Cocaine Wars

by Mick McCaffrey

  McDowell told Dáil Éireann that ‘a feature of the gun culture which has emerged is the apparent belief on the part of some criminals that they are not bound by or subject to the laws of the land. Operation Anvil is intended to supplement existing operations so as to ensure that lawlessness does not prevail, that the threat which these criminals pose is met sternly and effectively, and, above all, that human life is respected.’ He added that Anvil would be ‘focused, sustained, targeted and relentless’. Commissioner Conroy said that the primary focus of Anvil would be ‘extensive additional overt patrolling and static checkpoints by uniform mobile and foot patrols, supported by armed plain-clothes patrols’. In addition, he said, ‘Intelligence-driven covert operations are also being undertaken, involving Dublin units and national Garda investigative units.’ As well as Anvil, Michael McDowell also announced several proposed amendments to the Criminal Justice Act, including minimum sentences for membership of gangs and for modifying shotguns to make them more lethal. Basically, Anvil resulted in Gardaí pounding the pavements and harassing known criminals. Roadblocks were set up outside the homes of gangsters, and they were followed wherever they went. It was a ‘get in the face of criminals’ operation and would prove to be very successful. The two main areas that Anvil initially targeted were Finglas and Crumlin-Drimnagh. After the Roche murder, the extra Garda patrols were more than welcomed, because the area was incredibly tense in the days and weeks after the slaying.

  It wasn’t just the criminals that were on tenterhooks. Gardaí stopped a BMW car on Sperrin Road in Drimnagh at around 4.40 a.m. four days after the murder. Shane Maloney and three of his friends were in it. In the Gardaí’s opinion, the four men were acting extremely nervously, so the Gardaí called for armed back-up. None was available, so the uniformed officers, fearful for their own safety, let the car leave the scene. It subsequently emerged that the BMW had a false number plate. In the early hours of 16 March, Ritchie Rattigan and Karl Kavanagh were arrested in a car, in possession of swords and baseball bats. There had been an incident earlier in the night when one of their friends had allegedly been assaulted by bouncers at a pub in Tallaght, and Gardaí believed that the men were going to seek revenge. They were released without charge, but it just illustrated how tense things were. On 30 March, a shot was fired into the home of a close associate of Freddie Thompson in Dublin 8. On the same night a unit from the Garda Traffic Corps stopped an Opel Vectra on Kildare Street, close to Dáil Éireann. Darren Geoghegan was driving and Freddie Thompson was the front-seat passenger. When they learned who the men were, they were taken to Sundrive Road Garda Station for a drugs search. Freddie Thompson had been wearing a wig that made him resemble Noel Gallagher from the band Oasis, and he also wore a bulletproof vest. He appeared to be very nervous and agitated. Geoghegan was wearing a stab-proof vest. Geoghegan was charged with a minor road traffic offence, while Thompson was released. The car had been rented from an agency on the Long Mile Road under a false name. It was seized and taken to the Garda compound in Santry. A few days later, gang member Gavin Byrne unsuccessfully tried to claim it. The following day, a squad car from Tallaght Garda Station stopped a Ford Focus being driven by Aidan Gavin. Freddie Thompson’s thirty-five-year-old brother, Ritchie, was a passenger in the front seat. Both were wearing bulletproof vests and both had a set of fresh clothes in the car. The men were arrested, and €5,000 in cash was seized, although they were later released without charge.

