Cocaine Wars

by Mick McCaffrey

  Noel Roche had convictions for assault, the illegal possession of a firearm and road traffic offences, and had been disqualified from driving for four years on 6 December 2001. His brother John had been dead for less than eight months. He had not avenged his killing and that was probably one of his priorities. Although he was distraught when his brother was murdered, Roche realised that they were involved in a war and there were bound to be casualties, so he channelled his grief into getting even. It had been a good few days. Roche was in good spirits and was looking forward to his night out; he was going to see Phil Collins in concert at the Point Depot. Although the soulful Collins might seem like a strange choice of musician for a Dublin gangster to be a fan of, detectives spotted over a dozen serious and well-known criminals from across the city going to see Collins perform that night.

  According to Gardaí, for some reason there are two songs that really resonate with criminals in Dublin. These songs are a staple of every wedding, twenty-first birthday and wake attended by well-known and petty criminals. The first is ‘Eye of the Tiger’ by Survivor, which was the theme tune for the Rocky films. A high percentage of gangland criminals are serious boxing fans and would always attend championship boxing matches at the Point. Freddie Thompson is a massive boxing fan and regularly travelled as far as Las Vegas to take in the fights of Ricky Hatton and Joe Calzaghe. When Bernard Dunne fights at the Point, or the O2 arena, as the latter is now known, there are upwards of fifteen armed and undercover Gardaí mingling among the crowd. Literally every criminal across Dublin attends these high-adrenaline events, and this obviously could result in bloodshed if the wrong people ran into each other. When ‘Eye of the Tiger’ is played at Bernard Dunne fights, the crowd explodes with delight. The tune is a testosterone-fuelled number and brings out the best – or the worst – in macho men who remember watching Rocky and Apollo Creed square off against each other in the film when they were kids. Whatever the reason for its popularity, ‘Eye of the Tiger’ is a gangster’s favourite. It can only be matched in popularity by one song – Phil Collins’ ‘In the Air Tonight’. ‘In the Air Tonight’ is a powerful song that tells the story of the singer witnessing an unspecified act, which leads to a death. Collins wrote the song while he was going through a divorce, and several urban myths have developed. Again, it is hard to tell why the song resonates with criminals, but there is an undercurrent of anger throughout, and when there is an explosion of drums going into the final verse, it never fails to bring the criminals to their feet to sing along. Maybe it is the fact that the singer has the power of life over death in the song, which criminals can relate to, or more likely, they just like the beat of the drums. It could also be because Phil Collins starred in the film Buster, about the Great Train Robbery. He played a petty criminal from the East End. It is hard to imagine that Irish gangland criminals would not only listen to his music, but actually go to his concerts.

  Noel Roche had arranged to go to the concert with his girlfriend and aunt and uncle. Eddie Rice drove Roche to the gig. Rice was thirty-two and hailed from Kilworth Road in Drimnagh. Rice was not a central member of the gang, but was a trusted lieutenant who was seen as very loyal to Rattigan, and especially to Noel Roche. He had a handful of convictions for relatively minor offences. His most serious brush with the law had come in October 1994, when he was arrested and later jailed for two years after admitting to pointing a rifle at and threatening two Gardaí who were pursuing him.

  Part of Eddie Rice’s job was to run errands for Noel Roche, and to generally make sure that he had everything he needed. While Roche enjoyed watching Phil Collins, Rice would have stood guard, making sure that everything was OK and that his boss had everything that he wanted. Roche was a lazy individual who was happy to have somebody running around and doing menial jobs for him and acting as his chauffeur. If you are making the money that Roche was each week, it is probably easy to let others do the mundane tasks that most people have to do for themselves. At around 9.30 p.m., Roche and his girlfriend went out to the lobby bar for a drink. While he was there, either he or Eddie Rice saw somebody of whom they were suspicious. It is not known whether that person was a rival gang member or an associate of the Thompson gang, but Roche was concerned enough to leave the concert early for his own safety. He sent his girlfriend to tell his aunt and uncle that he had to head off. He dispatched Eddie Rice to the car park to get the car and pull up out the front, so he could safely leave the area. There is no evidence that Roche feared his life was in danger, but perhaps he was just being cautious and didn’t want to put himself in a position where he could be confronted by one of ‘Fat’ Freddie’s men while he was so far from home. A man was waiting outside the Point in his car to collect his parents and noticed a Fiat Punto in front of his car. The man in the front seat was fairly large. There was another person wearing a hoodie and smoking a cigarette going back and forth from the pavement to the Punto. Suddenly a Ford Mondeo pulled up and a man jumped into the vehicle and it took off at high speed in the direction of Clontarf. The man who jumped into the car was described as being about 5 ft 9" with black hair and in his thirties. He was on his mobile phone when he got into the car. The Fiat Punto that had been parked in front of the man’s car did a U-turn and took off after the Mondeo. He didn’t realise it at the time but he had seen Noel Roche leaving the Point, and whoever was in the Punto was probably the person that had seen him at the concert and was now following him.

