was seen as a welcome and unexpected development. The outstanding charge was based on a weak case and it was likely that the fraudster would walk. But they weren’t prepared to share that information with him. The charge could be used as leverage to get Cahill’s consigiliere working for them.
When the detective and a senior officer visited the Coach in the UK, over a two-day period, Traynor suggested that he was prepared to do a deal of some kind if the charges were dropped against him. He was bluntly told that the State wanted the return of the DPP’s files which Cahill had taken in 1987. In particular, they wanted the file relating to the suspicious death of Father Niall Molloy in 1985. The battered body of the Roscommon priest was found in the bedroom of wealthy landowners and horse-breeders Richard and Therese Flynn, in County Offaly. Fr Molloy, who was a close friend of the Flynns, had been involved in a number of horse and land deals with Therese. The killing of the priest had all the ingredients of a steamy scandal – money, power, religion, sex and secrecy. Richard Flynn was subsequently charged with manslaughter but was unexpectedly acquitted in 1986. The court ruled that the priest could have died from a heart attack and not his head injuries. At the time there were widespread allegations of a cover-up. The file in the General’s possession contained notes and statements that certain people in power did not want in the public domain. The authorities wanted the file back at all costs.
Traynor was informed that his outstanding warrants would be ‘looked at’ if the file was returned, but no other assurances were given. The Coach replied that Cahill had absolute control over the files and all he could do was talk to the man whenever he got home. When the cops left, the slippery conman was satisfied that he was ready to go home. He consulted a lawyer, who assured Traynor that he could not be extradited back to the UK on the charge he had been convicted of because the law didn’t cover it. By November 1992, the fraudster had convinced the prison authorities that he had gone straight and could be trusted with a week’s temporary home leave. Traynor jumped on a flight back to Dublin – and didn’t return to the UK for another 18 years.
Traynor had also received some comforting news two months earlier, when his former business partner, John Francis Conlon, was arrested in Dublin. Mayo-man Conlon and veteran villain Eamon Kelly, Gerry Hutch’s mentor, were arrested after they’d collected £500,000 worth of high-quality cocaine from a courier who had arrived in Ireland on a flight from Miami. Conlon had sourced the drug through his Colombian connections. It was the biggest seizure of cocaine yet recorded in Ireland. In the early 1990s, the Colombians had begun targeting the European market as a new outlet for cocaine. It was partly as a result of a huge crackdown on the South American cartels by the US Government, in its much hyped ‘war on drugs’. Kelly and a group of North Dublin criminals had decided to invest in the new cocaine trade. The deal for the kilo of the drug, which was 85 per cent pure, had been done through Traynor’s two old associates, Conlon and James ‘Danger’ Beirne. Unfortunately for Kelly and company, someone tipped off the Gardaí.
A large surveillance team from the CDU and the Drug Squad were watching on 3 September 1992, when Conlon arrived in Dublin on a flight from London. As he walked into the arrivals hall he made eye contact with Eamon Kelly, who was waiting for him. Neither man spoke; they walked out separately to the car park and got into Kelly’s van. They were kept under observation as they drove around the city. The investigation teams, who were under the command of Detective Inspector Martin Callinan (the current Garda Commissioner), watched as Conlon withdrew £2,000 from a bank and then drove to Jury’s Hotel. A short time earlier, a Cuban woman called Elizabeth Yamanoha had checked into the hotel. She had been recruited as a courier by Conlon in Miami. The portly 40-year-old had smuggled the kilo of cocaine in the folds of her body fat. She handed the drugs to Conlon, who gave her the £2,000 and went back to Kelly. Callinan gave the order for his officers to move in and arrest the drug-dealers as they crossed the River Liffey at the East Link Toll Bridge. Now Kelly, as well as Traynor, was accusing Conlon of setting him up. During his trial in 1993, the violent, ex-Official IRA member also implicated Danger Beirne in the drug plot, when he revealed that the Roscommon rogue had asked him to collect Conlon at Dublin Airport. Kelly was eventually jailed for 13 years for the cocaine rap.
Conlon, who had left the jurisdiction while out on bail, was re-arrested in England in December 1994 and extradited to Dublin the following May. At the time Conlon’s arrest created a considerable stir in intelligence circles. He later told journalist Sean Boyne of the Sunday World that MI5 were in contact with the Garda top brass to ‘discuss’ the case. Conlon claimed MI5 had promised him that he would not serve time in an Irish jail because of his value to them as a spy. In 1998, he pleaded guilty to the cocaine charge. The court was told that he had accidentally contracted Hepatitis C while in custody and was also suffering from a bad heart. Conlon was given a ten-year sentence on the charges, with the last five years suspended because of his age, health and ‘peripheral role’ in the crime. He was spirited away from the court following the hearing and quickly vanished. Members of a number of intelligence agencies had been in court to listen to the proceedings.
