Gilroy was picked up from the clinic by two associates of the Don, who were living in the south of Spain. He was never seen again. Gardaí later received reliable intelligence that Dunne hired a hit man from Ballyfermot called Eric ‘Lucky’ Wilson to carry out the murder and ensure the body was never found. The 26-year-old was a contract killer who had been hiding in Spain since 2005. He’d skipped bail after he was charged with possession of a cache of firearms, including an AK47 rifle.
Lucky Wilson was also suspected of doing hits on behalf of Marlo Hyland and David Lindsay, the Penguin’s former protégé. In 2005 Lindsay had paid Wilson to murder 22-year-old Martin Kenny in Ballyfermot. Kenny was a cousin of Mark ‘the Guinea Pig’ Desmond. Lucky had also whacked drug-dealer Paul Reay in 2006 for Marlo Hyland. Then in 2008, Wilson killed Paddy Doyle in Spain for the Kinahan syndicate. That was followed in July of the same year with the double execution of his former client, David Lindsay and an associate, Alan Napper. The men were lured to a house in Rostrevor, County Down where they were shot dead. Their bodies were rumoured to have been cut up with a chainsaw. The double murder was ordered by Lindsay’s former business partner, Michael ‘Micka’ Kelly, another dangerous drug-trafficker nicknamed ‘the Panda’. Like the Don, this 28-year-old from Kilbarrack, North Dublin, had emerged as a bloodthirsty killer. As well as the deaths of Lindsay and Napper, Kelly organized five other murders. In 2010 his hit man, Wilson, was suspected of causing the disappearance of the Panda’s associate Alan Campbell. But both Wilson and Kelly’s luck ran out. During a row over a woman in a Spanish bar, Wilson shot dead English gangster Daniel Smith. In 2011 he was jailed for 23 years. And Kelly was shot dead in North Dublin on 15 September 2011.
A month after the disappearance of Christy Gilroy, the Don ordered another assassination. This time Dunne contracted an associate of Wilson’s to try to whack Michael Murray again. On 2 March 2009, Murray was shot three times in the head. Then on 12 June, another threat to Dunne’s life was erased. The body of 34-year-old criminal, Paul ‘Scar Face’ Smyth, was found lying in a ditch near Balbriggan in North County Dublin. He had been clinically executed with a bullet in the head. Smyth, who had been a member of Hyland’s gang, was Paul ‘Farmer’ Martin’s brother-in-law. He had been approached by associates of both Martin and John Daly to kill the Don, following Murray’s death.
Smyth’s death brought the number of killings Dunne had either ordered or carried out himself to a total of six in six months. Since 2005, the body count connected with him had reached 12. No criminal in the history of organized crime in Ireland had been personally linked to so many murders. The Don’s efforts to control Gangland were measured in blood. Dunne’s paranoia and suspicion made everyone around him extremely nervous.
In the wake of the Cronin and Maloney murders, the Organised Crime Unit (OCU) set up a major investigation to target Eamon Dunne in February 2009, codenamed ‘Operation Hammer’. It used Operation Oak as a template and officers began putting serious pressure on Dunne and his associates. He was regularly followed, stopped and searched. Dunne and his cronies were arrested and questioned about the various murders and other crimes. The Don objected to the attention and began photographing and filming his tormentors, in a bid to intimidate them. The Criminal Assets Bureau also launched an in-depth trawl of Dunne’s finances. In the first eight months of 2009, Operation Hammer resulted in the seizure of over €1.5 million worth of drugs belonging to the Don’s syndicate. Fifteen members of the gang were also arrested and charged with serious drug offences. Dunne was beginning to find himself under the same kind of pressure that Marlo had experienced. But it didn’t stop his killing spree.
On 11 October 2009, David Thomas died instantly when he was shot twice in the head as he stood smoking outside the Drake Inn pub in Finglas. Gardaí believed that the Don organized the murder as a special favour to a friend. Thomas hadn’t been involved in serious crime since he was acquitted of killing a man during a row in another Finglas pub in 2001. But he couldn’t avoid the attentions of the most dangerous thug in gangland.
