Nobody else wanted to leave the party, so the two lads jumped in Maloney’s ‘D’ registered silver Nissan Micra and drove the 1.8 km to the restaurant. It was just after 3.05 a.m. at this stage. They parked the car and spotted Declan Gavin talking to a group of four girls outside the ‘chipper’. Roche and Gavin had been good friends for many years, but they were now in rival gangs after the seizure in the Holiday Inn, and tensions between the two groups were very high. Roche jumped out of the car and shouted over at Gavin that he was a ‘rat’ and had informed to the Gardaí on Graham Whelan and Philip Griffiths. Roche cursed him and said that Gavin was enjoying his chips while Whelan and Griffiths were languishing behind bars. Gavin was no shrinking violet and gave as good as he got. He told Roche to ‘f*** off’ and said that he was no ‘rat’ and would be soon charged over the Holiday Inn seizure and would be joining the other two lads in prison for ten years. Gavin told Roche that if anyone was a rat that it was him, although he didn’t provide any specific details of when John Roche had been a police informant. The two men were screaming at each other from a distance of about 4.5 m and never actually physically confronted each other or threw any punches. John Roche was well able to look after himself, but he didn’t want to take on Gavin without any reinforcements, especially with so many people who were friendly with Gavin hanging around the area at the time. Shane Maloney told Roche to calm down and forget the food, and they got into Maloney’s Micra and headed back to the party. The incident between Declan Gavin and John Roche had only lasted a couple of minutes.
Back at Cooley Road, nineteen-year-old Karl Kavanagh invited a group who had been drinking in Brian Rattigan’s house to go to his place. He lived just 30 m away in a house on the same road. Karl Kavanagh lived with his mother and father, as well as his twenty-year-old sister, Catherine, Ritchie Rattigan’s girlfriend. His parents were away, so he had a free house. John Roche, Shane Maloney, Brian Rattigan, Joey Rattigan, Mark O’Reilly, Joey Redmond, Greg Bourke and Alex Hooper all went up to Kavanagh’s. Catherine Kavanagh was already in the house. Because she was going out with Ritchie Rattigan, there was always a great deal of movement between the two houses. As the group arrived at the Kavanaghs’, John Roche brought up the row with Declan Gavin outside Abrakebabra. He explained that the pair had a heated exchange and that Gavin even had the cheek to call him a rat, when the world and its mother knew that the only reason that ‘Deco’ Gavin was a free man was that he had been a Garda informant for years. Brian Rattigan lost the plot and said that a few of the group should head back up to Abrakebabra and sort Gavin out. Rattigan had taken a lot of cocaine at this stage and he was wired and full of nervous energy. Rattigan then got a knife and balaclava and got back into the front seat of Shane Maloney’s Micra, with Joey Redmond and John Roche scrambling into the back. The car pulled up outside Abrakebabra shortly before 3.30 a.m.
3
Cold-blooded Murder
WHEN RATTIGAN SPOTTED someone he knew, twenty-one-year-old trainee soldier John Malone, he rolled down the car window and had a brief conversation with him. Several witnesses saw this exchange take place, and later told Gardaí about it. While Rattigan was having the conversation with Malone, Declan Gavin was standing outside Abrakebabra chatting to a young woman. The woman heard someone shouting ‘rats’. She looked and saw that they were shouting out the window of the parked car. Because she thought that the insults were levelled at her, she said: ‘What are ye saying?’ Then someone in the car replied: ‘What are you looking at, slapper?’ Other witnesses also described hearing the word ‘rat’ being shouted along with ‘There he is.’
When Rattigan spotted Gavin, he pulled on a balaclava to cover his face and pulled a knife out of his pocket. Then he jumped out of the car and ran towards Gavin, who was taken by surprise. Gavin was standing in the middle of a fairly large group of people; many of them saw Rattigan run towards him and they quickly scattered. Brian Rattigan stabbed Gavin once in the middle of the chest. Although the knife attack had inflicted a very serious injury, Gavin was aware enough to realise that he had to get away from his attacker. Despite his injury, he managed to run into Abrakebabra. A security guard held the door closed behind him preventing Rattigan from getting inside.