  Roche and Rice were unaware that they had been seen early in the night and were probably under surveillance while they were at the concert. Gardaí do not know who was in the Fiat Punto outside, but it is known that the person made a phone call to Paddy Doyle. He came out of his hiding place after the double murder two days before, and psyched himself up, ready to inflict yet another casualty on the Rattigan gang. He summoned his driver, twenty-one-year-old Craig White from O’Devaney Gardens in Dublin 7. White was a driver for the Thompson gang and was quite low in the gang’s hierarchy, but he was eager to learn the tricks of the criminal trade and was happy to do anything to please the gang leaders. He was driving a beige Peugeot 307 that had been stolen from outside a house in Blessington, Co. Wicklow, five weeks previously.

  Eddie Rice drove Roche and his girlfriend back across North Dublin to her apartment near Coolock. After dropping her off, Roche told Rice to make his way down the Clontarf Road towards town, and they would head into Temple Bar for a few pints. They were not being followed and were happy that they had left the Phil Collins concert without attracting any attention from the rival gang.

  At around 10.25 p.m., a Peugeot 307 began to rev up behind Rice’s Mondeo, attempting to ram it off the road. It was not their lucky night. After getting the call and picking Paddy Doyle up, Craig White spent half an hour or so driving around to see if he could spot the Mondeo. The Thompson gang knew that Noel Roche had an offside apartment in Coolock, and headed in that direction to see if he had gone back to stay there. It was just sheer luck that they managed to spot Noel Roche on the Clontarf Road. Even though it was late and there were not that many cars on the road, trying to pick out one car in a massive area of North Dublin was akin to finding a needle in a haystack, but Doyle and White were lucky. The Clontarf Road is one of the busiest arteries that lead into Dublin city centre, with thousands of cars using it each morning. It is unclear if Roche knew that Paddy Doyle was in the front of the Peugeot with a gun, but he would have known that he was in serious danger, because he was not armed and was in an old car, and Eddie Rice wasn’t turning out to be much of a getaway driver.

  Rice desperately tried to get his battered Mondeo away from Doyle and White, but he was no match as a driver compared to White, who would not give up and refused to be shaken off. As Roche and Rice were approaching The Yacht pub, White managed to swerve across their path, so that Paddy Doyle and Noel Roche were side by side in the middle of the road.

  Doyle whipped out a 9mm Glock and fired four shots in quick succession. His aim was accurate, and
Roche was hit three times in the head, dying instantly. Eddie Rice slammed on the brake as soon as the shooting started. He wasn’t hit. He looked to his left and saw that his friend was dead and covered in blood. Although Rice was naturally shocked and covered in Noel Roche’s blood, he fled his car. He began knocking on doors, trying to wake householders. Several people answered their doors in their nightclothes, only to quickly shut them when they saw a man covered in blood screaming frantically at them. Rice managed to make it into a back garden and escaped.

  After the shooting, White drove the Peugeot to Furry Park in Killester, which was less than a mile away. This was a similar tactic to that used in the double murder carried out two days previously. Burning the car close to the scene of the crime is seen as a must, because the last thing that gang members want to happen is that they speed away from the murder and are passed by Gardaí on their way to investigate. It is too dangerous and leads to the possibility of being stopped, which would definitely result in the person being convicted, because they wouldn’t have the chance to burn out the getaway car, dispose of their clothes or get rid of the murder weapon. Destroying the car and the all-important DNA evidence immediately and within the vicinity of the crime is therefore vital to ensuring that there is nothing to link you to the incident.

  However, White made a ridiculous error: in his panic to escape, he actually forgot to torch the car. This was despite the fact that he had brought a can of petrol for that very purpose. This would later come back to haunt him. White and Doyle ran down Furry Park Road and got into another waiting car, which was driven by an unknown third accomplice. They were seen by a resident running away, but were gone by the time Gardaí arrived.

