Gangster Page 11
Guerin thought someone had got lost and was looking for directions. She opened the door and was confronted by a man pointing a large pistol at her head. She froze with fear; she could barely make him out. He was wearing a motorcycle helmet with a visor and a blue sports jacket. The gunman had screwed out the bulb over the porch light. She stepped backwards and he followed. She didn’t break her stare but backed into a wall and cowered, putting her hands over her face in an effort to protect her face, pleading with him not to shoot her. She heard his gun discharge and felt a sudden pain in her right leg. With that, the gunman entered the house and ran down the corridor and out the back door.
‘The first thing I saw was the gun,’ she later said. ‘And it looked huge and the light was shining on the thing. I didn’t see him, I just saw the gun. The first thing that went through my head was that he meant it. I don’t know why but I did it instinctively, I went into the foetal position. As he put the gun to my head, I began to roar—it wasn’t a scream. And then I felt it at my thigh. I didn’t hear it shoot. And then I heard his footsteps running out. And I just said, “Jesus, I’ve been shot.”’
The hired killer had panicked and shot her in the leg. Why he ran through her house and out the back door is a mystery. But he did, past her guard dogs asleep in the kitchen. Adrenaline pumping, Guerin pulled herself to the phone and dialled 999. She struggled into a room at the back of the house where Turley had installed a bar and sat herself up.
Cryan was again the first to arrive on the scene. He had just finished work for the evening in Coolock Garda Station when he got the call. He walked into the bar and could see she wasn’t that badly injured. They exchanged a few polite courtesies, harsh words spoken among friends, and he told her she’d survive. Within minutes, the area was swamped with armed police and an ambulance rushed the injured journalist to Beaumont Hospital. News of the shooting was relayed to media organisations who dispatched reporters to the scene.
The last time shots were fired at her house, her neighbour Patrick Buckley was sitting in the front room of his house watching television. When he saw blue flashing lights outside the house he realised something was wrong and went out to investigate.
‘We did hear something the last time, and it sounded like gun shots because they were so rapid they couldn’t be anything else really. But I couldn’t see anything when I went out,’ he told reporters who arrived at the scene. ‘It was just after 7 p.m. this evening when I saw the ambulance and asked a garda what had happened. Of course we are very shocked and hope that everything is all right. The way things are going in this country, I’m not surprised at something like this happening,’ he said.
Cryan’s officers sealed off the area, leaving two uniformed gardaí standing outside the house. He telephoned Turley, told him what had happened and brought him to the hospital where Guerin was being examined. The bullet had entered her leg just below her right thigh, shaving an artery before lodging just beside the bone. The surgeon used the word ‘miraculous’ four times in his report on her wounds. It was a miracle that she was not more seriously injured.
After the initial shock, Guerin returned to herself. She welcomed hospital visitors and almost appeared to enjoy the attention. Journalists descended on the ward wanting news. Turley emerged and gave an impromptu press conference. ‘Naturally, we’re all horrified about what’s happened, but I’m glad to say Veronica is very stable and in great form. I’m not a medical man, but as far as I am concerned she’s talking away normally and she’s fine.’
Her news editor, Willie Kealy, arrived minutes later and spoke to the media. ‘We are aware, as we were all aware, that there was another shooting before, and to that extent she was cautious about her personal security,’ were the only words he could think to muster. He was fond of Guerin and he was in shock. He felt it was too early to start talking about how she went about her job, but didn’t think she would change her approach. ‘She’s a very courageous woman.’
The Minister for Justice, Nora Owen, arrived when everyone else was about to leave. ‘I went up to her in the hospital without any great fanfare. The media were all in the front hall, I came in the back door and just went in to see her on . . . it was on a personal level. She said: “Well, they’re not going to get me. They’re not going to stop me.” One part of me, as a woman in an occupation that is mainly male-dominated, one half of me said good for you, to have the courage to go on. And I left it at that.’
But that night Guerin spoke to Traynor on the phone. She did not know that he wanted her dead, that she was only alive because of his hired gunman’s incompetence. Traynor, ever willing to lie, told her he had heard the news. He mentioned an article she had just published about another Dublin criminal, saying he had ordered the attack. But he hadn’t—it was Traynor.
