Cocaine Wars (19 page)

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.

They were not long in coming either. Just five days after Rattigan's relation's house had been shot at, Aidan Gavin was shot in an incident at his house at Foxdene Avenue in Clondalkin. Shortly after midnight, Gavin answered a knock at his front door and was faced with a masked man brandishing a revolver. The first shot missed the target and the second whizzed past Gavin's cheek and grazed the bridge of his nose. Gavin slammed the door and ran out the back of the house into the back garden and jumped over a wall and escaped. His wife and two children were in the house at the time. This was a bona fide murder attempt, and it was a miracle that Gavin survived at all. The gunman escaped in a waiting car, and there was no forensic evidence left at the scene. It is not known who carried out the gun attack.

Aidan Gavin was born in December 1971, and spent most of his life living on Mourne Road in Drimnagh. He was involved in the feud from day one, and moved large volumes of drugs around the city. He had nine criminal convictions for possession of drugs with intent for sale and supply, simple possession of drugs, burglary, robbery and a conviction for assaulting a Garda. When his brother Declan Gavin was murdered, Aidan took it personally and began to lose the run of himself. He developed a bad drug addiction and got more and more drawn into the world of organised crime, a world that had already claimed the life of his brother.

On 8 August 2005 at around 5.50 p.m., Kevin Redmond, a brother of Eddie, was fixing a car outside a house on Knocknarea Road in Drimnagh, along with a man he had recently sold the vehicle to. The pair were hard at work when a motorbike pulled up with two men on it. The passenger on the bike pulled out a revolver and fired a number of rounds at the two men, hitting them both but not causing serious injury. The two men were totally innocent, and Gardaí believe that they were shot in a case of mistaken identity, because Kevin Redmond closely resembled his brother Eddie. Gardaí believe that the attack was in revenge for the attempted murder of Aidan Gavin the previous month.

The day after, Gardaí recovered the .375 Magnum revolver that was used in the shooting of the innocent men. It was hidden in the garden of a house in Dublin 8. Gardaí seized the weapon and placed the garden under surveillance. A number of hours later, a twenty-eight-year-old man from the north inner city arrived and attempted to recover the gun. He was a close friend and known associate of Paddy Doyle, but he refused to say anything and was later released without charge. Following this shooting, members of the Rattigan gang took photos of the bloodstained footpath where the two men were shot. They then sent the photos via picture message to a mobile phone that Brian Rattigan secretly had in Portlaoise Prison. Rattigan had been transferred to the high-security jail because he was becoming too powerful in Mountjoy. A text accompanying the photos asked him what should be done about his friends and lieutenants being shot at. A couple of weeks after the shootings, there was a random search of cells in Portlaoise and the mobile phone and picture messages were discovered. Gardaí were called in to investigate, and they got a reminder – if they needed any – that it was still the jailed crime lord who was calling the shots in the feud.

A week after the two men were shot by mistake, twenty-four-year-old Daniel Doyle from Clonmacnoise Road in Crumlin, was drinking in Sundrive Park, which is also known as Eamonn Ceannt Park, when he was approached by three men, one of whom was carrying a sawn-off shotgun. One of the trio opened fire from close range with a .22 rifle, hitting Doyle in the thigh and back. He survived, but was left paralysed for life as a result of the incident and will have to live permanently in a care home. When he recovered enough to be interviewed, he gave a statement to Gardaí identifying Paul Hurley, a seventeen-year-old from Clonmacnoise Road, as one of the three men. Doyle told Gardaí that he had been shot at the behest of the Rattigan gang, after he was blamed for being the man who shot the two innocent men the previous week. Doyle told detectives – off the record – that he was shot because he had recently stopped sourcing his drugs from a close associate of the Rattigan gang and changed to Graham Whelan.

Whelan was with Declan Gavin in the Holiday Inn during the Garda operation in March 2000. He was serving a six-year sentence in Mountjoy, but he was running a drugs operation from his prison cell. Phone records obtained by Gardaí linked Graham Whelan's prison mobile to having contacted a number of well-known feud members, so detectives had little doubt that Whelan was a serious player. Whelan was far from a young man being influenced by more serious criminals – as he had argued in court after the Holiday Inn seizure.

Paul Hurley was subsequently charged with the shooting. On the first day of the trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, the prosecution Senior Counsel told the jury that Doyle recognised Hurley as the gunman, but he was refusing to give evidence. Detective Sergeant Gerry Quinn took the stand and read out the statement that Doyle had given to Gardaí fingering Hurley as the gunman. He told officers that he recognised one of the men as Hurley but, ‘I thought nothing of it because I recognised one of them. As they came towards me, I saw a flash and heard a bang and I started to run. Then the next thing I knew, I was on the ground.' Doyle said that Hurley was not carrying the rifle, but was standing on the left of the group and wore a baseball cap. He said that he brought his hand up to block his face from further shots. ‘I heard one of them say, “You got him in the head,” so I went along with that. I played dead.' In his statement, Doyle added that he heard one of the group suggest that they take his mobile phone. ‘They says, “Hurley, get his phone,” and he said, “No, I'm not touching him.” Somebody then turned Doyle over and began searching him. He still had his hand over his face when he was turned, and opened his eyes and saw Paul Hurley. When the group left Doyle, seemingly dead, he dragged himself to the front gate of the park and a passer-by called the Gardaí.'

As Detective Sergeant Gerry Quinn read out his statement, Doyle shouted that the Garda was telling lies. When he was questioned by Judge Paul Carney, he refused to answer him and said that if he did, he would be killed. Judge Carney said that the only reason Doyle wasn't spending a night in the cells was because he was in a wheelchair. Judge Carney said that the law gave him no alternative but to acquit Paul Hurley of attempting to murder Daniel Doyle or cause him serious harm. Hurley walked free from court. Gardaí say there is no doubt that Daniel Doyle was intimidated and frightened into not following through on his statement.

Three days after Daniel Doyle was shot, Gardaí searched a house in Portarlington, Co. Laois, after a tip-off, and found a note identifying members of the Rattigan gang and some of their loved ones who could be targeted. A number of individuals were identified in the note, including Joey Redmond. The note listed: ‘Joey Redmond. Navy Blue Bora which his ‘girl' drives'; ‘Shay one arm Valley apartments.' This was a reference to Shay O'Byrne, one of Brian Rattigan's lieutenants. The note went on: ‘Rattigan's sister silver Golf easy got.' This was a reference to Sharon Rattigan, O'Byrne's partner. ‘***** easy got.' This is thought to refer to Brian Rattigan's disabled relative. He was obviously considered to be fair game because his home was shot up the previous month. It is possible that he was shot after he was included in the seized list; detectives didn't know how old it was or if it had been acted on yet. Another name to appear on the list was ‘B Rattigan's girl silver Bora easy got.' This was obviously Rattigan's partner, Natasha McEnroe.