Cocaine Wars

by Mick McCaffrey

  Even if Brian Rattigan did not know that Eddie McCabe was going to be murdered in the fashion that he was, he was the head of his gang and he was blamed on the streets. The general public and even other criminals could not believe the savagery that had been used to kill McCabe. It was a fatal blow to Rattigan’s reputation.

  12

  From Bad to Worse

  AFTER EDDIE McCABE’S murder, Brian Rattigan got a lot of negative publicity on the street. Things then went from bad to worse for Rattigan when he lost yet another trusted associate just weeks later. On 30 December 2006, twenty-four-year-old Trevor Brunton from Broombridge Road in Cabra was spotted with a gun. He was seen by a bouncer in the toilets of a nightclub at the Spawell leisure complex in Templeogue with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun sticking out of the back of his trousers when he was walking into a cubicle. Other bouncers came to the scene. Brunton came out of the cubicle voluntarily and was restrained. A number of bouncers then frogmarched Brunton through the nightclub to hold him until Gardaí arrived. When Brunton attempted to take the gun from his trousers into his hand, a bouncer slapped his wrist causing the weapon to fall to the ground. One of the security men picked up the gun and placed it into a money bag and later gave it to Gardaí. There were eight rounds in the magazine, ready to be fired.

  Brunton was a big man and a keen GAA player, and was well able to handle himself, but was eventually restrained. Two of his friends were also detained but were later released without charge. When Brunton was taken into custody, it was discovered that he was renting an apartment in Castleknock.

  The apartment, at Candlewood on the Castleknock Road, was searched, and thirty bags containing €159,361 worth of heroin and seventy-eight rounds of ammunition for the gun he had in the nightclub were found. Detectives also searched Brunton’s address at Broombridge Road and recovered two silencers and more ammunition. The apartment in Castleknock had been rented with the sole intention of preparing the heroin to sell for the Rattigan gang. Not only was it dangerous, but it was also careless and ridiculous to bring a loaded gun into a crowded nightclub, especially as he didn’t even hide it properly when he went to use the toilet. Gardaí could not believe their luck. Brunton had served himself up on a platter. He had long been a target. He was regarded as being a middle-ranking member of the Rattigan gang. Brunton’s job was to be a ‘minder’ of the product, which was a job with a high degree of trust. Brunton later pleaded guilty to the possession of heroin for sale and supply and possession of the firearm and ammunition.

  Detective Sergeant Joe Molloy told the court that Brunton possibly had the gun in the nightclub for three reasons. He could have brought it as an act of ‘bravado to impress girls’, to give it to somebody else or to simply have it for his own protection. DS Molloy said that Brunton never gave a ‘satisfactory explanation’ about why he brought the gun out with him that night. Sources say that Brunton was acting as a minder for a senior member of the Rattigan gang, who had left the nightclub before the incident, but Brunton has never told the full story.

  Brunton was jailed for eight years for the drugs possession charge and handed a consecutive five-year term for possession of the firearm. The last four years of the sentence were suspended on condition that he keep the peace for four years after his release from prison. Brunton only had one previous conviction for a minor road traffic offence, but a lengthy jail sentence was another blow to Rattigan, who was seeing his gang slowly fall apart.

  Things didn’t get any better in early 2007 with Rattigan receiving another setback when his close friend Karl Kavanagh, whose house he had been in after Declan Gavin’s murder, was caught with a gun. Then Wayne McNally narrowly survived a murder attempt.

  On 13 February, members of the Crime Task Force attached to Crumlin Garda Station, led by Detective Inspector Brian Sutton, received intelligence that Kavanagh was in possession of a firearm in his family home on Cooley Road. A search of the attic of the house, conducted by Sergeant Dave Lynch resulted in a 9mm Smith and Wesson handgun being recovered. Kavanagh immediately took full responsibility for the firearm. He told Gardaí he didn’t know whether or not it was loaded. He said he had taken it into the house two days previously, and his mother did not know that he had it there. He said that he was holding the gun for somebody, but would not name names because he feared for his and his family’s safety. Kavanagh was twenty-four at the time of the incident. He was one of Joey Rattigan’s best friends, and had taken Joey’s murder, which had occurred five years previously, badly. He had amassed six criminal convictions for traffic and public order offences since his friend’s killing. He was not really involved in the feuding and was not a player in the Rattigan gang, but was, nevertheless, close to the extended Rattigan family because his sister was Ritchie Rattigan’s partner. Karl Kavanagh had been with Brian Rattigan before and after the murder of Declan Gavin. He had been arrested in relation to the killing, and told Gardaí that he was afraid his house would be burnt down if he co-operated with them. Gardaí believed that Kavanagh was only holding the gun for somebody as a favour and he pleaded guilty to possession of the gun. Judge Tony Hunt also had sympathy for Kavanagh, and said that he accepted that Kavanagh did not have a serious criminal record and was a ‘small cog in a big wheel’. The judge added that because of his early guilty plea it would be ‘unjust’ to impose the minimum mandatory sentence of five years, although he added that ‘this is not a marker for other firearms cases. This sentence is based on these specific circumstances.’ Detective Garda Gerard Fahy told the court that Kavanagh would not be considered a ‘hard man’, and he would be surprised if he had ever actually fired the gun. Kavanagh was jailed for three years.

