Cocaine Wars (14 page)

Detective Superintendent Denis Donegan (now retired) from Crumlin Garda Station was in charge of many of the feud murder investigations.
© Collins

Detective Superintendent Brian Sutton, one of the most senior Gardaí involved in investigating the feud.

© Mark Condren/
Sunday Tribune

Detective Superintendent Gabriel O'Gara. Many of the feud murders happened in his Kevin Street ‘A' District.

© Evening Herald

Detective Inspector John Walsh who has a knowledge of the feud that is second to none.

© Mark Condren/
Sunday Tribune

Detective Garda Ritchie Kelly, Detective Garda Ken Donnelly and Detective Sergeant Adrian Whitelaw, from Kevin Street Garda Station.

© Mark Condren/
Sunday Tribune

Brian Rattigan winks defiantly at the camera as he is led from court in December 2009, after he was handed a life sentence for the murder of Declan Gavin.

© Collins

W
ITH
B
RIAN
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ATTIGAN
locked up and out of the way, the feud quietened down. After the incident involving Rattigan and the Gardaí in Bluebell in February 2003, the rest of the year in fact passed quietly. Freddie Thompson and his gang were now the dominant players in drug dealing from Crumlin to the south inner city. Rattigan's men seemed happy with this arrangement; they shipped significant amounts of drugs around Drimnagh and made their money without any bloodshed. Although Thompson was enjoying the feeling of dominating the streets of Crumlin and Drimnagh, he couldn't actually enjoy the benefits because he was serving a two-year jail sentence after being found guilty of endangerment and assault, after he drove his car at a Garda in Rathmines in August 2002. He was sent to prison in February 2003. So, with himself and Rattigan off the streets, there was a much-needed lull in hostilities.

The following year, 2004, got off to a bloody start though. It was a sign of things to come – the next two years would be the bloodiest in the history of the feud, with conflict starting again at a pace that was much quicker than before. On 15 January at approximately 1.45 a.m., a number of shots were fired through the window of an apartment in Dublin 8. The apartment was home to a forty-three-year-old woman and her relation, a nineteen-year-old girl who was also Joey Redmond's girlfriend at the time (Joey Redmond being one of Rattigan's senior henchmen), but nobody was injured. Garda intelligence suggests that Paddy Doyle was responsible for the shooting. Although he was arrested, there was no real evidence against him, so he was never charged and the incident was not solved.

On 30 January, the Garda intelligence branch, Crime and Security, received information that there was a threat to the life of Darren Geoghegan. Detective Sergeant John Walsh from Sundrive Road subsequently met with Geoghegan at the station on 3 February. He told Geoghegan the news, before offering him advice on his personal security. Geoghegan laughed when he was told about the threat to his life. He stayed in the station for all of thirty seconds. There was serious bad blood between Brian Rattigan and Darren Geoghegan, and he had been targeted the most out of all the members of Thompson's gang. Gardaí had no doubt that Brian Rattigan's side was behind this latest threat.

On 10 February, Crime and Security again got in touch with DS John Walsh and told him of intelligence that Joey Redmond's life was now under threat. John Walsh telephoned Redmond and asked to meet him, but he refused, so Walsh had to give him security advice over the phone. However, the following day Joey Redmond's mother went to Sundrive Road and she was given more advice concerning the safety of her son. Freddie Thompson's gang were thought to have been behind the threat.

On the same day that Crime and Security got in touch about Joey Redmond they also relayed information that Michael Frazer's life was in danger. Michael Frazer, who was twenty-nine and from Knocknarea Avenue in Drimnagh, had been on the periphery of the Rattigan and Gavin gang when it had just formed. He was no longer associating with either side at this stage, although he had been close to Declan Gavin. The day after Gardaí received the warning from Crime and Security, Frazer called to Sundrive Road station and was given security advice from DI Brian Sutton. He refused to acknowledge the fact that he was involved with any criminal group and expressed surprise that anybody would want to hurt him. However, when he was pressed further he said that if anything were to happen to him, it was because of the Drimnagh feud and his former friendships with people like Brian Rattigan and Freddie Thompson. The intelligence passed on by Crime and Security was spot on. Just four days after he was given security advice, armed, masked men fired three shots outside Frazer's home, and shouted, ‘Tell Mickey he's gonna get it.' Gardaí could never fully determine who was responsible, but Shay O'Byrne, Sharon Rattigan's partner, was the prime suspect.

