In the sitting-room of the house they met Dessie Dundon and Anthony ‘Noddy’ McCarthy, who sprung the trap. McCarthy suddenly produced a .38 revolver and ordered the two men to get down on the floor. The gang grabbed the €60,000 and Keane and Treacy were tied up. Their captors ordered them to arrange a meeting with Philip and Brian Collopy. The mob hoped to murder the four most important members of the opposition in one strike. But, even after being beaten and tortured, the two captives refused to give in to the demand.
The Murder Inc. killers decided to cut their losses – they could catch up with the others at a later date. Keane and Treacy were bundled into a van and taken to a country road outside Limerick. Keane was pushed onto the road and stabbed six times in the side of the head. The gangland killer was then executed with a gunshot in the back of the head. Owen Treacy was stabbed 17 times in the throat, neck, ear and chest. One of his attackers, David ‘Frog Eyes’ Stanners, stared into his victim’s face and hissed: ‘This is the last face you are going to see.’ Treacy pretended to be dead and the gang left.
Although seriously injured, Treacy raised the alarm and was rushed to hospital. Leaving him alive would prove to be a catastrophic mistake for the mob. Treacy later identified his kidnappers and his uncle’s killers. As a result Frog Eyes Stanners, Christopher ‘Smokey’ Costelloe, James McCarthy, Dessie Dundon, Noddy McCarthy and Keith Galvin were convicted and jailed for life.
The gangland schism led to a state of war between the two sides. It claimed the lives of twenty people over the next seven years and many more were maimed in the bloodshed. The feuding sides sent teenagers as young as 15 out with machine-guns to settle scores. At one stage the McCarthy/Dundons, who claimed responsibility for most of the bloodshed, paid €100,000 for an armour-plated jeep.
The Keane/Collopys spilled the first blood after the death of Kieran Keane. They had been patiently waiting for a chance to hit John Ryan and in July 2003 he dropped his guard. As he was helping a friend lay a patio a gunman shot him three times. Ryan died a short time later in hospital.
As the feud intensified, victims were horribly mutilated before being killed. One of them was 23-year-old Michael Campbell McNamara, a member of the Keane/Collopy gang. In October 2003 he was lured to his death by three members of the McCarthy/Dundon mob. McNamara was systematically tortured and forced to call Brian Collopy to lure him into a trap. But Collopy’s instincts saved his life when he didn’t turn up. When McNamara’s body was found the next day, it was discovered that he had been stabbed at least ten times, in the back and chest. He was then blasted in the head with a shotgun. A second shot was fired into his pelvis and buttocks, causing horrific injuries.
Among the most sickening acts of terrorism committed by Murder Inc. were crimes against the people of Limerick. In November 2008 one of the gang’s hit men shot dead Shane Geoghegan, a totally innocent man. Gardaí believed that the rugby player had been mistaken for a drug-dealer the Piranhas wanted to kill. That was followed with the cold-blooded murder of businessman Roy Collins on Holy Thursday, 2009. Roy was shot dead on the orders of Wayne Dundon. Dundon, who was in prison, had also ordered the botched hit the previous November. The gunman was an impressionable thug, 24-year-old James Dillon, who was arrested within an hour of the murder. Dillon was jailed for life in 2010 but was too terrified to name the people who’d sent him to commit the crime.
Roy’s murder was another act of revenge against the Collins family, who had bravely stood up in court and testified against the evil mobster. In 2004 Roy’s adopted brother, Ryan Lee, had refused Dundon’s 14-year-old sister, Annabel, entry into the Collins family pub. The thug whom the travellers nicknamed ‘the Ditch Rat’ was infuriated, and made threats against the 18-year-old barman before leaving. He’d returned a short time later armed with a gun, and shot and seriously injured Ryan as he stood serving drinks behind the counter. Wayne Dundon was subsequently arrested and charged with making threats to kill Ryan Lee. Despite attempts to intimidate the family, Ryan and his father, Steve Collins, gave their evidence in court. Dundon was initially jailed for ten years, but the sentence was later reduced by the Court of Criminal Appeal to seven years. Dundon had vowed to get revenge. He’d ordered his associates to burn down the family’s pub, and it later transpired that he’d sent instructions to pay a hit man to murder Steve Collins in November 2008. The businessman’s name was found on a piece of paper, under the name of the drug-dealer Shane Geoghegan was mistaken for.
