Badfellas

by Paul Williams

  On Friday, 14 October 1994, Shanahan worked late on the building-site. Shortly after 7 p.m. he arrived with a friend at his gym in Crumlin. As he walked to the front door, a lone gunman emerged from the shadows and shot the former gangster once in the face, at point-blank range. Shanahan fell to the ground, seriously injured. The hit man casually walked out the pedestrian exit and disappeared. Two days later, the Dunne family’s one-time student, who had graduated to become a major-league gangster, died from his injuries.

  Shanahan’s death brought to 11 the number of gangland murders which had taken place in Ireland since 1990. Five of the murders took place in 1994, making it the most violent year yet recorded. The bloodshed had started in February with the murder of former INLA boss Dominic ‘Mad Dog’ McGlinchey in Drogheda, County Louth. The mass-killer was gunned down after he made a phone call to Gilligan’s associate, Martin ‘the Viper’ Foley, from a public coin box. As Mad Dog was about to make a second call, two armed and masked men jumped from a car and began pumping rounds into their target. McGlinchey was shot at least 11 times. In a brutal twist of fate his son, Dominic Junior, witnessed his father’s death. Seven years earlier he had also witnessed his mother being shot dead by her former INLA comrades.

  The previous year, 1993, there had been three gangland murders in Dublin. Two of them were directly linked to the burgeoning drug trade. Michael Godfrey had been executed by PJ Judge (see Chapter 21), and heroin-dealer Fran Rodgers was gunned down in front of his young daughter, as he was lighting a Halloween bonfire in the Coombe, Dublin. The third fatality was Sean Clarke, who had been suspected of molesting children. The modus operandi of the murders of Clarke and Rodgers had striking similarities. In both cases the killer was armed with a shotgun and first disabled his victim by shooting him in the legs, before finishing him off with a blast in the head. Detectives believed that the same assassin did both hits. The gun would remain the corporate tool of choice in gangland’s new world order.

  The detectives investigating the murder of Paddy Shanahan sent a file to the DPP recommending murder charges against one of the criminal associates for whom he had been laundering cash. The man was never charged. During the police enquiries, Dutchie Holland emerged as the suspected hit man and was arrested for questioning. He was released without charge. Dutchie had been freed from Portlaoise Prison a month earlier and was living in the Crumlin home of Seamus ‘Shavo’ Hogan at the time. Shavo was also arrested in the swoops that followed the Shanahan hit. Unlike Martin Cahill, who used black polish to hide his face, Hogan smeared his with faeces. When the hoods were finished with the police they both got involved in the drug trade. Dutchie became an important member of Gilligan’s gang.

  Over the following years the murder rate steadily rose, as the drug trade flourished. With Martin Cahill out of the picture and the INLA and the Provos in his pocket, John Gilligan emerged as the strong man of the Dublin underworld. Gangland had a new master.

  17. The Munster Mafia

  The fake tax disc in the windscreen of the BMW aroused the suspicions of Customs officers monitoring the cars arriving in Rosslare on 5 March 1990, off the ferry from Cherbourg. The eagle-eyed officers ordered the female driver to pull the car to the side. They summoned Jake, the sniffer dog, to conduct a spot check for drugs. Mary Vesey had no reason to be concerned and believed it was just routine. But then she realized she had driven into a nightmare as the dog started to bark and enthusiastically wag his tail, indicating he had made a hit. The civil servant was frozen with shock, as the Customs team uncovered a secret compartment, containing a stash of 76 kilos of cannabis. The 44-year-old would never forget her weekend in Paris with former priest John McCarthy.

  Mary Vesey was immediately arrested by Gardaí and charged with importing the drugs which had a street value of £700,000 (€1.5 million today). It was a major seizure. She protested her innocence and profound shock when she was brought before Wicklow District Court to be formally charged. ‘I was used as a tool to bring drugs into the country,’ Mary Vesey told the judge. She said she had driven the car back to Ireland to oblige a ‘friend’ after they’d spent the weekend together at a rugby international. Vesey had arranged to meet the man in the Talbot Hotel in Wexford but he never turned up. ‘Now I know why,’ she remarked ruefully. Vesey had been duped by the enigmatic, international drug-trafficker dubbed ‘Father Hash’.