  On 2 April 2005, three Gardaí stopped Joey Redmond’s girlfriend’s Volkswagen Bora in Crumlin, which was being driven by Joey Redmond. He was wearing a bulletproof vest and was carrying a concealed Bowie knife. The vehicle was seized and taken to a pound in Parkgate Street. At the same time, Mrs Frazer, the mother of Michael Frazer, who was a former associate of Thompson, went to Sundrive Road Garda Station and alleged that Joey Redmond had threatened her daughter. She said that Joey Redmond had been driving a Volkswagen, and the incident happened just minutes before Joey Redmond was stopped and searched by Gardaí. While Mrs Frazer was making a complaint in the station, Redmond’s girlfriend arrived demanding the return of her car. A row ensued, and Gardaí had to separate both parties. Outside the station, Joey Redmond made threats to Mrs Frazer in the presence of Gardaí. Detective Superintendent Denis Donegan and Detective Inspector Brian Sutton had adopted a carrot and stick approach in dealing with the feud. On one hand the parents of gang members, local clergy and representatives of both factions regularly met to negotiate peace deals and see if they could find a solution to the feud that was now more entrenched than ever. Donegan and Sutton gave an undertaking that Gardaí would fully support any peace efforts, but warned the criminals that if they were caught engaging in law-breaking they would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The two senior officers also made it clear that the tit-for-tat killings had to stop. Running parallel with this peace-brokering effort were extensive anti-gang operations by members of Operation Anvil, the Special Detective Unit and local Gardaí, which involved targeted, intelligence-led operations, dozens of searches and proactive ‘in your face’ policing. The officer in charge of the Dublin Metropolitan Region, Assistant Commissioner Al McHugh, personally approved and supported the type of policing being implemented on the streets of Crumlin and Drimnagh. The policy of supporting peace brokering, while having zero tolerance of crime, was thought up by Brian Sutton, who was one of the few trained negotiators in An Garda Síochána. His negotiating skills would be used on several occasions in the feud over the next few years.

  On 14 April, twenty-six-year-old drug dealer Terry Dunleavy arrived at the Croke Villas flats complex in Ballybough, at around 10.00 p.m. He parked his white Volvo and made his way up the stairwell towards his girlfriend’s flat. When he got up the first few stairs, a gunman confronted him and fired five shots from a pistol, with a bullet striking him in the chest. Dunleavy desperately tried to escape up the stairwell, but he was pursued and shot again. He fell to the ground as he reached the top. As he lay helpless, the assassin fired three more shots at his head, killing him instantly. The gunman escaped on a motorbike that was driven by an accomplice. When Gardaí searched Dunleavy’s car, it was found to contain several blocks of cannabis, worth close to €110,000, and detectives immediately suspected that Dunleavy had been set up by other criminals. The motorbike was discovered in the hours after the murder. It was burnt out at nearby Whitworth Road. The murder investigation was led by detectives from Fitzgibbon Street Garda Station, under the supervision of Detective Inspector Christy Mangan. Mangan had been involved in the arrest of Declan Gavin at Ballymount Cross in August 1999. He was the founding sergeant in charge of the Drugs Unit at Sundrive Road and still had a good knowledge of the feud and the main players. He had since been promoted and transferred to the Dublin Metropolitan North-Central Region.

  Terry Dunleavy took pride in the fact that he was regarded as a hard man. He was extremely volatile and inflicted needless violence on hopeless drug addicts if they were late paying him. His fellow criminals regarded him with disdain. He had frequent disputes over drugs and had built up a lot of enemies. Dunleavy sold cannabis and cocaine in and around the north inner city, but had recently expanded his operation and was now dealing cocaine in several popular nightclubs and bars in the trendy Temple Bar area. He was starting to make a serious amount of money, but was stepping on a lot of toes while he was doing it. A native of Marino, but with an address at Lower Drumcondra Road, Dunleavy had amassed a significant number of criminal convictions for armed robbery and arson, after he burnt down a secondary school. In 2002, Dunleavy went on trial for shooting a man in Fairview Park in 1998, only for the trial to collapse because a newspaper had printed a photograph of him being led back to a prison van in handcuffs after appearing in court. Dunleavy had used firearms on three separate occasions in the weeks before his murder to threaten separate rival drug dealers. He was fond of guns and once threatened a neighbour with a pistol after breaking into his home. It was clear that whoe
ver killed Dunleavy had probably been watching him for some time and was aware that he often went to visit his girlfriend in the evenings. The initial line of inquiry that Gardaí in the investigation took was that Dunleavy had been murdered by a well-known criminal from the north inner city over a long-running feud between himself and Dunleavy. However, as the investigation progressed, Gardaí ascertained that the getaway bike used in the murder had been owned by Albert Doyle. Doyle, a twenty-one-year-old from Errigal Road in Drimnagh, was Freddie Thompson’s first cousin. Doyle was interviewed by Gardaí and said that he had owned the bike up to approximately three weeks prior to the shooting. Detectives then received intelligence that Doyle had handed the bike over to his cousin as part payment for an outstanding debt. This new information led Gardaí to look at Freddie Thompson’s gang to see if it might have been responsible. It didn’t take much digging before Gardaí discovered that the Thompson gang had indeed been behind Dunleavy’s murder. Dunleavy had been supplied with his cannabis by the Thompson gang and owed them €26,000 for a consignment that had been seized just five weeks before his murder. Dunleavy had paid just €14,000 up front for the €40,000 worth of drugs, and had been given the rest on credit. Paddy Doyle went to see Dunleavy on a number of occasions, but he refused to pay up. He made the fatal mistake of ‘slagging off ‘ Doyle and ‘Fat’ Freddie, and told them that they would not be getting a cent of the cash, and that he would shoot them if he saw Doyle near Ballybough again. Paddy Doyle gave Dunleavy one more chance to pay the cash he owed, and when he refused, Doyle told him that there would be serious consequences. Dunleavy’s rise up the drug-dealing ladder had obviously affected his brain, because threatening an enforcer from one of the most feared gangs in the country is bound to have a negative effect on your health.