Ever since Joey Rattigan had been murdered, Paul Warren was a marked man and knew that if any of Brian Rattigan's gang saw him alone, he would be vulnerable. However, he had managed to avoid bumping into any of the rival gangsters in the eighteen months since he had set up Joey Rattigan to be murdered. On the morning of 25 February 2004, the twenty-four-year-old got up out of bed as normal, having no reason to suspect that this would be the day when fate finally caught up with him. He went to work at Hennessy Glass, on the Lower Kimmage Road, at about 8.20 a.m. He had worked as a glazier for the company for the previous two years. He liked his job and the people he worked with. He went to do a job in the south inner city at about 1.15 p.m. He decided to go to Gray's pub, on Newmarket Square, for a pint and a game of pool. Warren knew Gray's as the Red Lion, and before that as Bonnie and Clyde's. He grew up not far away in St Teresa's Gardens. He was a regular in the pub, and was well known there. Warren had had an accident a few weeks previously, when a pane of glass had fallen on his head, resulting in stitches. He had an appointment to go to St James's Hospital to get the stitches removed, but he was enjoying the few pints and decided to skip it. His boss had already said it was OK to have the rest of the afternoon off. Warren was also supposed to meet with his probation officer that afternoon, but again decided to give it a miss, even though it meant that he could get in trouble if the probation officer decided to take things further. He spent the afternoon playing pool with random customers. At about 7.00 p.m., a friend of his called to Gray's and asked Warren if he would go with him to Crumlin with another mate to try to sort out a dispute that he was having. Warren was always willing to do a pal a turn, so the three men drove to Crumlin, looking for the rival group. There was no sign of the group, so they went back to Gray's to continue drinking. Champions League football was on the telly, and the group was in the mood for a few more games of pool.

Things had been going well for Warren of late. He'd managed to put the events of the last eighteen months behind him. He was trying to get on with life as normal. Warren was originally from Fatima Mansions but moved with his parents to St Teresa's Gardens when he was a young lad, along with his four sisters and brother. He had only recently moved in with his girlfriend and they were renting a house together in Clondalkin. He had been in trouble with the police on and off since he was young. He had managed to chalk up twenty-three convictions in his twenty-four years – twenty of those were for road traffic offences, and the other three for the simple possession of drugs. He had never served a lengthy jail sentence, and was regarded as a bit of a messer, and certainly not a serious criminal. He was way out of his depth getting involved in the Joey Rattigan murder. No matter how smoothly things were going at that time, being blamed for setting a man up to be killed was surely never far from his mind.

Gray's pub was not busy and there were only ten people present when the football kicked off. Warren and his two friends drank and played pool, and Warren occasionally spoke to the barman. The barman later recalled that ‘he was in good form. There was a good atmosphere, a normal atmosphere.' At about 8.00 p.m., a man called Jonathan Mooney came into the pub with his girlfriend at the time. He looked at the other customers and noticed Paul Warren, whom he knew from around the area. Mooney was a criminal who had spent time in jail with Brian Rattigan, and who associated with known members of the Rattigan gang. Mooney took his girlfriend's mobile phone and made a call. About ten minutes later, the phone rang. Brian Rattigan was on the other end, even though he was in a jail cell in Mountjoy Prison. Rattigan asked Mooney if Paul Warren was in the pub. When Mooney confirmed he was, Rattigan inquired as to what clothes he was wearing and where he was sitting in the bar. Customers noticed that Jonathan Mooney spent a lot of the night going in and out of the pub talking on the mobile. Paul Warren was playing pool while keeping an eye on the football – oblivious to the fact that the phone call Jonathan Mooney made had sealed his fate. Although Brian Rattigan had had to wait for a year and a half to avenge his brother's death, he was determined that Warren would not walk out of Gray's that night.