  As far as Vesey was concerned, 50-year-old McCarthy was a well-educated, charming gentleman. But the truth was a lot more sinister than that. The ex-priest was a key figure in a Cork-based international crime syndicate that had a major influence on developments in the drug trade in Ireland. They became known as the Munster Mafia. Like most of his associates, McCarthy had successfully operated under the radar until his car was stopped in Rosslare.

  Father Hash was probably best described as the Irish underworld’s equivalent to Oxford graduate Howard Marks. Neither man could claim that they were driven into crime through social deprivation or lack of opportunities in life. John McCarthy was born in 1940 and grew up on the Western Road in Cork, where his family were wealthy farmers. After school he studied for the priesthood and was ordained in Rome. He was fluent in French, German and Italian and held a Doctorate in theology. He ministered in Rome and Paris for a number of years before returning to Cork, where he was appointed Curate to the villages of Ballinspittle and Ballinadee. He also worked as a teacher and was Chaplain to the local convent school in Bandon.

  McCarthy became the subject of scandal for the first time when he fell in love with a local woman and left the priesthood in 1981. His former parishioners remember him as the ‘priest who ran off with the woman’. A few years later the couple had a daughter, married and settled in Waterfall, outside Cork City. Father Hash earned a living as a cattle-dealer but then he decided to cater for the needs of another flock – dope-smokers.

  McCarthy became a partner in one of Ireland’s first well-organized drug-smuggling syndicates. It had extensive international contacts and was operating long before John Gilligan switched from stealing hardware to selling hash. In the early 1980s, the Munster Mafia identified the craggy coastline of the south-west as an ideal route for smuggling multi-million-pound drug shipments for European markets. One of his business partners was fellow Cork man Paddy McSweeney, who was probably the most successful drug-trafficker in the history of organized crime in Ireland.

  Successive Garda intelligence reports identified Patrick Anthony McSweeney as a major player in the global drug trade. An extremely clever and sophisticated operator, McSweeney painstakingly avoided any public connection with organized crime – and his only criminal convictions were for road traffic offences. Born in 1949, he shunned the company of anyone who risked drawing him into the spotlight. The secret of his success was that he trusted no one, never opened his mouth and, unlike the Dunnes and the General, didn’t attract attention. He observed a strict rule of maintaining a safe distance from his product and customers. To the outside world he was a wealthy businessman, who frequently travelled throughout Europe, Asia and South America. Gardaí claim that McSweeney imported some of the first shipments of heroin into Ireland in the late 1970s, and by the end of the 1980s he had become one of the biggest Irish operators. Although he was well known to the police and was the subject of many undercover investigations, he always escaped the net. It wasn’t until the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) investigated McSweeney’s vast wealth that he finally lost his cherished anonymity – they hit him with a tax bill for almost €2 million.

  Another central figure in the Munster Mafia was Alan Buckley, a well-spoken antiques dealer based in Kinsale. Buckley, who was ten years younger than McSweeney, had been equally successful at maintaining a low profile and also hid behind the image of a respectable businessman. Buckley held shares in a number of front companies owned by McSweeney. Like his partner, he had featured in several major drug investigations through the years but avoided getting caught. Intelligence analysis of his role in the operation
determined that he was the organizer and logistics manager. But he too was eventually forced out into the open when the CAB came calling – and served him with a tax demand for over €350,000.

  By his own admission he became a full member of the Munster Mafia in the late 1980s. In an interview with this writer in 2002, Buckley admitted: ‘For eight years I was involved in that [the drug trade]. It was pure greed mixed with the excitement.’ He claimed that he was out of the drug business, which he would only refer to as ‘that’: ‘It is six years since I had any involvement in any of that [drug crime]. I don’t want to go into specifics about what I did and I do not have a problem with anyone from my past. I have no need or desire to go near that life again.’