James Beirne had not been so lucky. A year earlier he was jailed for 17 years for his role in a conspiracy to smuggle a multi-million-pound consignment of cocaine into Britain.
When John Traynor returned home in November 1992, the General welcomed him with open arms. Gangland had changed completely since Traynor had fled to England in 1987. The hardcore of the General’s gang were behind bars and Cahill had had to organize a new gang around him. Always anxious to portray himself in a good light, Traynor later claimed to this writer that Cahill confessed to him that ‘everyone let me down except the fraud man I didn’t trust’. The General regaled his consigliere with stories of the dramas that had befallen the gang in the intervening period. When he reckoned the time was right, Traynor broached the tricky subject
of his proposed deal with the police. The manipulative fraudster was astonished when Cahill, who harboured a pathological hatred of the State, actually agreed to co-operate and return the contentious file. Despite his unpredictable nature, the General was a pragmatist and he knew he needed Traynor on his side.
A few weeks after his return, the Coach called the young detective who had helped his family at his office in Harcourt Square, Dublin. It was late in the evening when the phone rang. Traynor had a brief message. ‘I think that we can do that bit of business tonight. Meet me outside the Garda Club.’
Ten minutes later the detective found Traynor sitting in a car outside the Garda Social Club on Harrington Street, around the corner from Harcourt Square. He instructed the detective to walk to Stammer Street. There was no one in sight when the detective walked into the dimly lit side street. He felt for his revolver as a shadowy figure suddenly emerged from a bush about 300 feet down the road. It was Martin Cahill. He walked over to the cop and handed a plastic bag to him. There was a strong, damp smell coming from the bulky file inside. It had obviously been buried somewhere for a long time. Cahill was brief and to the point. He didn’t waste time on small talk with the enemy. ‘I’m doin’ this for John. I appreciate what you did for his family. This is where you and me start and finish.’ The General turned and disappeared into the night. It was the one and only occasion when Martin Cahill had given the police anything other than grief. The State kept its side of the bargain and the charges against Traynor were subsequently dropped.
The Coach was finally free to make a new start in life. And like Gilligan, he had no intention of doing time ever again. Instead, to raise some cash, he immersed himself in the ongoing efforts to sell the Beit paintings. Traynor made a tentative approach to the CDU officers with an offer to sell the masterpieces back to the police. The opening demand was for £1.6 million. He gave an officer a photograph of one of the paintings, by Rubens, called ‘Portrait of a Man’. The negotiations, which involved the National Gallery and the Beit Foundation, fell through after six months.
At the same time Cahill had concluded a deal with a Belgian criminal syndicate, brokered by veteran villain Niall Mulvihill. He’d been a business associate ever since he sold the Jetfoil pub to Cahill and Traynor in the late 1970s. Mulvihill, like Traynor, had always been heavily involved in the background of various criminal rackets, including organizing logistics and money-laundering services for different mobs. Mulvihill, who was a Fianna Fáil activist and known as ‘the Silver Fox’, was not a violent criminal, but his list of associates included all the major players, as well as members of the INLA and IRA.
A month before Traynor’s return to Ireland, Mulvihill paid Cahill £500,000 as a down-payment for a £1 million deal for eight of the paintings. The handover took place in Rathfarnham and the priceless art was later smuggled out of the country by trucker and Gilligan gang operator Liam Judge, from Allenwood, County Kildare. Mulvihill and a Belgian underworld art dealer intended selling the paintings to a German national for £1.5 million. But the deal fell through when Mulvihill’s Belgian partner became suspicious that the German was an undercover cop.
As part of the same deal, Cahill loaned Mulvihill £100,000 to buy 125 kilos of cannabis in Spain, which was to be driven to Ireland via London. Cahill never got back the money he loaned, or the profit he was promised, from the hash deal. Even though the Silver Fox claimed that he had been stung by some of his associates, the General and other underworld sources believed that Mulvihill had ripped him off.
Cahill demanded the return of the eight paintings from Mulvihill, who agreed on the condition that the General return the rest of the down-payment. In the end a compromise was reached: four of the paintings were returned to Cahill and Mulvihill hung on to the other four.
Over the following months, the Beit jinx struck again when three of the paintings were recovered in London: two were found when a burglar stole them from an apartment and then tried to sell them; the third, the Gainsborough masterpiece ‘Madame Bacelli’, turned up in a left-luggage office at Euston Station.
