by John Mooney
The stocky little man made an impression on Dunne. They chatted and had a drink. Before he left, Gilligan asked for his telephone number. A few weeks later, in early November, Dunne was working in the Sea Bridge offices when his mobile telephone rang. It was Gilligan. He asked if he they could meet. Dunne, out of politeness, agreed and asked him when and where.
I’m sitting outside your office,’ said Gilligan.
Dunne looked out the office window. There he saw Gilligan sitting with a portly man in a green Nissan Primera. It was Traynor. Dunne walked out and sat in the car. Gilligan wasted no time and came straight to the point.
‘He asked about importing goods from the UK and Holland. Sea Bridge did not ship goods ourselves from Amsterdam, so I gave him the name of three agents in Holland,’ Dunne later recalled.
The gangster, speaking with authority, put the following proposal to him. If he agreed to transport boxes of ‘cigarettes’ from Holland and deliver them to Dublin, he would be paid handsomely—IR£1,000 hard cash for each consignment. Dunne readily agreed and explained that he would have to pay groupage fees of IR£300-IR£400 out of the cash but was more than happy. He would make IR£600 profit per consignment.
[1] Evidence presented to the Special Criminal Court in the trial of John Gilligan.
Chapter 7
Easy Money
‘You think I’m big. He’s fucking huge.’
John Traynor Talking to Veronica Guerin about Gilligan
The first shipment of cannabis arrived in April 1994. It was 75 kilos of top-grade cannabis resin. Rahman’s gang had carefully packed the drugs into two wooden boxes, which were then delivered to one of the freight companies Dunne had advised the gangsters to deal with. Gilligan relayed the time of arrival to Dunne, who drove down to the docks in his Hiace van and collected the crates. From here, he drove straight to the Ambassador Hotel in Kildare town. When he was 30 minutes away from the rendezvous point, he called Gilligan. ‘I never gave it a thought, it was pure greed,’ Dunne would later say.[1]
When he arrived, Gilligan and Traynor were waiting, parked on a slip road. Another car was parked nearby; Charlie Bowden, one of Mitchell’s runners, drove it. Meehan had ordered him to collect the drugs. Gilligan and Traynor had no intentions of handling the load themselves. Gilligan drove into the hotel car park and as his car passed Dunne’s van, he rolled down the window and said Bowden would make the collection. Gilligan’s car, which was chauffeured by one of his runners, drove out as Bowden drove in. ‘John Dunne is up there waiting for you.’
Gilligan said nothing else. Bowden pulled up alongside Dunne’s van and helped him unload the crates.
The conspiracy went smoothly. Bowden drove back to Dublin in less than an hour. He wasn’t stopped by any gardaí. Meehan had taken the necessary precautions to make sure he didn’t arouse any suspicions. ‘They bought a car for me. I registered it in a bogus name because I was banned for drunken driving,’ he said. Even if his car had been seen by a police patrol it would have meant nothing.
Bowden delivered the drugs to a warehouse at Emmett Road in Inchicore, which he rented under a bogus name. The two boxes were made out of plywood and were rectangular in shape with metal stripping around the edges. ‘Inside there would be strips of Styrofoam around the sides and on top. The cannabis was packed in 9oz bars sealed in plastic wrapping,’ said Bowden. Rahman sprayed the bottom of the crates with hardening foam, which prevented the valuable contents from being damaged. The foam also concealed the smell should the crates be checked by sniffer dogs. There were about twenty bars of hashish in all.
And so Gilligan’s career as a drug trafficker par excellence began. For the first time since his release from prison, he was operating in the premier league, working between the INLA, Traynor and Meehan’s gang. It was an unholy alliance, held together by the lure of cash. It was the perfect crime. He bought the cannabis at a reasonable price—IR£1,200 a kilo. He sold it for IR£2,000. Meehan in turn sold it for IR£2,300 to IR£2,400. At no time was Gilligan at risk of arrest because he never even saw the drugs.