Dundon’s move against Roy Collins was to remind everyone in Limerick that he has a long memory. Steve Collins and his family still receive 24-hour police protection, to prevent another attack.
The murder of Roy Collins was a watershed in the history of organized crime in Limerick. In an unprecedented public display, over 5,000 people joined the Collins family in a protest march through the city in May 2009. The ordinary decent citizens were sending a clear message to the mobs – we have had enough. As a direct result of the outrage the then Minister for Justice brought in tough anti-gang legislation in July 2009. The laws gave police the powers to plant surveillance equipment in the property and cars of targeted suspects. It also made it an offence to direct an organized crime gang or to be a member of one.
The local Gardaí had also been scoring major successes in their war against the gangs. Since the feud first broke out, over 500 individuals had been convicted for serious crimes connected to it, including murder, attempted murder, assaults and stabbings. The Limerick police consistently have the highest detection rate for gangland murders in Ireland. Other gang members were jailed for possession of drugs, guns and bombs. Between 2005 and 2010 there were almost 400 incidents in which firearms were discharged in the city. In the same period 220 people were convicted for firearms offences alone.
When Wayne Dundon was released from prison in 2010 he returned to a completely changed gangland environment. A specialist surveillance unit had been brought in from Dublin to harass and follow the gang members wherever they went. A new Armed Response Unit was also established in the city, to pile the pressure on the hoods.
By 2011 the tough response from the Gardaí was paying off. Most of the major players in both Murder Inc. and the Keane/Collopy factions were either serving long sentences or awaiting trial. The number of incidents where firearms were discharged had dwindled from 103 in 2007 to 19 in 2010. In 2011 that figure had fallen even further.
Gardaí in the city say that it would be premature to declare that the war is over. As long as some of the protagonists are alive they will ensure that the hatred is passed on to the younger generation. At the time of writing, however, serious cracks have been emerging in the once unbreakable alliance between the members of Murder Inc. Associates are before the courts, charged with threatening to murder each other. In the meantime, other criminal families have seized their opportunity to fill the vacuum.
Peace in Limerick will always be a fragile thing.
24. The Dapper Don
In the early hours of 25 May 2010, Spanish police swooped on one of the biggest organized crime syndicates in Europe. The target of the major international investigation had tentacles which spread across the world. At the same time as the Spanish made their move, law enforcement agencies in Ireland, the UK, Belgium and Brazil also carried out searches and made arrests as part of the carefully co-ordinated operation. Seven hundred police were involved in the swoops and 32 people were arrested. In Spain the authorities described it as the most extensive investigation they had ever conducted against a criminal consortium.
The syndicate controlled a large slice of the drug trade across Europe and in the process had accumulated awesome wealth. It had an estimated balance sheet of €1 billion from drug-trafficking, arms-dealing and money-laundering. The investigation had also uncovered evidence of a global property portfolio worth in excess of €800 million. Through a complex network of front companies, corrupt financiers, lawyers and brokers, the multi-national organization invested in real estate and businesses
in Ireland, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, Dubai, South Africa, China, Antigua and Barbuda, Namibia, Brazil, the UK and Cyprus. In Brazil the group owned six leisure complexes and a string of residential properties worth €500 million, with another €150 million invested in Spain alone. The environmentally conscious mob also put their money into waste-disposal companies and renewable energies. They invested in food, cement and commodity markets. In Ireland they owned a dry-cleaner’s and a ticket sales business. The money-laundering web used a network of 31 companies in different countries through which the dirty money was channelled. The group owned their own transport companies and a string of warehouses dotted across Europe, the UK and Ireland to store the drugs, which were usually disguised as domestic goods.
But this global criminal empire did not involve either the Colombian drug cartels or the Mafia. This was an exclusively Irish operation. A Spanish government minister later dubbed the syndicate ‘the Irish Mafia’.
The Godfather at the top of the complex pyramid was veteran gangster Christy Kinahan, aka ‘the Dapper Don’. His principal partner was his long-time pal John Cunningham, ‘the Colonel’. Fifty-three-year-old Kinahan and 59-year-old Cunningham had come a long way since they started off as petty thieves on the streets of Dublin. And unlike many of the Godfathers who had emerged in Ireland since the 1990s, the wily mobsters had avoided a hit man’s bullet.