  One of the better-known members of the group was Cork crime figure Thomas Francis O’Callaghan, who was the front man in McSweeney’s secret empire. Tommy O’Callaghan had progressed from robber to drug-dealer after a string of convictions for theft and burglary, both at home and in the UK. Originally from the Churchfield area of Cork’s north-side he was first incarcerated in 1969, at the age of 15. Like many of his underworld counterparts, he was sentenced to two years in Daingean Reformatory School.

  O’Callaghan was a shrewd crook who played his cards close to his chest and also studiously avoided attention. His criminal gang controlled a huge slice of the drug market in Munster and by the 1990s was classified as one of the country’s top ten operations. Despite being unemployed all his life, O’Callaghan enjoyed a lavish lifestyle and bought a luxury home in upmarket Buxton Hill in the city in 1987, where he lived with his wife and children. Gardaí were aware that he held bank accounts containing huge sums of cash but there was nothing they could do about it. In a search of his home in the late 1980s detectives found a bank book for an account in Amsterdam which was held in his wife’s name. They also discovered evidence that he was dealing in oil shares. O’Callaghan was not an overtly intimidating or violent hood. ‘He had no interest in fighting or bullying and was quiet and unassuming,’ recalled a local detective. ‘But no one in the underworld would mess with him because Tommy had plenty of serious muscle to call on if he had a problem.’ The muscle included Tommy Savage and two former members of the Provisional IRA.

  The fifth member of the syndicate was Jeremiah ‘Judd’ Scanlan from Wilton in Cork. In 1986, the 36-year-old was jailed for three years at Uxbridge Magistrates Court in London, on a charge of conspiracy to smuggle heroin. When he was released in 1988, he went back to Cork and assisted in the construction of the crime empire.

  The Munster Mafia’s closest associates outside Cork were INLA hoods Tommy Savage and Mickey Weldon, and George ‘the Penguin’ Mitchell. Savage and the Munster Mafia had been involved in organizing the cannabis shipment which was intercepted in Rosslare Harbour in 1990. It was one of the first major set-backs for the syndicate.

  Investigating Gardaí discovered that McCarthy used the cover of the rugby international to collect the hash, which had been sent as air freight from Schipol Airport in Amsterdam to Paris. The smooth-talking ex-cleric invited Mary Vesey to travel with him on the ferry from Rosslare to Cherbourg and on the drive to Paris. To lessen his chances of arrest, Father Hash then spun a yarn that he had to fly home to Cork on urgent business. He asked her to drive the car back and arranged to meet her in the Talbot Hotel in Wexford. But McCarthy heard a radio news report about the drug seizure as he was travelling to Wexford and promptly went on the run to Spain.

  Mary Vesey meanwhile gave Gardaí a full statement about how the charming theologian had hoodwinked her into a world of trouble. After several months in hiding, McCarthy’s conscience finally got to him and he returned to Ireland to confess his ‘sin’. The DPP acknowledged that Mary Vesey was innocent of any involvement and the charges against her were dropped. In 1992 Father Hash pleaded guilty and was jailed for five years.

  The Rosslare seizure had attracted much unwelcome Garda attention on the Munster Mafia and they kept their heads down until the dust settled. Losing shipments was an occupational hazard and they had plenty of cash reserves built up from the many importations which hadn’t been seized. At the time, the Gardaí simply didn’t have the resources necessary to target such a sophisticated group in a prolonged surveillance operation – and had to bide their time.

  The main opposition to the Munster Mafia’s business in Cork was a family-based criminal organization led by notorious brothers Seanie and Kieran O’Flynn. The O’Flynns and their four other brothers – Donal ‘Duckie’, Bobby, Christy and Noel – had a ferocious reputation for violence and were the most feared gangsters in the city. From the Togher area, most of the family had been involved in serious crime for many years, including robbery, assaults and extortion. The O’Flynn gang had a core of about 25 members, many of whom were related by blood or marriage. They had carved out a large slice of the drug trade in Cork and were among the first gangs to bring in large quantities of ecstasy. The gang’s army of dealers plied their trade openly in several pubs and clubs in the city centre. And if the proprietors didn’t like it they were threatened, beaten or had their premises burned down. Unlike their main competitors, the O’Flynns never attempted to disguise what they were – brutal thugs.

