Gangster (25 page)

The article sparked off debate. Jim Higgins, the Fine Gael spokesman on justice, asked O’Donoghue to comment in the Dáil. He refused. The Bureau’s defence was that the offer was legitimate because it gave Geraldine an amount that she was legitimately entitled to. Geraldine couldn’t comprehend what had happened. Afterwards she said of Grimes, ‘I think he’s fucking mad.’

Although Gilligan didn’t know it, Bowden was deeply unhappy in prison. He exchanged corres-pondence with the Department of Justice to no avail. He wanted freedom. This was the essence of the problem. Warren wanted the same. They formulated a plan aimed at pressurising the State into conceding to their demands.

On Tuesday, 11 August, Hickey received a message from one of Debbie Warren’s bodyguards asking him to make contact. He called her directly and was told Warren wished to meet him as soon as possible. There was urgency in her voice.

Three days later, accompanied by Detective Sergeant John O’Driscoll, one of the gardaí whom the informants trusted, Hickey arrived at Arbour Hill Prison where Andy O’Riordan, the chief prison officer, greeted him. He said Warren and Bowden were waiting. He took them to a private visiting room.

The prisoners were brought into the room. Bowden declared he was speaking with Warren’s authority. Warren indicated to Hickey that this was the case. Bowden spoke with the sincerity of a liar. He said he wanted to make it clear that both he and Warren were utterly committed to giving evidence in forthcoming trials. This, he said, would not change. But there were certain issues he wanted clarified. He asked Hickey to meet with Chris Houricane, who would discuss these matters. This conduit would protect all involved against any accusations of impropriety.

A week later, Hickey and O’Driscoll met Houricane at the Skylon Hotel in Drumcondra. The solicitor thanked the gardaí for their assistance, then came straight to the point. His clients wanted answers to the following series of questions, which Hickey later wrote in yet another confidential memo:

(1) What is the Witness Protection Programme? (2) Were his clients and their families assimilated into the Witness Protection Programme? (3) Who is organising the Witness Protection Programme and who is in charge of it? (4) Could his clients be informed of their probable release date on termination of their custodial sentences? (5) Could a more humane prison regime be introduced for his clients, as the present regime was almost consistent with solitary confinement in that it offered no association within the prison with anyone other than each other. (6) Are the visits being monitored electronically? (7) Would the Witness Protection Programme consider some type of custody under the auspices of An Garda Síochána as no secure environment existed within the prison system, e.g. special secure units? (8) What would the position be in relation to Temporary Release and the granting of it and could some formal mechanism for their release be put in place? Mr Houricane stated that temporary release into Garda custody would not cause any difficulty whatsoever. (9) Mr Houricane asked what was envisaged on completion of his clients’ custodial sentences. Would they be given the full protection of the State, relocated, or was any strategy in place for this eventuality?

Houricane said Bowden and Warren were of the opinion that Gilligan would use every legal avenue to delay his extradition and ultimately his trial. Regardless, they promised to give evidence against him, even after the termination of their custodial sentences. He then said the informers were considering a habeas corpus application to secure their freedom. This drastic course of action was against his advice, but Warren and Bowden were, in his opinion, not thinking rationally. He attributed this to the nature of their confinement and a degree of pressure from their families. He said he had been instructed to look at English case law with relevance to similar confinement. Hickey promised that he would give these concerns immediate priority. The informers were given more privileges.

Meehan was flown home on 4 September 1998, having taken every legal route to block his extradition in a battle that lasted ten months. His fate had been sealed on 15 July when the Dutch Justice Minister, Winnie Sorgdrager, ordered his deportation.

He was handed over to O’Loughlin at 1.15 p.m. on a runway at Eindhoven, a military base that lies on the outskirts of Amsterdam. He was flown to Casement Aerodrome in Baldonnel in County Kildare on board a military aircraft. The flight touched down at 4 p.m. He was formally arrested when he stepped off the plane onto Irish soil. He never said a word. Later that night, he was brought before the Special Criminal Court. The hearing lasted no more than 20 minutes. He was remanded to Portlaoise Prison.

It was now imperative that Bowden and Warren keep their promise. Hickey had pressed for the Department of Justice to create a special category of prisoner for his two witnesses, not because he liked them, but because they were essential to securing convictions. It was a case of the lesser of two evils. On Monday, 21 September 1998, together with Detective Chief Superintendent John McGroarty, Hickey met officials from the prison section of the Department of Justice. The officials understood the wishes of the gardaí. They offered to recommend a mechanism for perhaps monthly temporary release. But O’Donoghue had concerns in case regular temporary release suggested preferential treatment. If highlighted in court, he said, this would reflect unfavourably on the State. In the end, Bowden and Warren were granted more concessions.