In January 2010, Dunne organized his fifteenth gangland murder in five years. Traveller John Paul Joyce was a major drug-dealer and armed robber who had become involved with the Don’s gang. He was released from prison just before Christmas 2009, after doing time for a savage assault in which his victim had been left brain-damaged. Before he was jailed, Joyce had been given the job of disposing of the weapon used to murder Farmer Martin. Instead, Joyce decided to hand it over to the police, in the hope of getting a lighter sentence for the assault charge. But the Don discovered his treachery when detectives showed the weapon to two members of his gang who were questioned about the shootings. Joyce had signed his death warrant.
The drug-dealer was last seen alive when he went to meet an associate of Dunne’s, on 7 January 2010. Two days later, Joyce’s body was discovered in a ditch near Dublin Airport. Like many of the Don’s other victims, the traveller had been dispatched with a bullet in the head. A year earlier, Joyce’s younger brother Tommy had also been executed, in a separate gangland feud.
Over the following weeks Eamon Dunne grew even more unpredictable and paranoid. His murder rate had made him Public Enemy Number One. The police continued to pile on the pressure and Dunne soon had other problems.
The spectacular collapse of the Irish economy had not been good for organized crime. Just like in the legitimate business world, the balance sheets of the drug lords were in decline. Gangsters who had invested their ill-gotten-gains in the property markets were also in negative equity. The demand for cocaine had dropped dramatically and there was a shift in the drug market to heroin and home-grown marijuana. At the same time Head Shops were opening in practically every major town in Ireland, selling dangerous, legal highs. The economic downturn had a colossal effect on the underworld.
Criminals began fighting among themselves over unpaid debts, and looked for new business opportunities. Eamon Dunne decided to make up his shortfall by collecting drug debts for other hoods and targeting the Head Shops for protection money. The dangerous thug made the fatal mistake of trying to extort large amounts of cash from a number of veteran villains who were business partners of Christy Kinahan. One major player received a demand for €150,000 from Dunne and was told that the INLA would deal with him if he failed to pay up. The criminal asked for a meeting with the INLA leadership in Belfast to discuss the issue. When he arrived, he was surprised to discover that Dunne was also there. The terrorists told him that the Don had the full support of the organization behind him. The shaken criminal returned to Dublin and met a number of other mobsters to discuss the problem. It was agreed that the Don had become a major liability. Decisive action would have to be taken. In Spain, Christy Kinahan and his associates were also consulted and an agreement was reached. The Don was living on borrowed time.
To make matters worse, Dunne – like Marlo Hyland – had developed a serious cocaine habit which made him even more dangerous and unpredictable. It was known that he was snorting 5g of the drug every day. The coke-fuelled haze accentuated his sex drive, and his aggression. His former associates claimed that he was as addicted to sex as he was violence. Whenever he was stopped and searched, Dunne always had a few Viagra pills in his pocket. The Don had a string of dangerous liaisons with the girlfriends and wives of his associates and other hoods. He was becoming so detached from reality that he didn’t seem to care who he was upsetting. It was becoming clear that Dunne had a death wish.
Dunne openly bragged about his various conquests and kept explicit pictures of one gangster’s moll on his mobile phone. Another affair that he was rumoured to have had was with a former girlfriend of convicted killer Craig White. White was furious and demanded that his associates on the outside get rid of Dunne. His cronies, in the inner-city gang aligned to Kinahan, assured him that plans for Dunne’s demise were already in place. It was now only a matter of when, and not if, the Don would meet the Grim Reaper.
In a macabre t
wist to the story, it has since been revealed that the malevolent mobster knew that his time was running out. Late in 2009 Dunne organized his own Mafia-style funeral. He booked an undertaker and ordered an aluminium casket from the US, which arrived in Ireland in February 2010. Dunne also picked his own grave, in Dardistown Cemetery, North Dublin. He wanted to be buried head-to-head with his friend and fellow killer Paddy Doyle, who’d been buried in Dardistown after he was murdered in Spain in 2008. Dunne left strict instructions that he was to be laid out in the casket in his parents’ home and specified his clothes. He even dictated the dress code for his henchmen and friends – black ties, shirts and suits. Dunne asked that they take turns carrying his casket to the funeral in the local church.