  The family introduced the gun to the streets of the city to keep control of the drug trade. Stories of the mob’s viciousness are still told in Cork’s underworld. On one occasion Kieran O’Flynn walked into a city pub armed with a sword and ran it through a man sitting at the counter. ‘That’s what you get for messin’ with me,’ O’Flynn told his stricken victim. As he casually walked out of the pub, with the blood still dripping off the sword, O’Flynn warned the other shocked patrons, ‘and none of you saw anything either.’ Another man, who made the mistake of taking up with the former girlfriend of a senior gang member, was abducted. He was taken to Cork Airport in the boot of a car, stripped naked and savagely beaten. The gang was also responsible for scores of other attacks and shootings in the city. Their brutality ensured that no one ever did see anything. The O’Flynns were only too willing to show the local police that they were not afraid of them either.

  One experienced detective, who spent years investigating the family, described how they operated: ‘They were very dangerous men who weren’t very bright. They expressed themselves through violence and had no problem shooting or maiming anyone who crossed them. A few of them had been in the Army and they were physically big men which helped their image greatly. We knew of several incidents where they walked into pubs and attacked people but such was their reputation for extreme violence that we could never get witnesses or victims to come forward. They took over a number of pubs and clubs to sell drugs but the owners were too terrified to stop them. You could say they were to Cork what the Dunnes were to Dublin – only a lot worse.’

  Seanie O’Flynn regularly boasted to cops that his family had kept heroin out of the city. On one occasion he even told officers at Togher Garda Station that he was going to set up a branch of Concerned Parents Against Drugs (CPAD).

  The O’Flynns’ brother-in-law, Michael Crinnion, stood out as the most violent member of the entire mob. He was married to their sister Collette, with whom he had four young children. Born in 1960 and also from Togher, Crinnion had been a violent, dangerous thug all his life. In the early 1980s he received a lengthy jail sentence for attacking a man with a hatchet on Shandon Street, and in 1988 got three years for armed robbery. ‘When he was younger he would go around with a group of other boys and just beat people up if he didn’t like the look of them. When he got in with the O’Flynns he thought he was untouchable,’ said one former associate interviewed for this book. Crinnion was the gang’s top enforcer and hit man – two jobs he carried out with great enthusiasm.

  In 1990, Crinnion and the O’Flynns began flexing their muscles against the opposition. While the gang avoided direct conflict with the leading members of the Munster Mafia, they began targeting hoods further down the drug-dealing food chain. Individuals who didn’t buy
their drugs from the O’Flynns and who tried to deal on their patch, were threatened, beaten and shot. Tommy O’Callaghan and his associates, who had a much bigger operation, watched with increasing anger as the violent gangsters grew more arrogant and dangerous.

  In late 1990 the O’Flynn mob went too far – and brought Cork to the brink of an all-out gang war. Crinnion, together with Seanie and Kieran O’Flynn, abducted a mid-ranking dealer whom they tortured, before stealing a large shipment of drugs and money. The dealer, who worked directly for another major player in the city, John Dorgan, was told that if he wanted to stay alive it would be in his interests to work for the O’Flynns instead. Dorgan was a close associate of Tommy O’Callaghan and Judd Scanlan. The Munster Mafia decided that something had to be done about the O’Flynns and called in Tommy Savage to help them wipe out the problem. By early January 1991, both sides began to limber up for a violent confrontation.

  The O’Flynn brothers would later claim to Gardaí that they made approaches to Dorgan and his associates to sort out their differences but were rebuffed. On 11 January they claimed that a group of masked men, including Tommy Savage and John Dorgan, had attacked Kieran O’Flynn’s home in Thorndale Estate. The following day Dorgan made contact with the O’Flynns to discuss peace. He suggested that he meet with Seanie later that evening. But Dorgan and his associates were not interested in peace. They planned to shoot O’Flynn and any more of his brothers and henchmen who turned up. Tommy Savage had already arrived in the city in the company of another Dublin hood to carry out the plan.