Joey Redmond, Shane Maloney and John Roche stayed in or around the Micra during the stabbing incident, which was over in less than two minutes. According to witness accounts, Rattigan spent a few seconds trying to pull the door open, but he was drawing attention to himself and was seen by at least a dozen witnesses. However, it wasn’t obvious who he was to some onlookers, because he was wearing the balaclava. Rattigan gave up and ran. As he was on his way back to the car, Mark Skerritt got hold of a golf club from the back of his car and chased him. Witnesses differed on whether or not Skerritt managed to strike him with the golf club, but he certainly lashed out at him. When Rattigan got inside the car, Skerritt turned his attention to Maloney’s Micra and smashed it over the bonnet, breaking the golf club in two. With that the Micra sped off into the night. A number of witnesses later described the voice of a female shouting, ‘It’s the Rattigans’, as the car left the scene.
Back in Abrakebabra, Declan Gavin staggered from the front door and collapsed in the small kitchen area. Several people in the restaurant tried to help him. A woman who was in the restaurant ran to help; she applied pressure to Gavin’s knife wound in a bid to stop the bleeding. She also performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, when it became clear that the injured man was on the brink of death. Darren Geoghegan and Patrick Doyle had arrived just after the stabbing; they were also in the kitchen trying to pull Gavin back from the brink. Somebody said that an ambulance had been called, so the group tried to keep Gavin alive until the medical experts arrived.
On the morning of 25 August 2001, Garda David Pidgeon was on duty at the public area of Sundrive Road Garda Station. A security guard from Abrakebabra ran into the station in a distressed state. He said that a man had just been stabbed in the ‘chipper’. Garda Pidgeon immediately circulated this information over the Garda radio system to all squad cars on duty in the area. Gardaí Thomas Lynch and Michael Redmond were in their patrol car when they heard the message and rushed to the scene. They were soon joined by Garda Pidgeon and Gardaí Sean O’Sullivan, Colm Quinn and Brian Clerkin. When the officers arrived at the premises, they noted that a man was lying in the back of the kitchen area. He was alive but unconscious and was bleeding from a large stab wound to the chest. Four people were around him administering first aid, including well-known criminals Patrick Doyle and Darren Geoghegan.
Shortly before 4.00 a.m. an ambulance crew – Brendan Walsh and Mick O’Reilly – arrived at the scene and assessed the injured Declan Gavin. It was obvious that the injuries were severe, and it was decided that Gavin should be immediately transported to hospital. The ambulance rushed to St James’s Hospital, which is less than a five-minute drive from Crumlin village. Gardaí Colm Quinn and David Pidgeon followed behind the ambulance in a patrol car, while the other officers at the scene preserved it for investigation, and identified and took the names of as many people at the scene as was possible. It was clear that witnesses would be needed for a possible future court case. Darren Geoghegan also followed the ambulance in his car to see what condition his friend was in.
At St James’s Hospital the ambulance crew handed Declan Gavin over to the care of the hospital staff. Geoghegan had phoned Declan Gavin’s mother, Pauline, while he was following the ambulance, so she knew what was happening almost immediately. Pauline Gavin soon arrived at the hospital with her other son, Aidan, and her daughter. The news was not good, and following surgery and attempted resuscitation in an operating theatre, the doctor pronounced Declan Gavin dead. Gavin had died from a single stab wound to the heart. That morning Pauline Gavin did what no parent ever expects to do – she formally identified her son’s body. Gavin’s sister was present with her when she confirmed to Garda Marion Keane that it was Declan Gavin’s body.
State Patholog
ist Dr John Harbison conducted a postmortem on Gavin’s remains that afternoon. During the two-hour examination, Dr Harbison found that the principal injury, to an otherwise healthy body, was a stab wound on the right side of the chest, around two and a half inches long. The fatal injury was caused by a knife being thrust through cartilage into the right atrial appendage of the heart, causing bleeding, which in turn caused the right lung to collapse and the left lung to partially collapse. A second superficial injury was observed on the radical side of the right index finger, which Dr Harbison felt could be construed as a defensive wound, while Gavin was trying to fend off his attacker. A toxicology report showed a urinary alcohol level of 227 mg of alcohol per 100 ml of blood, which meant that Declan Gavin had drunk around ten pints. The report showed no traces of drugs.