  Gardaí have not solved the Dunleavy murder, but Paddy Doyle is certainly high up on the list of suspects. It is not known who drove the motorbike, and the case remains open. Sources say that Dunleavy was killed to send a message to other criminals being supplied with drugs by the Thompson gang that if you did not pay your bills, you would be shot without mercy. The fact that Dunleavy had been foolish enough to threaten Doyle had sealed his fate. The murder was the first time that the feud had left a person dead who was not directly connected to Crumlin or Drimnagh. It would not be the last time that somebody indirectly involved would be murdered though. The Dunleavy murder illustrates how the Thompson gang had become much bigger and had started to act as a wholesaler to middle-sized dealers across Dublin. With their increased size and influence, they were also becoming increasingly violent and ruthless. John Roche and Terry Dunleavy were murdered within little over a month of each other. The feud had now become so big that its tentacles had spread far and wide. It was becoming harder and harder for Gardaí to determine what was feud-related and what was not, especially because there were now so many personalities involved in doing business with both the Rattigan and Thompson gangs.

  Although Gardaí didn’t find out about the Thompson link to the Dunleavy murder until months after it happened, on the streets of Crumlin and Drimnagh it was well known, and it only added to the tension and the paranoia of some of the key players.

  On 2 May 2005 at around 4.00 p.m., Eddie Redmond’s wife contacted Detective Sergeant John Walsh at Sundrive Road Garda Station. She told him she was driving around Crumlin and her car was being followed by a blue Ford Mondeo. She said she was with her husband. She could see three men in the Mondeo, and felt that she and her husband were being targeted. John Walsh and Detective Garda Paul Lynch rushed to the area in an unmarked car and spotted the Mondeo on Herberton Road in Rialto. A twenty-year-old from Clanbrassil Street was driving the car. Walsh and Lynch immediately spotted Freddie Thompson in the front seat, even though he was wearing his Noel Gallagher wig and a large pair of sunglasses. As the officers approached the vehicle, Thompson took out the SIM card from his mobile phone and proceeded to swallow it. Paddy Doyle was sitting in the back seat. The passengers and car were searched. A Bord Na Móna firepack, gloves, a balaclava and a leather belt for shotgun ammunition were found in the boot. The trio were arrested and taken to Sundrive Road, but were released without charge. Just half an hour later at 7.15 p.m., the boyfriend of one of Brian Rattigan’s cousins received a severe beating from three men at Grand Canal Lane in Dublin 8. The injured party described one of his assailants as having worn a black curly wig, but he refused to make a statement of complaint, so there was little that Gardaí could do, despite the fact they believed that ‘Fat’ Freddie had been responsible.