The next day, gardaí searching the fields at the back of her home found a pair of black slip-on shoes stuck in mud. A short distance away, they found the gun—an old, reconditioned .45 revolver. The gunman had also abandoned his jacket. Whoever he was he had literally got stuck and kept running, losing the gun in his ensuing panic. Forensic tests carried out on the bullet removed from her thigh showed it was an old piece of ammunition, primed for use. It was a dead lead slug.
Cryan did not need anyone to tell him that Guerin was now in clear danger. He wrote off the first shooting as a warning, but this was the real thing. He focused his inquiries on Traynor. But the truth was that no one knew. The investigation team made routine inquiries, all of which gleaned nothing new. Criminal informants knew nothing.
Guerin in the meantime had been released from Beaumont and put under police protection by Chief Superintendent Jim McHugh of Coolock. But determined not to give in to intimidation, she decided to personally visit each of the major gangland figures she knew. It was not a particularly sensible move but, nevertheless, she felt compelled to face down her fears.
She was still on crutches at the time.
‘When I came out of hospital, I said, “This is it, I’m going to let those bastards see they didn’t get to me.” I went to them all, just to let them see me and let them know I wasn’t intimidated. On the way to see the guy I thought had organised the shooting, I had to get Graham, who was driving the car, to stop twice, because I was physically sick at the thought of seeing him. But I felt I had to do it. I couldn’t let them know they had frightened me.’
The next Sunday, she wrote an article for the Sunday Independent. ‘I have already said, and I will say it again now, that I have no intention of stopping my work. I shall continue as an investigative reporter, the job I believe I do best. My employers have offered me alternatives . . . any area I wish to write about seems to be open to me . . . but somehow I cannot see myself reporting from the fashion catwalks or preparing a gardening column. I do not consider myself a brave woman. In deciding to continue, I am merely doing the same job as any of my journalistic colleagues . . . I am simply doing my job. I am letting the public know exactly how society operates.’
Traynor was arrested and brought to Coolock for questioning three weeks later by Cryan. He said he didn’t know anything about the attack and gave an alibi. ‘What else would he have done? We expected him to have at least that because we knew he hadn’t pulled the trigger,’ said the detective.
Guerin had made a mistake meeting Traynor, but her errors of judgement continued. Her fatal mistake was her decision to keep in contact with him, not only keeping the lines of communication open, but affording him a degree of trust. She continued to place trust in him even after she learned he had ordered the shooting. They would meet for lunch in Fan’s Chinese Restaurant on Dame Street in central Dublin. Traynor would later recall that she seemed completely fascinated and obsessed by crime and police work. He provided her with information that she turned into exclusives.
She believed Traynor to be something he wasn’t. He was a gangster, but not the significant player she made
him out to be. Not any more. There were bigger fish in the pond. It became a quid pro quo agreement. He helped Guerin because she heightened his profile and standing in the underworld. After all, how many criminals were close friends with respected journalists?
The agreement worked well until Traynor started talking about one John Gilligan. ‘You think I’m big. He’s fucking huge,’ he told her. In the coming months he would tell her a great deal about Gilligan. Little did he know she would go straight to him.
By January 1995, the Gilligans had opened the Jessbrook Equestrian Centre. The secret to Gilligan’s success was the way he ran his operation. Everything was run on a need-to-know basis. His gang was structured along the same lines as a paramilitary organisation. Gilligan appointed himself chief of staff, Meehan acted as his director of operations, Traynor his director of intelligence and confidant. He dealt with these one to one. No one else was allowed meet him, nor see his face. Like all good businessmen, he didn’t invest all his cash in one single area of crime. The enterprise was divided into three separate units. One smuggled tobacco and contraband cigarettes, another smuggled cannabis, a third collected and laundered the cash proceeds.