The life stories of the ageing gangsters mirrored that of organized crime in Ireland over the previous four decades. Kinahan and Cunningham were among the first generation of young hoods who established the Republic of Gangland’s independence. They worked their way up the ladder from petty crime, fraud, armed robbery and kidnapping, to international drug-trafficking and gun-running. The magnificent villas where the veteran hoods were arrested near San Pedro, outside Marbella on the Costa del Sol, underlined how well they had done for themselves. Kinahan’s home was valued at around €5 million. The two luxury residences were in stark contrast to the conditions the gangsters had grown up in – the Colonel in the working-class sprawl of Ballyfermot and Kinahan in the bleak Oliver Bond flat complex, in inner-city Dublin.
The swoops were the culmination of a two-year international investigation which had been prompted by the Garda National Drug Unit in 2008. With the apt codename ‘Operation Shovel’, it had succeeded in digging up the true extent of the syndicate’s activities by following the money trail. From the Costa del Crime, Kinahan and Cunningham dealt in huge, multi-ton loads of cocaine, hash and heroin. Spanish police also revealed that they were investigating a number of gangland murders linked to the mob. In Ireland one man was arrested and several business premises were searched by officers from the GNDU and the Criminal Assets Bureau. In the UK the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) arrested 11 more suspects, while another 20 arrests took place in Spain. The Dapper Don’s two sons, 32-year-old Daniel and 29-year-old Christy Junior, were also among those taken into custody. Daniel Kinahan was in charge of his father’s drug business, while Christy Junior handled the money.
Kinahan was the overall Godfather, and brains, behind the entire operation. The multilingual underworld sophisticate dealt directly with the Mafias in Russia, Sicily and Israel, as well as with the main drug producers – the Moroccan, Turkish and Colombian cartels. In ten years it was estimated that Kinahan had accumulated a personal fortune of €100 million.
From his Mediterranean retreat, the Dapper Don also had a controlling influence on organized crime in Ireland. He was the top player in an exclusive and very secretive society of veteran villains. Kinahan and his faceless associates, all of whom are gangsters in their fifties, were – and still are – the overlords of Gangland. One member of the group, a convicted criminal, maintains a public image of non-involvement in the drug trade. His participation is a closely guarded secret, as he pulls the strings through his relatives. Another player in the exclusive cartel is a powerful and respected businessman who has been in the background of organized crime for the past four decades. Such is the power of these individuals that they make the life-and-death decisions which determine the fate of many Irish gang leaders. Through Kinahan, this hierarchy commands the respect and loyalty of several of the country’s most ruthless young gangs. If they want someone dead, then the Dapper Don only has to give his protégés the nod.
In 2010 Kinahan was rated as being among the top five suppliers of hashish, cocaine, heroin and ecstasy to the UK market. He also featured in Europol’s list of the top ten criminal Godfathers in Europe. With his old friend George ‘the Penguin’ Mitchell on the same list, the Irish were punching well above their weight in the international mob scene.
In the story of organized crime there are many remarkable characters who stand out from the rest of the gangland rabble – mostly for the level of violence and fear they are capable of inflicting. But Christy Kinahan was probably the most unusual of the lot. Born in inner-city Dublin in 1957, he was handsome, suave and well-spoken. He earned the nickname ‘the Dapper Don’ because of his expensive taste in designer clothes. His Dublin brogue was soon replaced by a cultured European accent. He was considered to be something of a gangland sophisticate who used various stretches in prison to obtain two university degrees. Kinahan also learned several languages, including Spanish, Dutch, French and Arabic. Described as highly intelligent, he was a born entrepreneur who could just as easily have been a successful businessman in the legitimate world.
Kinahan started off his criminal career with a handful of convictions for burglary, receiving stolen goods and using forged cheques. As the Dunne family lost their grip on the heroin trade, he was one of the people who moved in to fill the vacuum. When John Cunningham was caught for the Jennifer Guinness kidnapping in April 1986, his future partner-in-crime was already making a name for himself in the drug trade. Kinahan was in business at the time with an Algerian trafficker called Rebah Serier. A strict Muslim, 30-year-old Serier was also becoming a major player on the international crime scene. Together they controlled one of the largest heroin distribution operations in Dublin.