  At around 10.30 p.m., Gardaí received a call to say that shots had been fired. Several local residents had heard a number of loud bangs and had assumed that fireworks were being let off. Clontarf is a quiet, affluent area, and the last thing people expected was a gangland slaying to be taking place on their doorstep.

  Gardaí rushed the green Ford Mondeo abandoned in the middle of the road. The driver’s door of the vehicle was wide open, the lights were on and the key was in the ignition, but the engine was not running. There was no sign of the driver. Garda Colm Mac Donnacha looked through the driver’s window and saw a male slumped backwards on the front passenger seat. It was Noel Roche, covered in blood. It was obvious that he had been shot several times in the head, and his body was lifeless. Garda Colm Mac Donnacha noticed four bullet holes in the passenger window. He moved around to the passenger side and spotted four 9 mm bullet casings lying on the ground. Gardaí immediately put out a message across the city for all units to be on the lookout for a man who was on the loose and was potentially injured and armed and dangerous. Armed detectives and members of the Emergency Response Unit (ERU) flooded into Clontarf and began a sweep of the housing estates in and around the murder scene, searching for the car’s driver. Garda dogs, specially trained to sniff out even the smallest drop of blood, and their handlers combed through gardens. Gardaí knew that the driver was injured because they had seen a trail of blood, but they did not know the extent of the mystery man’s wounds.

  Some officers carried bulletproof shields in case the man was armed and attempted to fire at them if he was confused and thought that they were the hit man coming after him. A check on the owner of the Ford Mondeo told detectives that the driver was probably Edward Rice, who was born in August 1973 and had a criminal record. Gardaí in Clontarf would not have known Roche or the players in the Crumlin-Drimnagh feud, but as the car was associated and linked to Rice, Crumlin Gardaí were summoned. They soon indentified the deceased man in the Mondeo as Noel Roche. They were also able to tell investigators at Clontarf that Eddie worked as a driver and general messenger for Noel Roche, so at least Gardaí knew who they were looking for.

  The ERU immediately flooded the streets of Dublin, and every Garda was on red alert to look out for Rice, because it was feared that because he was a potential witness, he might be the rival gang’s next target. It seemed like he had vanished into thin air. Gardaí didn’t know whether he had been kidnapped by the shooters or had been fatally wounded and was lying dead in a hedge somewhere. The Garda helicopter spent the night searching for Rice from the air but without success.

  A woman from Furry Park Road went to the front of her house at around 10.30 p.m. and heard a car speeding past. It pulled up across the road from her, and two men who looked to be in their early twenties jumped out and ran away. She took the car registration details and immediately phoned the Gardaí.

  When Gardaí arrived at the scene, they were amazed to find that the getaway car was still intact. A forensic examination of the vehicle recovered a brown paper bag in the rear driver’s side of the car, which contained a balaclava, a Glock 9mm pistol, a tea towel and gloves. A container of petrol was also found in the footwell of the abandoned car. A further search of the area along Furry Park Road unearthed two gloves, which were believed to be discarded by the people that had murdered Roche. Fibres from the Peugeot were later found to match fibres on the discarded gloves, while the four bullet casings found on the road beside the Mondeo were shown to have been fired from the Glock that was found in the Peugeot. It was a veritable treasure trove of forensic evidence and a Garda detective’s dream scenario. The contrast to the scarcity of evidence left in Firhouse two days previously couldn’t have been stronger.

  Superintendent Nicky Connelly from Raheny Garda Station and Detective Superintendent Mick Byrne from Santry Garda Station led the investigation into the Roche murder. Detective Inspector Angela Willis also played a key role in the probe. Connelly and Byrne and their team would not have been familiar with the Crumlin-Drimnagh feud, but soon brought themselves up to speed with the help of Detective Sergeant John Walsh and one or two other detectives from Crumlin.

  Although there were no actual eyewitnesses to the murder, a tour bus full of Americans did pass by the scene just seconds after the incident, and a tourist filmed the immediate aftermath of the murder on a camcorder. The footage was handed over to Gardaí. It showed the stolen Peugeot doing a U-turn after the shooting took place and speeding off in the direction of Clontarf, breaking a red light.