Even in death, the hoodlum seemed afraid of attack or media exposure. His instructed his associates to stand guard over his corpse – to prevent anyone defacing it. Mobile phones were to be banned while the casket was open; to prevent anyone taking a picture and selling it to the newspapers. Dunne even left cash for the post-funeral booze-up in the Swiss Cottage pub, North Dublin.
Detectives believe the actual murder plot was hatched sometime in February 2010. It is known that a number of criminal groups came together, under the direction of Christy Kinahan and his shadowy gangland council. Members of the Dapper Don’s gang from the north inner-city got the job of carrying out the shooting. Former members of Marlo Hyland’s gang and some of Dunne’s associates were also in on the plot. Gangland’s hierarchy knew that it would have to be a carefully planned attack, with no room for mistakes. Dunne had a finely honed instinct for other predators, and if he survived, he would unleash hell on his enemies.
On Friday 23 April 2010, Gardaí in Dublin received intelligence that two senior members of Kinahan’s mob were in the process of planning a hit in North Dublin. From phone taps, detectives knew that the two thugs had been watching a target for a number of days. But they didn’t know the identity of the victim, the time or the location for the proposed assassination. The police hear of planned murder attempts practically every day; most never take place – but this hit was different.
That evening Eamon Dunne attended the fortieth birthday of his friend John Fairbrother in the Faussagh House pub in Cabra. The Don brought his 17-year-old daughter Amy to the party and seemed to be in good spirits. Several of his friends and associates were also there. As usual he was being watched over by two of his henchmen, who acted as bodyguards.
Around 9.30 p.m. a red Volkswagen Passat arrived in the pub car park. Three armed men got out, while a fourth remained behind the wheel. One man stayed outside, while the other two ran into the pub. A number of Dunne’s associates made a run for it when they saw the gunmen. One of the hit men made straight for the table where the Don was sitting with his back to the door. The killer fired two rounds directly into the Godfather’s face. When Dunne fell to the floor, his executioner fired one more round into his head. The most blood-stained gangster in Ireland was dead. Like Marlo Hyland, Dunne’s relatively short life had also been ‘nasty, brutish and short’.
As the hit team ran to their getaway car there was panic in the pub. One of the Don’s close associates, Mark Buckley, ran from the pub in a state of shock, shouting: ‘They got Eamon; they shot Eamon.’ The murder was clinical and professional – just like the many assassinations organized by the victim.
Later that night, the prime suspect spoke on his mobile phone to Daniel Kinahan. The Dapper Don’s son warned the henchman to assume the call was being tapped by the Gardaí and to say nothing. The hit man, who had recently become a father, left Dublin with his family and stayed down in the country for the rest of the weekend. A week later, he flew to Spain and met the Kinahans in Marbella. A few days later the police in Spain, Belgium, England and Ireland made their move on the Kinahan organization as part of Operation Shovel.
Despite the outpouring of grief and anger from the large number of criminals who turned up, in black, for the Don’s funeral, there was no retribution. Dunne’s associates, including his partner in the ‘security business’, Brian O’Reilly, conducted their own investigation to find out who exactly had ordered the hit and then carried it out. Their enquiries ended when two gunmen walked into O’Reilly’s local pub in Bettystown, County Meath, and tried to kill him in August 2010. O’Reilly survived the attack, recovered from his injuries – and dropped the investigation.
Elsewhere the murder madness continued. There were another 12 gangland executions in 2010, which brought the underworld death toll for the year to 20. Among the victims were two brothers, Paul and Kenneth Corbally, from Ballyfermot who were gunned down in an attack in June 2010. They had been involved in another ongoing feud, this time with their former partner-in-crime, Derek ‘Dee Dee’ O’Driscoll. The two sides had declared war after an associate of the Corballys, Manchester criminal Jason Martin, was stabbed to death during a melee between both sides in September 2009.