Bowden, as promised, testified against Paul Ward when his trial started in the Special Criminal Court on 7 October. Months of legal arguments over the release of statements made by some 20 criminal informants to Ward’s legal team had delayed the prosecution.

Ward vehemently denied any involvement in Guerin’s murder. He did admit in the course of giving evidence in the Special Criminal Court that he had collected IR£3 million for the gang. He blamed Bowden for implicating him in the murder. Bowden, he said, partly told the truth and partly told lies.

‘I am a victim of being accused of this. Mr Bowden is the main man, the main person who has me here. I know the guards have to do their job. I am not making myself out to be a saint, far from it. I don’t blame the guards, I blame Mr Bowden for the lies he said about me and he is after convincing the guards. He is putting poison in the guards’ minds saying that I was involved in that woman’s murder. I wasn’t.’

Ward denied emphatically that he disposed of the gun and motorcycle used in the killing. But the court accepted Bowden’s word, although the judges could see the latter’s motive for testifying. After six weeks of evidence and complex legal arguments, Ward was convicted on Friday, 27 November. He remained stone-faced as the court sentenced him to life. In its 40-page ruling, the Special Criminal Court criticised the police handling of the case. It described Bowden as a liar and expressed dissatisfaction with the admissions he made about the murder. Few were surprised when the Court of Criminal Appeal later quashed the conviction. It ruled there had been no evidence against him.

Chapter 17

Retribution

‘I’ll come back, if they give me a jury.’

JOHN GILLIGAN

Gilligan’s fight against extradition continued. But the arrival of the year 1999 did not herald any good news. The passing of the New Year brought personal troubles. Sarah, his ageing mother, was taken ill with pneumonia during the holiday period. She died from a heart attack on 12 January. Gilligan, a son she adored, never had the chance to say goodbye or attend the funeral. The death affected him deeply, unlike his father’s when he died approximately one year earlier. Gilligan became more aggressive, if not openly hostile towards the prison authorities and the courts. He craved freedom.

In part to satisfy his own personal need to assign responsibility to someone else, he sacked his legal team and hired new lawyers. He threatened prison staff and doubled his efforts to target the gang members co-operating with Hickey’s team.

His worsening attitude towards the British courts could be gauged from the contents of a letter read out at a remand hearing on 18 January by Tomas O’Maoileoin, his new counsel. The letter was written in Gilligan’s own hand. In it, the gangster pleaded with the court to extend his custody time limits, pending his challenge to the House of Lords, which in turn was busy hearing a case concerning the Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet.

Gilligan wrote that his continued detention in Britain was at ‘enormous cost to the taxpayer’. Sustained by an inner rage, he offered to plead guilty to the British charges if extradition to Ireland was ruled out. His trial judge, James Rucker, sympathised with his predicament, but did not sway. Gilligan was remanded to Belmarsh once more.

Gilligan did not even try interpreting his situation rationally. He possessed a remarkable ability to convince himself that he was of good character. It was of course a delusion, but one which gave him the strength to continue with his legal fight.

He decided to write directly to Warren from his cell. His cronies were unable to penetrate the security shield guarding his former associates. Gilligan began by acknowledging Warren’s plight, who by this stage was in a deep depression over the fact that his parents were charged with money laundering offences.

‘They must be “going through hell”’, he wrote.

The letters came as a complete surprise for Warren, who interpreted them as threats because if the gangster was to be convicted, it would be on his evidence. In the letter, Gilligan claimed that there never was any threat against Warren and told him to ignore the lies in the newspapers. ‘The press are talking shit,’ he wrote. He then referred to Bowden and Dunne, but not by name. ‘Please tell your friends to stop taking notice of all the shit in the newspapers.’

In typical form, he compared his legal fight with Warren’s, insisting that he was an innocent victim. He ended the letter: ‘Believe me, I wish I could help your families—your friend John Gilligan.’

He wrote another letter several days later, trying to reassure Warren that he did not need to avail himself of the witness protection programme. The purpose of this letter was to dupe Warren into withdrawing his evidence in the full knowledge that any withdrawal of evidence could be used against the other witnesses, or at worst collapse the case.

‘You don’t need to leave your country over me, say what you like in court,’ he wrote.

‘You have a home and family now, and your new child may well want to come back to where he was born.’

The reference to Warren’s child was meant to be a threat. Gilligan was engaging in reverse psychology.

‘You have my word on it. No one is after you. The papers are mad. They’ll do anything to sell them.’