Mulvihill later claimed that he and Cahill patched up their differences and a new deal was negotiated to sell the remainder of the paintings and a number of works by Picasso to two criminals from Belgium and England. Payment was by means of £1.5 million worth of high-quality heroin, which was to be shipped into the UK by a Turkish gang. Mulvihill assured the General and Traynor that they would finally get their slice of the profits. On 1 September, Mulvihill and two Irishmen arrived at Deurne Airport outside Antwerp for the handover. As they passed the paintings to the criminals, they were arrested by Belgian police who had been waiting for them. The two criminals turned out to be cops – one from Belgium and the other Scotland Yard. Mulvihill was held in custody for three months but was released when the charges were dropped on a legal technicality.
Just over a week later, on 9 September 1993, John Gilligan was granted temporary release from prison. He’d served the remainder of his sentence in Cork after he’d assaulted a chief officer in Portlaoise in November 1992. The short-tempered thug said he ‘lost the rag’ when he had to wait for some paperwork. Gilligan was convicted of the assault and given an additional six months. The conditions of his temporary release were that he signed on each week at Portlaoise Prison, until his full release on 7 November. Three days after Gilligan got his freedom, Brian Meehan was also granted temporary release. His full release date was set for April 1994. Paul Ward had finished his sentence six months earlier.
As John Gilligan walked through the prison gates for the last time, he made a promise to himself that would have major repercussions for Irish society. He swore that he would never again serve another jail sentence. Gilligan was determined to become the most powerful figure in Gangland.
16. A New Order
In the 1990s organized crime moved into a new, more dangerous phase, as narcotics became the stock in trade for the vast majority of gangsters. Despite the economic difficulties in the early part of the decade, there was a steady increase in demand for all types of drugs among Ireland’s large population of young people under the age of 30. In time it would become a billion-Euro industry and pose a major threat in the dramatic escalation of violence, as rivals were prepared to kill over turf.
A sinister trend emerged as drug-suppliers in Holland and Spain began throwing automatic pistols and machine-guns in with shipments for their Irish customers. It was akin to a ‘sales incentive scheme’ for drug-traffickers – get a free shooter with every ten kilos purchased. The first proof of this came in 1990, when a large consignment of hashish was washed up in two barrels on a Dublin shoreline. The haul had been dropped from a larger ship off the coast but the gang missed the rendezvous. There were six 9mm automatic pistols and ammunition hidden inside the barrels.
The evolution of the Gilligan gang typified the changing face of organized crime in Ireland. Gilligan and Traynor wasted no time organizing their exciting new business venture together in the autumn of 1993. The Coach did his own research into the trade by drinking and socializing with the new breed of drug-dealers. The clever crook studied the dynamics of the business and the methods used to launder the profits. With this in mind he opened a second-hand car dealership near the site of the old Hollyfield Buildings, and began importing Japanese cars which were very popular at the time. Like Gilligan, Traynor was reluctant to dabble in heroin – not as a result of any deep-rooted revulsion at the devastation it caused on the streets, but because heroin-dealers were classed as the scum of the earth and attracted too much media attention. Traynor simply didn’t need the aggravation. Dealers down the heroin distribution chain also tended to be addicts themselves and prone to ‘ratting’ to the police. The Coach preferred to be the one talking to the cops. Through his one-to-one relationship with his Garda handlers, Traynor could gauge what they knew.
Little John and Big John were the perfect partnership and they were totally dependent on one another. They had been close
friends since they’d worked on the B and I ferry together. Gilligan, Traynor and a small group of crooked employees had controlled a major fraud racket that eventually ran the company aground. Traynor even bluffed his way into a senior position in the Seamen’s Union, which effectively controlled B and I. At one stage, the Government commissioned a secret survey among passengers on a typical sailing. While the manifest recorded 220 passengers, an actual head count found that there were more than 700 people on board.
In the new business Traynor needed a partner with clout in the underworld whom he could trust. The Coach was then happy to stay out of the limelight and live the high life on the proceeds. He once described Gilligan in an interview with this writer in 1995: ‘He is the best grafter I have ever met. In criminal terms he is a great businessman. He can turn money into more money, no problem and is prepared to be hands on if necessary. But he is very dangerous if you fuck with him.’
In return, Gilligan needed Traynor’s planning to get his new empire off the ground. Always the cunning chancer, the Coach had worked out the gang’s strategy. He advised Gilligan that they should vary the size of the drug shipments. Each large consignment should be followed by a smaller one in case the route was compromised and the drugs seized. It would also give them the breathing space to collect their money. Traynor suggested operating a cash base, or what is known in bookie circles as a ‘tank’. The gang would start with an initial cash injection as the ‘tank’. After each shipment the money would be collected and the original investment money would be returned to the ‘tank’ to pay for the next one. As business prospered, the ‘tank’ increased to cushion the financial loss if a shipment was seized.
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