Four months after the double murder another associate of the Corballys, Robert Ryle, was also whacked. Then in November, the names of two more completely innocent young men were added to the list of the dead. Cousins, 20-year-old Glen Murphy and 23-year-old Mark Noonan, were ambushed by two gunmen at a petrol station in Finglas, North Dublin. They were murdered in a case of mistaken identity, by a hit team involved in a separate gang war in Coolock.
As Ireland nears the end of the first year of the fifth decade of organized crime there is only one certainty – Gangland is here to stay. The underworld and its population have come a long way since a quasi-republican mob called Saor Eire carried out the first professional armed robberies in the State. The first Godfather, Christy ‘Bronco’ Dunne, who is now in his seventies, must find it hard to recognize the underworld that has evolved since he and his siblings first blazed the trail for others to follow.
Today serious crime and violence have become embedded in Irish culture. All types of illegal narcotics are easily available, in every town and village in the country and gangs have sprung up to control and prosper from the trade.
Since the start of the Noughties, gangland murders have become an almost acceptable reality in our cities and major towns. And as the drug trade continues to flourish throughout Ireland, the violence is guaranteed to continue. The spectre of the hit man now stalks many Irish streets where once there was no problem with serious crime. Adding to the toxic mix are former Provos and the dissident republican gangs, like the INLA and Real IRA. These criminal mobs have become part of the fabric of Gangland since the 1970s and 1980s. The terrorists are no longer distinguishable from what would once have been described as ‘crime-ordinary’ criminals. The cycle of organized crime is guaranteed to continue.
Ireland has certainly taken a trip down a very different road to the ‘straight road’ Eamon De Valera once referred to, when he celebrated the Jubilee of the birth of the fledgling Republic. When the nation gathers again to commemorate the centenary of that great event, Gangland will be preparing for its own Jubilee.
Illustrations
Joseph Dillon, Saor Eire.
Liam Walsh, Saor Eire member, blown up by his own bomb in 1970.
Martin Casey, who bought weapons from Christy ‘Bronco’ Dunne.
Patrick Dillon, Saor Eire.
Patrick Dwyer, Saor Eire.
John (Sean) Morrissey, Saor Eire.
Simon O’Donnell, Saor Eire, convicted of armed robbery with INLA man Tommy Savage.
Christy ‘Bronco’ Dunne.
Christy ‘Bronco’ Dunne Sr and his wife Ellen, the parents of Ireland’s first crime family.
Mickey Dunne (left) and Henry Dunne (right) with their mysterious business partner the Prince (centre).
Larry Dunne, the man credited with bringing the first heroin shipments into Ireland, pictured in prison in 1992.
Henry Dunne at the funeral of Martin Cahill, 1994 (© Padraig O’Reilly).
Vianney ‘Boyo’ Dunne.
Robert Dunne (© Padraig O’Reilly).
C
harlie Dunne (© Padraig O’Reilly).
Christy Dunne Sr.
The original poor quality picture circulated by Gardaí of Martin Cahill, early 1980s.
Martin Cahill, the General.
Martin Cahill at home with his children in their rundown flat in Hollyfield.
Eddie Cahill, the General’s brother (© Padraig O’Reilly).
Hughie Delaney, Martin Cahill’s brother-in-law and member of the General’s gang.
Family business: (from left) Eugene Scanlan, a member of the General’s gang, and John Cahill, the General’s elder brother.
Gang members in Portlaoise: John Foy (back) and Eamon Daly (front left) from the General’s gang in Portlaoise prison in 1992 with Brendan ‘Wetty’ Walsh (front right, dark shorts) of the Athy Gang.
William Gardiner from the Athy Gang (left) and Albert Crowley from the General’s gang (right) in prison.
Eamon Daly, member of the General’s gang.
Harry Melia, member of the General’s gang.
Martin Foley (‘the Viper’), member of the General’s gang, who has survived one kidnap and four murder attempts.
Noel Lynch, convicted armed robber and member of the General’s gang.
Martin Cahill murder scene, 1994.
Michael ‘Jo Jo’ Kavanagh, Cahill gang member (© Padraig O’Reilly).
Badfellas Page 54