  Karl Kavanagh might have been a ‘small cog in a big wheel’, but Wayne McNally was turning into a big, big fish in the Rattigan gang. McNally, along with Anthony Cannon, was now one of the most senior members of the Rattigan crew. Wayne McNally had been with Rattigan in the car in Bluebell in February 2003, when Rattigan shot at the Gardaí. McNally had pleaded guilty to his involvement. While Cannon and McNally were becoming more senior members of the gang, Shay O’Byrne was being actively pursued by the other side. O’Byrne had received several warnings that his life was in danger, and was given advice about his personal security.

  McNally was born on 19 December 1984 and grew up in Drimnagh. He had several different addresses, and seemed to live between them. He lived in Rosemount Court in Kilmainham, Loreto Court in Dublin 8 and Baltinglass in Co. Wicklow. McNally was known as a loose cannon, and petty drug dealers were also terrified of him. He had a casual ambivalence towards violence and was happy to dish out beatings whenever the occasion called for it. The extent of McNally’s violent tendencies was illustrated in a court appearance in July 2004, when he pleaded guilty to assault causing harm to a female motorist and unlawfully seizing her car on 2 January 2003, outside an apartment in Mount Argus in Harold’s Cross. Detective Garda Jonathan Kelly told Dublin Circuit Criminal Court that two men approached a woman as she left an apartment with a friend at around 9.30 p.m. Wayne McNally cut the woman’s throat for absolutely no reason, and then hijacked her car and drove away. The victim was taken to hospital, but fortunately her injuries were minor. Although her physical injuries were not too bad, the woman’s mental injuries were serious and she was left unable to go out at night for fear of falling victim to a similar attack. The judge described the victim as an ‘innocent young woman’ and the incident as ‘serious, inexcusable and unjustified’ before warning McNally that he was lucky that he had not been charged with a more serious offence. While McNally was on bail for the stabbing and hijacking incident, he committed the crime with Brian Rattigan in Bluebell. He was given an eighteen-month sentence for being in the stolen car with Rattigan and Wayne Zambra. He was handed two three-year sentences for the stabbing and theft of the woman’s car, which were to run concurrently – meaning he received a total sentence of just four and a half years. To rub salt into the wounds, the final six months were suspe
nded. The judge said he hoped McNally would use his time in custody to tackle his drug problem. However, he did not serve even close to his full sentence. He was back on the streets in late 2006 – just months before Eddie McCabe was murdered.

  On 20 February 2007 at about 9.00 p.m., McNally was with his girlfriend and a male friend at a house in Gray Square in the Liberties, when there was a knock on the door. McNally was greeted by a lone gunman who shot him at point blank range with a sawn-off shotgun, hitting him in the face and head. McNally managed to run upstairs and barricade himself into a bedroom, while the gunman escaped in a getaway car that was found nearby.

  McNally had been using the address as a ‘safe house’ and knew that his life was in serious danger, having been warned on numerous occasions by DI Gabriel O’Gara and Superintendent Tom Mulligan. Half of his nose was blown off during the attack, and he also had injuries to his legs, arms and shoulders. He was rushed to St James’s Hospital in a serious but stable condition. He later made a full recovery, although he required plastic surgery to fix his nose. Two detectives were placed on twenty-four-hour armed guard outside his hospital ward, so that members of the Thompson gang did not come back to finish the job.

  There was no doubt that the incident was a serious murder attempt, and McNally was lucky to escape with relatively minor injuries. Two well-known members of the Thompson gang were arrested in connection with the shooting but were never charged. Nevertheless, the shooting meant that between his stay in hospital and keeping his head down after he was released, McNally was out of action for several months, just when he was needed most by the Rattigan gang.