The burgeoning drugs culture sweeping through Ireland lent itself to the gangster. He simply couldn’t import enough cannabis to supply the demand. Meehan recruited ‘reputable’ criminals. Reputable because they had convictions that ensured they were not informants or because they had proved themselves as true criminals. In other words, they were under constant harassment by the law. Gilligan wanted to front the largest criminal gang in Ireland. But he knew the larger it became, the more vulnerable he would be.
He spent most of his time laundering cash before lodging it in offshore accounts in Gibraltar, Morocco, Austria, England and the Netherlands. Baltus helped him in this endeavour. But while laundering his profits, he also invested more cash into the equestrian centre.
On 20 January 1995, he bought a Land Rover Discovery 5-door for IR£29,500. He registered this to Jessbrook Equestrian Centre. Three weeks later, on 13 February, Geraldine, using her maiden name, bought a Land Rover for IR£5,290 from the same garage. This was also registered to Jessbrook Equestrian Centre. Gilligan spoiled those around him—especially his children. He paid cash for houses for them. In November 1994, he bought a house on Willsbrook View in Lucan for IR£73,000 as a present for Tracy. He paid IR£4,000 in cash for a deposit, followed up by another IR£3,000 in cash. The balance—IR£66,000—was paid with a bank draft. He didn’t bother taking out a mortgage on the house. In December 1995, it was Darren’s turn. He got a spacious residence on Weston Green, Western Park, in Lucan. They also got their own cars. Darren was fond of jeeps. Gilligan bought him a RAV-4 Toyota. Tracy got a Toyota Carina 1.6 GLI. Gilligan paid for both cars with hard cash.
As proprietor of the Jessbrook Equestrian Centre, he assumed the persona of a businessman. He no longer travelled economy class: instead he became a card-carrying member of Aer Lingus, flying first class, mixing with the business elite. His Aer Lingus Gold Card number was 569210. The airline treated him as a VIP passenger and with good reason. He spent IR£27,091 flying between Dublin and Amsterdam. He flew 39 times on the Dublin to Amsterdam route and 33 times the opposite way, and from Heathrow to Dublin four times. His spare change was lodged in 16 accounts held by Geraldine, Tracy and Darren in Dublin. Seven were opened in Geraldine’s name, two in her maiden name, four in Darren’s name, two in Tracy’s and one under the name Jessbrook Equestrian Centre. The amount of money that passed through the accounts was huge by anyone’s standards.
Geraldine controlled one of the accounts opened on 9 March 1995 at Bank of Ireland in Lucan. This account was used for the day-to-day running of Jessbrook. The total lodgements into this amounted to IR£338,484.60. Total payments out of the account were IR£373,595.15.
Another account, opened under the name of Matilda Dunne, A/C No. 52791983 at Bank of Ireland in Lucan, was used to carry out business. Lodgements into this totalled IR£839,689.73, the bulk made up of bookmakers’ cheques. She instructed the bank to allow Gilligan to conduct transactions through it. They worked this account by transferring vast sums of cash, IR£286,939 in total, into the Jessbrook fund. Payments of IR£165,450 were also made to Gilligan himself, while Geraldine withdrew IR£193,641 in cash over a period. The bulk of the money was lodged into the accounts in cheques made out to Gilligan, bookmakers’ cheques.
The Criminal Justice Act 1994 came into force in May 1995, modifying how financial institutions handled cash transactions over IR£10,000. Among other things, it placed an onus on financial bodies to report to the gardaí any transactions deemed to be suspicious. The act introduced by Fianna Fáil also put in place a series of procedures for banks and credit companies to follow if they suspected hot cash was being lodged with their institution. The act presented a huge obstacle to organised crime, particularly criminals like Gilligan. Crime was fast becoming a thorny issue which politicians could not afford to ignore. Politicians like Owen saw themselves facing a crisis in the next election. The Minister for Justice and her ministerial colleague Ruairí Quinn, the Minister for Finance, demanded that all agencies tasked with tackling crime co-operate.
‘The lack of co-operation between Customs, between gardaí, between Social Welfare, between Revenue, was really negating the good work that each of the individuals were doing on their own,’ Owen recalled. ‘We set up meetings with Revenue, with gardaí, with Customs. There had been some unpleasant and unnecessary spats between Customs and the gardaí. I was very angry about it at the time and I spoke to the commissioner. I said, “This is ridiculous and we’ve got to solve this.”’