  The forensic evidence found in the Peugeot was crucial. Gardaí later applied for warrants to search the homes of Craig White and his girlfriend, on suspicion of the unlawful possession of a firearm. While he was in custody, White refused to co-operate or say anything. Gardaí had information that Paddy Doyle was the gunman and offered to place White in the Witness Protection Programme, if he co-operated. He didn’t take them up on the offer. Gardaí took White’s fingerprints and DNA while he was detained, and were confident that they could match it against the items that were found in the stolen Peugeot and that charges would then follow.

  Noel Roche’s murder meant that his mother, Caroline, and father, Noel Snr, had lost two of their sons in just eight months. Noel and John Roche knew that their central involvement in the feud could result in them both being killed at some point, but they could hardly have imagined that they would both be murdered in the space of just a few months. Caroline Roche is a decent woman who was central to the earlier efforts to broker a truce in the feud with Pauline Gavin, Declan’s mother. She knew that her sons were no angels and she also knew the intricacies of the feud. When she arrived at the scene of Noel’s murder and saw him lying dead in the car, she immediately told Gardaí that Paddy Doyle was responsible.

  With three murders in less than three days, in two middle-class areas, it was obvious that there would be severe political fallout and serious pressure on the Gardaí to make progress in the two cases. Michael McDowell’s claims after the double murder, two days before, that the key members were under surveillance, were shown to have been a bit wide of the mark. There was little doubt that there would be reprisals from the Rattigan side. Noel Roche’s murder was the eighth feud killing, and it was a matter of when, not if, the ninth victim would die. In the for
ty-eight hours after Noel Roche’s murder, Gardaí carried out two dozen searches on properties around Crumlin and Drimnagh, but gathered nothing of note. It was mainly a political exercise to show that they were doing all they could to prevent bloodshed. CAB was also called in to uncover where the two gangs kept their drugs cash, in a bid to hit the two outfits where it really hurts – their pockets.

  A day and a half after witnessing Noel Roche’s murder, Eddie Rice walked into Raheny Garda Station with his solicitor. He was arrested and questioned for almost eleven hours, but refused to co-operate or offer any information that would help Gardaí in tracking down his boss’s killer. He said that he didn’t see who was responsible for the murder and that when he heard shots being fired, he just jumped out of his car and ran for his life. Rice was also offered a place on the Witness Protection Programme but politely declined. He did not want to spend the rest of his life with a new identity, hiding out in some far corner of the world. Rice was released without charge. His silence and loyalty seemed to earn him the respect of the Rattigan gang.

  After being fingered for carrying out the three murders in less than thirty-six hours, Paddy Doyle knew he was the most wanted criminal in Ireland, both by the Gardaí, and worse still, the Rattigan crew. Roche and Rattigan had been very friendly all their lives. Brian Rattigan went absolutely berserk when Roche was murdered. A bounty of €60,000 was placed on Doyle’s head. For the next few weeks, Doyle travelled around the city and out of the country with his head down and in heavy disguise – often going to such extreme lengths as to dress as a woman. He seldom stayed at the same address for more than two consecutive nights. About a week after the Clontarf Road murder, Doyle went into Crumlin Garda Station and had a meeting with a senior detective. He said that he knew he was in the feud up to his neck and wanted a way out. The detective told him to admit to carrying out a crime, and he would see what could be arranged with the DPP’s office. Doyle just looked at him and laughed, and said he would pass and take his chances. He did offer an insight into the way he was thinking, when he said that he thought that Freddie Thompson was a Garda informant and that he did not trust him. He always suspected the worst of people and trusted nobody but himself. When the gangs got so big and began to make so much money, the friendships were replaced by business partnerships. Friendships seemed to be fickle and money was the motivator. That Doyle would have been able to get into the back of a car with two men he considered to be friends and blow both their brains out showed this clearly. Paddy Doyle despised the Gardaí, so the fact that he was even talking to them showed just how desperate he had become. Several senior detectives said they had more time for Doyle than any other gang member, and said he had a way about him that wasn’t typical of most of the feuding criminals. He was more genuine, more polite and unlike many involved in the feud. He dressed well, looked well, looked after his two kids, and for want of a better phrase, had a way about him, some might go as far as to say he had a little bit of class. However, the fact remains that he was good at what he did and was a very violent man who would shoot dead anyone who got in his way, without a moment’s thought and without a shred of guilt. Several Gardaí said they were always struck by Doyle’s vacant stare; he looked you in the eye, but his gaze penetrated you like you weren’t even in the room.