  Freddie Thompson swallowing a mobile phone SIM card before Gardaí approached him might sound like extreme action, but it was not all that uncommon. Members of the feuding gangs change mobile phone numbers every two to three days. They always buy ready-to-go phones, so they do not have to register the number. A criminal buys a SIM card, uses the €10 free call credit that comes with it and then throws it away when the credit runs out. Gardaí refer to these as ‘wash-and-go’ phones. The feuding criminals know that mobile phone technology is one of the few ways that they can be caught. Gardaí can now triangulate phone signals, which means that they are able to tell, almost to the exact point, where a caller was when he used his phone. It is done by analysing the numbers called from individual mobile phone cell sites. It was this technology that helped to convict Joe O’Reilly for the murder of his wife, Rachel. It proved that he was lying when he said he was working at a bus depot in the centre of Dublin. Joe O’Reilly’s mobile phone signal had bounced off a mobile phone mast near his home in Naul, Co. Dublin, where Rachel was murdered in October 2004, so investigators were able to prove that he had lied. These developments hadn’t gone unnoticed by criminals, so there were rules that bill-pay mobile phones could never be bought and that phone numbers had to be ‘rinsed’ every few days, so that Gardaí would never get the numbers. Criminals even went as far as to travel to the UK, buy dozens of ready-to-go SIMs, load them with credit and come back to Dublin with them because they could not be traced by Gardaí.

  On 13 June, an article written by this author appeared in the Evening Herald newspaper, reporting that the two rival gangs had declared a truce. Senior Gardaí had been liaising with the families – particularly the mothers – of many of those involved in the feud. Local clergymen were also involved. Tentative agreement had been reached the previous month that hostilities should cease, at least temporarily, but Gardaí were not hopeful that the entente cordiale would last.

  On 15 July, an incident took place, which, although feud-related, did not represent a breach of the ceasefire – merely a settling of old scores. Patrick Fogarty was pulled out of his car outside a takeaway at Ravensdale Park in Kimmage, and given a hiding. The twenty-five-year-old had been in the van that had dropped Joey Rattigan off at his house seconds before he was murdered in July 2002. There was widespread suspicion that Fogarty had been involved with Paul Warren in setting Rattigan up to be killed. Warren had been murdered for his perceived role in the slaying, so it was inevitable that Fogarty would be eventually made to pay for the untrue innuendo that he was also involved. The matter was initially reported to Garda James McGeough at Crumlin Garda Station as a random assault. However, on the same night as the assault, Detective Inspector Brian Sutton spoke to Patrick Fogarty’s mother who informed him that she believed the incident was connected with the feud. DS John Walsh went to meet with Mrs Fogarty the following day. Mrs Fogarty told him that six or seven youths came upon Fogarty while he was sitting in his car waiting for his girlfriend, who was inside the takeaway getting chips. She said that her son had been economical with the truth, and that it was not a group of youths who attacked him but men in their late teens and early twenties. While Paddy Fogarty was being assaulted, one of the group told him that the beating was for setting Joey Rattigan up and that worse would follow. The group called Fogarty a ‘rat’ and a ‘scumbag’. He received extensive injuries to his face, arms, legs and body, and lost a large amount of blood
as a result. However, Fogarty refused to make a statement to Gardaí.

  On 22 July at around 10.00 p.m., five shots were discharged into a house at Grand Canal Bank in Dublin 8, narrowly missing the occupants. At midnight, a person involved on the Rattigan side of the feud contacted a detective and told him that the occupant of the house was a relative of Brian Rattigan. The relative was a paraplegic and was confined to a wheelchair. The informant also stated that Eddie Redmond had been contacted that day and warned to keep his head down, because Freddie Thompson had hired two assassins from Limerick to carry out an attack on an unknown member of the Rattigan mob. The informant went on to say that when Rattigan heard that the home of his disabled relative had been shot up, he had put out a €30,000 contract for anyone to carry out a revenge attack on Freddie Thompson, Aidan Gavin or any of their close associates. The truce had lasted just under two months, but it seems that Freddie Thompson’s gang was just taking advantage of the lull to plan to wipe out members of Rattigan’s gang. Rattigan, being very devoted to his family, was always likely to go ballistic if any of his relations were singled out. Around the same time, Garda Crime and Security issued a circular advising that intelligence had been received from prison that Brian Rattigan had told a gang member to plan to wait until at least five members of the Thompson gang were present in the one location before attacking them with grenades, wiping them all out at the same time. This tactic of mass murder had previously been used by the mafia, and the fact that he even contemplated this revealed a lot. The gloves were now off and the revenge attacks were bound to be vicious.