He ended this letter with the words: ‘God bless and take care and I wish you all the luck in the world, your friend, John G.’

The police interpreted the letters as a signal that he believed time was running out. Aware that they too should keep up the pressure, they continued searching for new witnesses.

Carol Rooney had fled to Australia weeks after the murder and refused to return home. On April Fools’ Day, in the misguided belief that life had somehow moved on, she flew into Dublin Airport. She made her way to Palmerstown to visit her parents, a respectable and hard-working couple. When news of her visit reached Lucan Garda Station, she was arrested and taken in for questioning.

The press reports were sketchy. Some journalists announced that she would testify at his trial. This, of course, was not true, but Gilligan didn’t know it. And he had no way of finding out. A sense of panic intensified.

If she agreed to co-operate, she could cause irreparable damage. She could corroborate Warren’s evidence, which he considered most damaging. It would also turn Geraldine against him for once and for all.

What he did not know was that his young lover had already told the investigation team all they needed to know. But she was no Bowden and refused to testify.

Gilligan, she said, had warned her that he would kill her parents if she ever betrayed him. No matter what they said, she would not put her parents through the nightmare of witness protection. She begged the gardaí to understand her predicament. Left with no other choice, they released her and she returned to Australia.

Whether it was her arrest or simply a yearning for liberty, at his next court appearance on 26 April, Gilligan launched a passionate attack on the British legal system when he appeared at Woolwich Crown Court. He protested his innocence, declaring that he was ‘100% innocent of all the charges’, yet he had been unjustly detained without trial for 31 months. He said the only way the English drugs charges could be left on file was with his consent, and this he would never give. The Crown’s decision not to allow his trial to go ahead was an abuse of process: ‘A manipulation of my legal rights,’ he declared, speaking with a counterfeit legal expertise. In no uncertain language, he warned Judge Rucker that the situation in Ireland was brought about ‘by not showing impartiality, independence, dignity and one of the other great tenets of the legal system: that all are equal before the law’. He pleaded with the judge to end his ‘purgatory’.

‘You have not got the power this year, had not got the power last year and will not have the power next year to leave this on file,’ he said with the grace of a lawyer. Rucker listened to his outburst, sympathised with him, but remanded him once more.

The failure of any hired assassin to get close to the State witnesses dominated Gilligan and Meehan’s everyday thinking. Although their efforts to reach either Bowden or Warren had failed, they did not yield in trying to organise intimidation. Meehan, in particular, was convinced that anything was possible given time. This certainty compelled him to keep fighting. Working in absolute secrecy from his cell in Portlaoise Prison, he conspired with Gilligan to silence those who could put him away. Meehan viewed Gilligan’s talk of putting a IR£2 million contract on Bowden and Warren’s head as an idle hope. He wanted action.

This gave rise to the question of who to attack. He chose Julian Clohessy, a witness planning to testify in his trial. Meehan, lost in a blizzard of cocaine one night, had told Clohessy that he was a killer. After months of trying to locate Clohessy, he found an address and smuggled it to an associate who assured him that Jules would be seen to at once. The plan was to threaten him into silence.

Like their paymaster, the gunmen he sent were not intelligent men. They called to the wrong address and hammered down the door of a house where a member of the Provisional IRA lived. This man answered the door to be confronted by a masked man wielding a handgun.

‘This is a message from Brian Meehan. You better keep your fucking mouth shut,’ he shouted. ‘This is your last warning.’

The republican said nothing, which seemed a wonder to anyone who knew him. But the next day, he reported the incident to the IRA’s Officer Commanding in Dublin.

Meehan, in the meantime, went on trial for Guerin’s murder at the Special Criminal Court. There was solid evidence stacked against him. The three supergrass witnesses recounted their evidence, which Gilligan monitored through the dozens of press clippings sent to him by friends on the outside. Warren and Bowden gave yet more differing accounts of their involvement in the murder.

Back on the streets of Dublin, the IRA wasted no time in tracking down the gunman who delivered the threat. The Dublin O/C sent a secret message to Kevin Walsh, the IRA’s commander in Portlaoise Prison. Walsh, a formidable republican who was convicted for killing a detective garda in a robbery, promised he would give the matter his urgent attention. He went straight to Meehan, cornering him in the prison laundry. Walsh told Meehan to back off. The IRA, he said, wasn’t scared of anyone, never mind a drug pusher called the Tosser, a nickname given to Meehan. The blood drained from Meehan’s face, and he signalled that he understood. Walsh was emphatic. His threats would not be tolerated. Neither Meehan nor anyone of his ilk should try to intimidate the republican movement. Meehan would soon discover why.