But the partnership ran into trouble in September 1986 when the Drug Squad swooped, following a rare surveillance operation. They had been watching Kinahan’s luxury apartment at Crescent House in Fairview, North Dublin, which was the central hub of his operation. The posh gangster had taken a step up in the world since he’d left his wife and two young sons for another woman. His boys were left to grow up in the much less salubrious surroundings of the Oliver Bond flats complex.
When officers burst into the apartment they caught Kinahan and Serier red-handed, with £117,000 worth (€300,000 today) of heroin. The officers who busted the Dapper Don included former members of the defunct Mockey Squad – Michael O’Sullivan, Jim McGowan and Noirin O’Sullivan. When they searched the apartment they found Linguaphone® tapes which Kinahan was using to learn Arabic and French. He also owned an impressive library of academic books. The two hoods were arrested and charged with drug offences.
In March 1987 Kinahan pleaded guilty and was jailed for six years. At his hearing it was claimed that he was a heroin addict. However, it has emerged that this was untrue and Kinahan was trying to win sympathy from the court. Serier was given four and a half years. He was described as a man of mystery and Gardaí were unable to uncover background information on his life before he reached Ireland. The Algerian’s defence counsel alleged Kinahan had sucked Serier into the drug trade.
Many years later, a member of the Drug Squad confirmed that both men were much bigger players than the Gardaí had realized. In the 1980s there was little contact between European police forces in relation to ordinary crime. The officer admitted: ‘We didn’t realize at the time just how big Kinahan was in the drug trade. Our focus was here in Ireland and when we caught him it was a major success. But in the prevailing culture we didn’t look beyond our borders to get a bigger picture. We weren’t interested in what was going on outside as long as we got a conviction. Serier also became a very significant p
layer in Europe later on.’
After his release from prison in 1991, Kinahan went back to crime. In June 1993 he was arrested in possession of £16,000 worth of travellers cheques which had been stolen in a bank robbery carried out by Thomas ‘Bomber’ Clarke. When he was questioned, Kinahan responded: ‘Out in the garden beside the stone wall there was an old man who said nothing at all. He sat in the garden and said nothing at all.’ When the puzzled cops asked him what he meant, Kinahan replied: ‘Nothing at all.’
The Dapper Don later accused drug addict Raymond Sallinger of tipping off the police about the travellers cheques. After that Sallinger moved to London where he remained for several years. In January 2003, shortly after Sallinger moved back to Dublin, he was shot dead as he sat drinking in a pub in the Liberties. The prime suspects were members of a young crime gang from the north inner-city led by Gary Hutch, the Monk’s nephew, who were close to Daniel Kinahan. The Dapper Don has a long memory.
While out on bail, Christy Kinahan fled to Holland and began building a new drugs business. The partnership between Kinahan and John Cunningham began shortly after the Colonel absconded to Holland from prison in September 1996. The men had built up a relationship when they were inside.
A month later, the Lucan Investigation Team shut down John Gilligan’s drug-trafficking operation. Gilligan was arrested and charged with money-laundering offences by the British police and held on remand in Belmarsh Prison. On the day the diminutive thug was busted, he had just collected a case full of cash from the Colonel’s brother, Michael Cunningham, at Heathrow Airport. Kinahan and John Cunningham took over where Gilligan left off.
In the meantime the Dapper Don had experienced more trouble with the law enforcement community. He was arrested by Dutch police while in possession of ecstasy, cocaine and firearms and was jailed for four years in Amsterdam’s Bijlmerbajes Prison. Kinahan, however, served less than a year and was soon back in business with the Colonel. The pair also teamed up with Dutch drug-dealer and gun-runner Johannes ‘Joopie’ Altepost, who’d met Kinahan in prison. Shaven-headed Altepost had a reputation for serious violence and had extensive contacts with gun-dealing gangs in the former Yugoslavia. The new syndicate began supplying large quantities of drugs and firearms to gangs in Ireland and the UK. Kinahan had built up extensive contacts in the UK over the years and carried a British passport. The syndicate’s business soon dwarfed Gilligan’s operation.
Badfellas Page 49