  An incident occurred in July 2007, which illustrated just how cheap life had become. In early 2000, a man called Jonathan Dunne lost a consignment of heroin worth €50,000 that belonged to the Thompson gang. Instead of shooting Dunne or making him work to pay the money back, he was told – Godfather-style – that the day would come when a favour would be called in. That day duly arrived and the favour was, predictably, a big one. A twenty-year-old, nicknamed ‘Mad Dog’, who occasionally worked as a driver for Freddie Thompson, was involved in a bitter dispute with a twenty-one-year-old called Ian Kenny, from Monasterboice Road in Crumlin. There was an allegation that Kenny was a Garda informant, and word began to spread around Crumlin that he was a ‘rat’. The row between the pair was becoming increasingly violent, and, on 27 September 2006, shots were fired into the Kenny family home in a drive-by attack. Ian Kenny gave a description of the car to Gardaí. Then three uniformed officers took up duty outside the house to make sure that the gang did not come back for seconds. Ian Kenny was not happy that Sergeant Mark Clarke from Crumlin Garda Station and two of his female colleagues were trying to ensure his safety. So he went outside his house and started giving abuse to the officers for doing their job. Suddenly, the car that had shot up the house earlier returned. Ian Kenny threw a beer bottle he was carrying at the car. The bottle smashed the front passenger window. A sawn-off shotgun appeared from out of the broken window and pointed towards Kenny. Sergeant Clarke realised the danger Kenny was in, and jumped on top of him, pushing him to the ground to safety. However, Sergeant Clarke was struck with the full force of the blast and was hit in the chest and arm. He fell to the ground thinking that he was going to die. Assistance was immediately summoned to the scene. As the brave Garda lay on the concrete, Ian Kenny, who was drunk, leaned over the critically ill officer, who had taken bullets meant for him, and shouted: ‘Die, you bastard, die.’ An unmarked patrol car drove by and Detective Garda Willie Ryan was on the scene in seconds. Ryan manhandled his injured colleague into the back of the car and rushed to St James’s Hospital. Fortunately, Mark Clarke didn’t die and made a full recovery from his injuries, but still has eleven of the shotgun pellets in his body, as the medics could not remove them. He is now back at work, although he has transferred out of the ‘G’ district.

  Three people would later be convicted for their roles in the shooting. Even with the shooting of a member of An Garda Síochána, ‘Mad Dog’ still vowed to make Kenny pay for ‘touting’. He was doing more and more work for Freddie Thompson and his men, and was accepted into the gang. ‘Mad Dog’ explained the history of his row with Ian Kenny and told members of the gang that he wanted to have him shot. They didn’t object and said they knew just the man for the job – Jonathan Dunne. The only problem was that Jonathan Dunne and Ian Kenny were lifelong friends. However, you do not turn down an order from the Thompson gang if you value your legs, and Dunne had no choice but to plan the shooting. Ian Kenny, who was a father of two, was no innocent and was involved in criminality at a low level. He had already served a sentence in Mountjoy in 2005, and had survived a vicious prison beating ordered by his sworn enemy. On 4 July 2007, Jonathan Dunne told Kenny that he was going out to buy a quantity of herbal cannabis in South Dublin with another man and invited his friend to join him. The trio drove to a shopping complex in Stillorgan. Johnny Dunne parked the car and said that he had to get something from the boot. He had hidden a sawn-off shotgun earlier in the day and took it out of the boot. Dunne then walked to the window of his own car and fired at Kenny at point blank range. The first shot struck him in the shoulder and Kenny stared, frozen, not believing that one of his best mates was trying to kill him. Dunne fired again, aiming for the shoulder, but he had no experience of using a gun and hit Kenny in the head. The twenty-two-year-old threw his victim from the car then drove to a nearby wooded area, where he made an unsuccessful attempt to burn the car. Dunne panicked and began running up the Lakelands Road, where he was observed by a passing patrol car from Tallaght Garda Station. He was covered in Ian Kenny’s blood and brain matter. Dunne swiftly put his hands up and admitted that he was responsible for the attempted murder. Gardaí were puzzled about what had happened. It was one of the most botched and amateur murder attempts in a long time. No criminal with an iota of experience uses their own private car to carry out a murder, and certainly doesn’t run away from the scene into the hands of investigators and admit to the crime. Dunne had no previous convictions and wasn’t known to Gardaí. Maybe the fact that he was ordered to kill one of his best friends made him blow the whole job. The pieces of the jigsaw started to come together when Dunne told detectives from Crumlin that he owed a favour to two men ‘who run things’ in the local area. Although he was too scared to name names, it soon became clear that he was talking about Thompson gang members. Gardaí soon learned about the lost drugs and that Dunne had been told that he and his family would be murdered if he didn’t carry out the shooting. Jonathan Dunne told Gardaí that the incident was the ‘most horrible moment of my life’. ‘If I could take it back I would. I am sorry for what was done. Ian was my friend. I was told to put two shots in his head but hadn’t got the bottle. I am not a killer.’ He was charged with the attempted murder and pleaded guilty. He was handed a twelve-year sentence, which the Kenny family called a ‘disgrace’. After he was shot in the head and shoulder, Kenny immediately lost consciousness and never woke up. He was fed through a tube in St Vincent’s Hospital, and had no control over his bodily functions. His family finally took the decision to turn off his life support machine in July 2009, just over two years after he was shot. Because Jonathan Dunne had already been convicted of Kenny’s attempted murder, he could not be re-charged with his killing.