In the meantime, the bank-draft scam was still running—but not as planned. Bolger was in over his head with the INLA. He was telling people that he was a tough guy; he felt capable of taking anyone on. He couldn’t see that the INLA gang were mere criminals masquerading as militant republicans.
Gilligan was acutely aware of this danger, but Bolger seemed oblivious to the threat. If he’d handed out business cards they would have read ‘John Bolger, financial consultant to the INLA.’ He drank beer in pubs with them and socialised with them as if he’d known them for years.
‘Bolger thought he was running the INLA. He was telling us what to do, who was boss. He was a fucking eejit. Gilligan kept out of it. All he wanted was the money, he was happy to allow Bolger to do the dirty work,’ said one of the INLA gang.
Whether he knew it or not, Bolger was dealing with highly dangerous men. While Gilligan had an uncanny talent for knowing how far he could push people, Bolger did not possess such skills. His biggest mistake was his failure to realise that he was not an essential player in the fraud. Gilligan was the source of the drafts, the INLA laundered them; Bolger was just a middleman. He was disposable.
Perhaps he should have taken a leaf out of Gilligan’s book—he didn’t. But Bolger actually came to rely on the INLA for protection, albeit because he was trying to protect a young girl. The girl, a 14-year-old, had been raped by her own father, one of Martin Cahill’s associates. Bolger had offered to protect her after she agreed to testify against her father, much to the protestation of Cahill. Bolger came under serious pressure from Cahill for allowing what the General described as a ‘tout’ to live under his protection.
Cahill’s refusal to stop threatening the rape victim resulted in a stand-off between Cahill and Bolger, with the latter calling on the INLA to provide protection. Gilligan took Bolger’s side.
The atmosphere caused by the dispute raised the temperature around Bolger considerably. This rubbed off on Gilligan who believed the INLA would fight his battles. He too came to threaten adversaries without thinking twice. He knew that if anyone was to take him on, he had the manpower and weapons to dispose of his enemy. In this respect, power went straight to Gilligan’s head. He became a megalomaniac, threatening people who crossed him for the slightest reasons. Bolger developed a similar attitude.
‘They were running the INLA in Dublin. It was unreal. Here were Gilligan and Bolger telling us what to do. And [names INLA officer commanding] was telling us to do what they said,’ recalled a source.
Besides taking the INLA for granted, Gilligan correctly saw his conspirators as being less clever than him, but what he failed to recognise was their volatility. The INLA chief’s continuing support for Gilligan, who was putting thousands of pounds his way, provoked jealousy. Characteristically for the maverick republicans, one side said enough was enough, and Bolger lost his life.
At 2 a.m. on 22 July 1994, Bolger was shot at point-blank range with a military assault rifle outside the Glimmerman pub on Dublin’s Clanbrassil Street. Bolger had tried to swindle two INLA activists out of cash earned from the fraud. The police believe the INLA set out to rough Bolger up but went too far and shot him dead. The row had been brewing for some time.
Bolger’s widow, Jean, later recalled: ‘Before his death, John was receiving death threats and warnings from people whom he met on the street. There were so many threats made against John that we both started to take them for granted. In some ways they didn’t frighten us because we got used to them.’
Gilligan was enraged at Bolger’s murder. Geraldine and Bolger’s widow were close friends, and he felt responsible. He went straight to the INLA demanding action. Three young children had been left without a father.
Bobby Tohill was one of the INLA team present when Bolger was shot, but had
not been responsible for the death. In compliance with Gilligan’s demands, the INLA chief set up a kangaroo court and decided that Tohill should be disciplined for using INLA weapons without permission. Tohill was born in England but grew up in Belfast where he was a member of the Provisional IRA, INLA and the Irish People’s Liberation Army. He had been convicted for terrorist offences in the Diplock court system, but these were overturned. He moved to Crumlin on his release from prison, where he resumed involvement in the INLA. The INLA command in Dublin sent word to Tohill that he was going to be court-martialled.