In the immediate aftermath of Declan Gavin’s stabbing, an incident room was set up in Sundrive Road Garda Station under the leadership of Chief Superintendent Noel Smith. Local Superintendents John Manley and Detective Superintendent Denis Donegan headed the investigation, and Detective Inspector Dominic Hayes of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NCBI) was also a key figure. Detective Inspector Tom Mulligan from Crumlin Garda Station was the day-to-day officer in charge of the murder inquiry. Over fifty officers were assigned to the murder on a full-time basis. Detective Gardaí John Doggett, Eamon O’Loughlin and Garda Katherina Joyce manned the incident room.
At first light a major forensic investigation got underway at Abrakebabra, conducted by a four-person team from the Garda Technical Bureau at Garda Headquarters. Detective Garda Seamus Quinn from the Ballistics Section examined the scene, and found blood in various places. Detective Garda Christopher O’Connor from the Fingerprints Section discovered a visible finger and palm mark in what appeared to be blood on the front window of the restaurant, 2" to the left of the door and 62" from the base of the window.
Detective Garda Caroline Hughes from the Photography Section took photos of what would later be a key piece of evidence. The palm mark taken from the window was compared to Brian Rattigan’s palm and fingerprints, which were on record from when he had been previously arrested, and it was concluded that the palm mark was made from Rattigan’s left palm. Later, DNA analysis of the blood next to Rattigan’s finger mark was examined. It matched Declan Gavin’s DNA. No blood was taken from the finger mark, as Bureau personnel decided not to distort the finger mark characteristics, so that adequate comparative features would remain intact. This turned out to be a pivotal development and would later prove to be a crucial decision.
It is believed that Brian Rattigan disposed of the murder weapon, his clothes and balaclava after leaving Abrakebabra. The movements of the four men in the Micra cannot be accounted for until they arrived back to the Kavanaghs’ house, ninety or so minutes later. Karl Kavanagh, Catherine Kavanagh, Ritchie Rattigan, Joey Rattigan, Mark O’Reilly and Greg Bourke were still in the house when the four men returned. John Roche, Joey and Brian Rattigan discussed Declan Gavin’s stabbing while they continued to drink. A radio bulletin came on at 7.00 a.m. – broadcasting news of a stabbing at Abrakebabra in Crumlin. Some of those present laughed and cheered at the news. After a while, Brian Rattigan told Shane Maloney to ‘get rid’ of the car in order to eliminate any forensic evidence. According to a statement later given to Gardaí, Maloney drove the Micra to the Texaco garage at the Cranley Centre on the Naas Road with another man. The other man bought a bottle of orange, emptied it and filled it with petrol. The car was then driven to Cookstown Industrial Estate, where it was partially burnt out. Shane Maloney then received a phone call from Brian Rattigan warning him not to get a taxi back to Cooley Road.
The party at the Kavanaghs’ broke up shortly afterwards, and the four men went into hiding anticipating that they would all be arrested. They were correct. They were all wanted men.
At around 8.30 a.m. on the morning of Saturday 25 August 2001, a woman was walking through the field at the back of Cookstown Industrial Estate in Tallaght. She noticed smoke and saw a car on fire. A call was made to the fire brigade. She didn’t see anybody else around the car, which she described as a small, three-door vehicle. The car was on fire on the side of the road directly outside Paramount Freight. The Dublin Fire Brigade arrived and extinguished the blaze. When the flames were put out, it emerged that the car was a Nissan Micra, registration 93 D 38843. Gardaí arrived at the industrial estate at around 10.30 a.m., and Detective Garda Tony Tighe and Garda Gavin Ross preserved the scene. They were sure that the burnt-out car had something to do with the murder the night before. The vehicle was taken to a secure storage facility at Santry Garda Station that afternoon. The remains of burnt clothing and footwear were found in the boot. Two unidentified palm prints were taken from the front wing of the driver’s side of the car.