Kevin Meehan, Brian’s father, had stood by his son. Each day he would travel from his home on Stanaway Road in Crumlin to watch the evidence unfold. His wife Frances often accompanied him, as did his daughter Vanessa.

On the night of Monday, 20 July, he was preparing to go to bed when he heard the doorbell ring. This was a complete surprise because they were not expecting visitors. Kevin Meehan answered the door to a man who said he was lost. This seemed strange because his home lies on a road where the neighbours know each other on first name terms; in other words, few people get lost. By the time he realised something was wrong, the caller had produced a gun and fired two bullets. The first ricocheted off a wall; the second hit its target in the shoulder, knocking him to the ground. Meehan collapsed in a pool of blood while the gunman made good his escape. It was a savage attack on an innocent man.

Brian Meehan learned of the attack the next morning on his way to Dublin from Portlaoise Prison. When he returned to the prison that night, he went straight to Walsh and pleaded for mercy. He said he was sorry. It was all a terrible mistake. Walsh said nothing as Meehan continued to demonstrate his desperation. When he finished begging, he then asked if the IRA would be able to get to any of the witnesses, in return for a cash donation. But as soon as he’d asked, the Tosser knew he had overstepped the mark. He apologised once again.

The following week, on 29 July, he was convicted for Guerin’s murder and sentenced to life in prison. This time, the court ruled that Bowden’s testimony couldn’t be believed. Instead, it accepted Warren’s evidence that Meehan inspected the motorcycle, directed repairs and renovations to be carried out, later road tested the motorcycle and returned to collect the motorcycle on the morning of 26 June 1996.

‘The court is satisfied that this evidence leads to only one conclusion, namely that the accused was a fundamental part of the conspiracy or plot to murder Veronica Guerin, that he participated fully in the event,’ the judge added.

But the court discarded the evidence given by Bowden and his common-law wife Juliet in relation to the murder, although it accepted their evidence concerning Meehan’s role in the drugs and firearms.

Of Bowden, Justice Freddie Morris, the presiding judge, noted: ‘In cross-examination Meehan’s defence counsel suggested to Charles Bowden that he was deliberately bolstering the evidence which he was giving so as to be the witness who implicated the accused in the crime and thereby make himself a more ‘saleable commodity’ if he sold his story to the newspapers or wrote a book.

‘Charles Bowden denied in positive terms that he ever considered such a thing. He did so in explicit terms. Subsequently defence counsel produced and established to the court’s satisfaction that Charles Bowden had in fact contacted a journalist with a view to collaborating with him in the publication of his involvement in this matter. Charles Bowden acknowledged to the court that he had lied to the court.’

These were but some examples of the way the court found his evidence unsatisfactory.

‘The court rejects this witness’s evidence as unreliable in relation to count number one.’ Justice Morris declared that the court treat the evidence of Juliet Bowden on the same basis as that of an accomplice. She had lied on a number of occasions to the court.

Dealing with the drugs offences, the judge said the court approached Bowden’s evidence on the drugs and firearms offences with extreme caution. He noted that Bowden was prepared to lie under oath and had been found to do so in this trial. But he was satisfied that while carrying out his function as a drugs distributor, Bowden acted under the direct control of Meehan.

The conviction made Gilligan more desperate. He was thrown into bouts of depression because, no matter how much he tried, he could find no mechanism to secure his freedom. He knew what lay ahead but couldn’t accept it. On 5 October, the House of Lords paved the way for the extradition.

In one of his more novel appeals, Gilligan had asked the Lords to rule that extradition was unlawful because the offences contained in the Irish warrants did not correspond to English offences. The appeal lasted two days, but Lord Browne Wilkinson and four other law lords unanimously rejected his claim in less than 15 minutes. Although his appeal did not succeed, Gilligan refused to give in. He went back to his cell and consulted his reference books on extradition and with great bravado submitted a writ of habeas corpus, written in his own hand, to the Divisional Court in London. The writ declared that he was being illegally held in Britain. If extradited, he declared, he would be tried for Guerin’s murder in the Special Criminal Court. In his opinion, this was fundamentally wrong because trial without jury does not occur in England and Wales.

It worked. His application pre-empted the publication of the written judgement by the Law Lords and further delayed his extradition because he was entitled to address the court. It was a smart move, for on 13 December he was granted bail for the British charges but still held in custody for extradition.

The truth of the matter was that the British courts were deeply uneasy about holding him for much longer. Therefore, it came as no surprise to anyone when the Crown Prosecution Service was ordered to make its position clear the following week as to whether it would proceed with the English trial or drop the charges altogether. Gilligan felt elated. Things were finally going his way, it seemed.