The car park of the Kiltalown shopping centre in Jobstown, Tallaght, in Dublin, would be the venue for punishment: 12.30 a.m. on 16 August the time and date. Tohill went for a drink with his cohorts who told him he wouldn’t be too seriously injured. He then left the pub and sat on a wall outside a nearby Chinese takeaway where he was approached by two men, one of whom shot him once above the left knee and twice below the right. He survived the attack. Satisfied justice had been done, Gilligan put Bolger’s death to the back of his mind.
By this stage, the deliveries of cannabis were arriving on average three times weekly, in wooden crates marked as machinery parts. Mindful of how useful the INLA could be, Gilligan had also started importing military weapons. It wasn’t sawn-off shotguns or small hand pistols he was dealing with, but Ingram sub-machine guns, assault rifles and an arsenal of military firearms. Some of these were donated to the paramilitary group. This served a number of purposes.
North of the border the INLA was well equipped, but in Dublin, where its membership was fluid and consisted of criminals, such weapons were seen as a godsend. That the INLA’s Dublin Brigade could acquire military weapons for free and without risking jail or running the gauntlet of British intelligence, which carefully monitored the sale and supply of arms in Europe, bolstered the unit’s standing in the organisation. Gilligan was a dream come true for the INLA renegades, a valuable asset that had to be pleased at all costs. Although he had been released from Portlaoise Prison for just seven months, he had put together a fraternity that worked along the same lines as a criminal cartel.
Cleverly, he coerced the INLA into a position where they worked for him, not with him. As for Meehan and Mitchell, they too pledged their support to Gilligan. Pulling these two potent forces together, Gilligan decided to see just how far he could go.
When Martin Cahill threatened Bolger for his decision to protect the incest victim, it enraged Gilligan. In threatening Bolger, Cahill, with malice aforethought, sent out a clear warning to Gilligan’s firm. Gilligan would later comment: ‘He was a criminal who attacked an incest victim, a girl who was raped. That’s all there is to him. Enough said. He was just a scumbag.’
Pure jealousy was also a cause of animosity. Soon after Bolger’s death, Gilligan let it be known through the appropriate channels that he did not like Cahill. In response, Cahill said he wanted his IR£600,000 back.
Traynor decided not to get involved, instead opting to stand on the sidelines. He knew what Cahill was capable of and was sure he wouldn’t accept Gilligan’s defiance, believing it was only a matter of time before the General retaliated. The truth was that Gilligan was earning such vast amounts of cash that it went straight to his head. He became intolerant of anyone who didn’t agree with him—in other words, anyone who told him the truth. He was a man who couldn’t read or write properly but suddenly found himself with money beyond his wildest dreams. His ego inflated in tandem with a festering hatred of Cahill until he decided to eliminate the General, a plan which fitted in perfectly with that of the INLA, who were also in a running dispute with Cahill.
The General had also crossed swords with a member of the Dublin Brigade of the INLA over the tenancy agreement of a flat in the south inner city. A relative of Cahill’s had squatted in the flat for a year when Dublin Corporation served an eviction notice through the Sheriff. Cahill petrol-bombed the flat to stop another tenant moving in. He didn’t know the new tenant had links to the INLA. Corrupt to the core, the commanding INLA officer of Dublin sanctioned Cahill’s killing. And so Gilligan and maverick republicans entered into a bloody deal to see the General dead. There is some evidence that Gilligan paid a gunman IR£25,000 to assassinate Cahill but if he did, it was money squandered, because the IRA beat him to it.
The IRA command in Dublin was literally gunning for Cahill. The General had made the fatal mistake of doing business with the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), albeit through Gilligan. But what brought the matter to a head was the UVF attack on the Widow Scallon’s pub in Dublin’s Pearse Street, where on the night of Saturday, 21 May 1994, Sinn Féin were holding a fund-raising event.
Martin Doherty, known to his friends as Docho, was standing guard at the door watching unmarked garda patrol cars driving by. The 35-year-old father of two from Ballymun was an experienced IRA man, having been involved in weapons smuggling and intelligence gathering for many years. Shortly before 11 p.m., as the function was drawing to a close, two men approached him at the door. They were loyalists from the UVF. One was armed with a handgun, the other was carrying an 18lb bomb in a sports bag. Doherty didn’t know them and refused to let them in. One of the bombers produced his gun and shot Doherty dead at point-blank range. There were 300 people attending the fund-raiser.