***

Gary Bryan's girlfriend, Valerie White, was looking forward to a quiet night in, when her boyfriend's mobile phone rang at around 8.15 p.m. Gary Bryan never said where he was going, but assured her that he wouldn't be long. While White sat watching TV, she was unaware that Brian Rattigan had phoned her boyfriend. A plot was being hatched to murder Paul Warren, who was in Gray's pub, only a short drive from the flat Valerie shared with Bryan on the South Circular Road. Gardaí believe that Bryan went out to meet John Roche, and that the pair were in communication with Brian Rattigan, formulating how they would murder Paul Warren. After about forty-five minutes, Bryan came back to the one-bedroom apartment, went to the bedroom and, detectives believe, took a Magnum handgun, which he kept in the house, from the back of the wardrobe. He left again without telling his girlfriend where he was going, and she gave out to him for leaving so soon. It is believed that Bryan and John Roche spent the next hour or so deciding on how the murder would go down, while driving around in John Roche's car deciding on the best route of escape after they had carried out the assassination. After this they went back to Bryan's apartment. They had a pair of balaclavas and each man had a loaded gun. Phone records would later show that several calls were made between Bryan and Brian Rattigan, before the killing took place. Ten minutes before the murder, Gary Bryan rang Jonathan Mooney's girlfriend and asked to speak to him. He double checked to make sure that Paul Warren was still in the pub. He made the call at 10.47 p.m., and it only took fifty-two seconds for him to get confirmation that the hit was still on. Bryan left his apartment with John Roche and drove the short journey to Gray's in a stolen silver-grey Ford Mondeo. Just before 11.00 p.m., Bryan and Roche arrived at Newmarket Square, a quiet area with very few houses. It had been agreed that John Roche would do the shooting, but before they went into the pub, Gary Bryan said that he was taking over. John Roche was over 6 ft tall, Bryan at just 5 ft 8" was far smaller. They both put on their balaclavas and gripped their handguns bursting through the front door of Gray's pub. Because Gary Bryan knew that Paul Warren was over by the pool table, he ran straight for him. Warren saw the movement, looked up and knew instantly that he was in serious danger. He ran to the opposite side of the pub, towards the toilets, just as Bryan opened fire with the Magnum for the first time, but the bullet missed its target. While Bryan went to take care of Paul Warren, John Roche covered the entrance to the pub. He shouted at the frightened customers: ‘Don't move.' Some of the dozen customers in the bar screamed in terror, and a couple ran towards the ladies' toilets to hide, as they were at the opposite side of the bar to the men's. The barman ducked into the cellar behind the bar, so as not to be caught in the crossfire. The execution was over in a matter of seconds. As Paul Warren ran into the men's toilets, Bryan caught up with him. Bryan fired a shot at close range, which struck Warren in the back, just underneath the neck. Even though he had been fatally wounded, Warren kept going. He made his way into a cubicle and tried to push it closed, in the hope that the gunman would panic and leave the pub. Bryan stuck his hand in behind the half-open door and fired a shot into Warren's face, hitting him in the right cheek. Bryan knew instinctively that his mission had been achieved, and he didn't even stop to make sure that Warren was dead. According to witnesses in the pub, when Bryan ran out of the toilet, he said to Roche: ‘I got him. Let's get out of here.' Both Jonathan Mooney and his girlfriend were present when the murder took place, but left before the Gardaí arrived. As the two gunmen were making their escape, customers were already starting to recover from the shock of what had happened. Several went into the men's toilet to check on Warren, but the large pool of blood that had flowed under the cubicle door and down towards the main toilet entrance told its own story. Paul Warren was dead.

At around 11.00 p.m. on 25 February 2004, Garda Caroline Mulpeter of Garda Command and Control, based at Harcourt Street, received a 999 call informing her that there had been a shooting at Gray's pub. Gardaí Joseph Duignam and Deirdre McMenamin were dispatched, and arrived at the pub, just one minute later. Dublin Fire Brigade had also been informed of the incident, and firefighters Phil Evans, Terry Dent, Liam Anderson and Ian Duffy arrived at the scene in two Dublin Fire Brigade ambulances. They tried to administer first aid to Paul Warren, but he was already lying dead in the toilet cubicle. GP Dr Lionel Williams officially pronounced him dead at 11.55 p.m.

The following afternoon, when Gardaí had finished the technical examination of the pub, Warren's body was taken from the scene to the Dublin City Morgue in Marino. That evening, Warren's father identified his son's body to Detective Inspector Gabriel O'Gara from Kevin Street Garda Station. DI O'Gara, an experienced murder detective, was the Garda in day-to-day charge of the case. Within minutes of the shooting, a murder inquiry was launched from Kevin Street. Over the next forty-eight hours, a number of case conferences were held that were attended by local Gardaí and detectives, as well as specialist plain-clothes officers from the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NBCI). Because Gardaí from Crumlin and Sundrive Road had been investigating Paul Warren in relation to Joey Rattigan's murder, it soon became apparent that Warren was murdered in revenge for his role – or perceived role – in that killing. Over the next few months, Gardaí from Kevin Street, Sundrive Road and Crumlin would work very closely together: comparing notes, information and anything they learned from talking to ‘touts' on the streets. All Gardaí involved in the murder were acutely aware that tensions between the Rattigan and Thompson gangs would be unbelievably high, and that revenge attacks were not just possible, but inevitable.