Just hours after the killing, Gardaí had interviewed several witnesses. They knew that four men had been at the scene when the murder occurred, and that the men had left in a car. Officers quickly learned from confidential informants and other sources that these men were Brian Rattigan, Shane Maloney, Joey Redmond and John Roche. The main focus of the investigation switched to investigating the movements of the four men on the night of the murder. The fact that Shane Maloney’s Nissan Micra had been burnt out was a further indication that the men had something to do with Declan Gavin’s murder. After preliminary investigations, Gardaí learned of Joey Rattigan’s eighteenth birthday party, and also knew about the gathering in Karl Kavanagh’s house after the party.
As the Garda investigation kicked into full gear, various detectives were assigned the jobs of interviewing witnesses and potential witnesses who had seen Declan Gavin in and around the time of his murder. These witnesses included staff and customers at Abrakebabra and the nearby Texas Fried Chicken. A video recording of the front entrance to Abrakebabra was seized from a security camera, and although it did not cover the roadway where Shane Maloney’s car pulled up, or the location of the actual stabbing, it was very useful in identifying people at the scene at the time. The camera footage had a second-counter and did capture Declan Gavin staggering and being chased by another man, who is wearing a balaclava and appears to have a large object in his hand. Witnesses were shown stills of the footage, and several identified themselves and others from these stills. Some witnesses also confirmed that Declan Gavin was not injured or bleeding prior to his encounter with the knife-man.
4
What the Witnesses Did or Did Not See
ALTHOUGH SOME PEOPLE were co-operating with Gardaí in giving statements about what they had seen, it soon became apparent that investigators were receiving less than full cooperation from some very important witnesses at the scene. Discrepancies in statements, off-the-record comments and recorded and unsigned memos indicated that several witnesses knew the identities of the culprits, but were not prepared to name them for fear of retribution. This lived up to the Crumlin and Drimnagh tradition of not co-operating with the law at any cost. Because of this reluctance to co-operate, twenty-two people were arrested during the course of the murder investigation, mainly for withholding information.
Gardaí knew there were several reasons why they were not receiving full co-operation. One of the main reasons was that many people had a lot of animosity towards the police and the criminal justice system in general, and as a result were openly hostile and unco-operative. Some individuals just did not want to co-operate with a force that they had been taught to despise. Certain other people who witnessed the stabbing were involved in criminality. These ranged from petty criminals to members of the Gavin gang, who were involved in the wholesale supply of illegal drugs. Witnesses Darren Geoghegan and Paddy Doyle certainly fitted into this category. Other, more innocent, witnesses understandably feared helping to identify men who were involved in a dispute between two violent rival criminal gangs. But Gardaí found that over the course of the investigation, the prevailing notion among many of the potential witnesses was that the naming of any indi
vidual to the Gardaí, regardless of the seriousness of the crime involved and the fact that a man had lost his life, would lead to the person being labelled a ‘rat’. Gardaí eventually divided the witnesses to events before, during and after the murder into two distinct groups – ‘independent’ and ‘other’.
The ‘independent’ witnesses were classed as normal witnesses to events surrounding the death of Declan Gavin. They gave full and detailed statements with largely accurate descriptions, and were regarded by Gardaí as being without prejudice, malicious intent or fear of intimidation. Most of these people had no previous criminal convictions and were not involved in the feud. Unfortunately, this often meant that because of their nature of abiding by the law, they were often unable to identify the key players involved in the murder.
The ‘other’ witnesses were mostly friends and associates of Declan Gavin or other people who were aware of the identities of those involved in the murder, but for one reason or another did not fully co-operate with Gardaí. Many of these ‘other’ witnesses were regarded as unlikely to give evidence in any future court proceedings. Many of them eventually identified the culprits to Gardaí, but it was usually after they were arrested, or when they were speaking off the record. Often when they spoke to Gardaí, they refused to sign their interview notes – meaning the evidence gathered was not admissible in court and was severely compromised.
Cocaine Wars Page 4