Another doorman, who was not a member of Sinn Féin, seeing the events unfold, pulled the door shut and was shot through the door. The bombers panicked and threw the bomb into the hallway, causing it to be made safe. It would have blown up the entire building if it had gone off. Their getaway car was found burned out 15 minutes later in the North Strand, which is an IRA stronghold.
The UVF attack threw the Dublin Brigade of the IRA into disarray. ‘The loyalists had not attacked Dublin in over 20 years. It terrified the Provos that the UVF felt comfortable enough to travel to Dublin. It was no secret that the UVF and UDA were doing business with criminals in Dublin, but no one thought this would ever happen,’ said one IRA source.
IRA intelligence officers were dispatched across the city to make inquiries into which members of Dublin’s underworld were doing business with loyalists. One man’s name kept popping up. He stood accused of assisting the loyalists, helping them dispose of their getaway car. His name was Martin Cahill. When approached by the IRA, Cahill politely told them to fuck off.
‘We grabbed one of his gang, who told us Cahill drank in a loyalist pub near Portadown. He was actually called a Fenian bastard in the pub by someone drinking there. We sent in the reports and the order to kill him came back,’ recalled one of the IRA squad charged with overseeing his execution. ‘Cahill had brought loyalists down to dogfights in Dublin. That’s when they first started to reconnoitre Dublin for a bombing.’
Cahill was shot dead by the IRA at 3.20 p.m. on the afternoon of 18 August 1994. He most likely knew he was about to die when he saw the .357 Magnum. His assassin was standing yards away, preparing to fire the revolver at point-blank range. If any thoughts flitted through Cahill’s mind in the last few seconds of his life, they were probably of surprise. He would not have expected death to visit him in such a fashion.
His assassin had made several attempts on his life in the previous weeks. He had followed Cahill everywhere, logged his every move, but the General proved an elusive quarry. He was saved from certain death several times when chance encounters with the gardaí forced his killers to shy away. They would later remark: ‘It was as if God was watching over him, as if there was a shield around him.’
An IRA squad comprising five people carried out the hit.
‘You have no idea how many times we tried to kill him. We must have went for him about six times but something always happened. I remember a garda appeared out of nowhere as he was about to be executed. I don’t like using the word murdered,’ said one.
His ‘executioner’ struck as he pulled up to a traffic intersection that lies between the Oxford and
Charlestown Road in the leafy suburb of Ranelagh in Dublin. It was far from a meticulously planned assassination—the IRA were desperate to murder the General.
His killers were acutely aware that he would be untouchable in two weeks’ time when the leadership would declare its first ceasefire. The month of August was their last window of opportunity. On the day of the actual killing, the hitman disguised himself as a Dublin Corporation worker pretending to count cars as they drove by. Another member of the unit assigned to carry out the shooting drove a motorcycle. Yet another was perched nearby scanning the Garda frequencies with a hand-held scanner, whilst another two IRA men waited nearby to drive the killers to safety and dispose of the motorcycle.
The bike rider dressed as a courier and was charged with keeping Cahill’s corporation home on Swan Grove under surveillance. At 3.10 p.m. Cahill emerged from the front doorway of his house and sat in his Black Renault 5. He was heading to a nearby video store to return a copy of the film A Bronx Tale. He paid no attention to the courier who sped off when he stepped outside his door.
When Cahill pulled up, the Corporation worker stopped counting traffic, walked towards his car and fired directly through the front windscreen. The bullets hit their target in the head and shoulder. The first shot knocked Cahill unconscious, causing him to lose control of his car, which throttled across the road. The gunman was under orders to kill. So having spent weeks following the General, he spent a few more minutes making sure Cahill did not survive. ‘That would have been a public relations disaster for the IRA. Even if he had have been left in a wheelchair we would have had to go after him again. Once the order was given,’ said one of his killers, ‘he had to die.’