Owen was breaking down traditional barriers between the gardaí and Customs. Following her instructions, Patrick Culligan, the Garda commissioner, appointed Kevin Carty, the chief superintendent in charge of the Central Detective Unit (CDU), and Fachtna Murphy, a superintendent from the fraud squad, to represent the Garda at a discussion group meeting.
Owen had an idea. She wanted the Revenue to take a pro-active stance against crime by auditing criminals for undeclared or inexplicable wealth.
The Criminal Justice Act 1994 was only an enabling piece of legislation, and none of the regulations had been written, or even agreed. Even though the legislation is dated 1994, the working bits of the legislation weren’t there until Owen introduced new laws which came into effect the following May. Even then, as the tedious negotiations dragged out, the law was worthless. The banks needed to train staff in identifying and declaring lodgements that fell into the suspicious categories.
Owen’s own political career was coming under pressure. Drug dealing was evident in most towns. In Dublin it had reached epidemic proportions with dealers openly selling hashish, ecstasy and heroin on Dublin’s main thoroughfare, O’Connell Street. In June 1995, Owen held a meeting in Garda headquarters with ten senior Garda officers. Pat Byrne was there as a deputy commissioner. Carty was also in attendance. ‘I said I don’t want to hear when something goes wrong that you’re hampered because of a lack of this or a lack of that,’ she told them. ‘I want to know what are the long-term annoyances in the system that you want sorted . . . because I’m doing some housekeeping legislation every year when I’m here, that we gather together a number of things.’
The gardaí accepted her frankness and told her straight out what was required. The Revenue, they said, needed to start investigating criminals. Drug dealing now represented a significant threat to the security of the State. Without Revenue’s co-operation, the gardaí could continue investigating the dealers, identifying property owned by them, pinpointing their offshore bank accounts, but couldn’t do anything about them. Owen listened attentively. She left the meeting saying she would do what she could. Carty took on board what she had said. He had his own ideas on how to tackle the drugs problem.
Gilligan meanwhile was encountering personal problems. He and Geraldine were
legally separated that summer. But a new love entered his life. Carol Rooney was Gilligan’s femme fatale. She had grown up in Palmerstown in south Dublin. He found her strikingly attractive. At the tender age of 19, she had just finished her Leaving Certificate examinations and was working part-time in a bookmaker’s office when Gilligan entered her world. He was gambling and noticed her working at a cashier’s desk. He started flirting with her and asked her out. What she saw in him, only she can say, but the two became lovers. Gilligan, behind Geraldine’s back, spoiled his young lover. He rented out a house for her in Celbridge in County Kildare, took her on foreign holidays and wooed her with gifts, including a $20,000 Cartier watch. Anything she wanted she got. Later that year, he took her to a garage and she picked out a Nissan Micra. He handed over a IR£1,600 deposit. Carol paid the balance in cash.
His renewed lust for life spilled over into the drugs trade. He began streamlining his operation. One of the first things he decided to do was relocate his distribution base. After nearly a year of distributing from the Emmett Road lock-up, he felt this would be a prudent move and so instructed Charlie Bowden to find new premises. Meehan had promoted Bowden into the senior ranks of the organisation. Bowden himself made an unlikely criminal. He had grown up in Finglas, a sprawling housing estate situated in the heart of north Dublin. When he left school after sitting his Inter Certificate exam in 1983, he joined the army and rose to the rank of corporal. He specialised in rifle marksmanship and the use of the 0.5-inch heavy machine gun. Such was his good aim that he won competitions for his shooting capabilities, including the Eastern Command Rifle Championships. Bowden, however, had violent tendencies. This character flaw surfaced in 1988 when he attacked two recruits. He beat them up so badly they were taken to hospital. He was court-martialled and asked to leave the army, whereafter he offered himself as muscle for hire. He began working as a ‘doorman’ at nightclubs, hired because he had a black belt in karate.