Gangster (22 page)

News of the charges was communicated to Gilligan. He was trying to fight his own battle. The British authorities moved him from Wormwood Scrubs to Belmarsh High Security Prison. He made an application for bail on 23 October but lost. The Crown Prosecution Service objected to bail and won. He was further remanded to 14 November.

The sheriff arrived with his men outside the gates of Jessbrook at 9 a.m. on 20 November 1996. His men were burly and wore masks and overalls. Some of them wore dark glasses, baseball hats and scarves to conceal their identities. The number plates on their vehicles had been removed. Behind them stood half a dozen gardaí drawn from the Louth/Meath division. They were there as back-up. A small number carried firearms. When John and Geraldine Gilligan failed to respond to their respective tax bills, the CAB instructed the county sheriff to seize their property. The day had come.

Geraldine was at home with Darren, Tracy and her daughter Shannon. She saw them coming, but there was nothing that she or anyone else could do. Frank Lanigan, the county sheriff, knocked at the door and explained his business. His men entered the house. The Gilligans put up no fight.

They took everything, lifting furniture and everything else as if they were removal men. Geraldine was lost for words. She spent much of her time during the raid sitting on the floor. At other times, she was possessed by a strength that made her appear outwardly unwavering in the face of such adversity. What affected her more than anything was the removal of her beloved horses. When she saw the sheriff’s men lead them one by one into horse trailers she broke down. For the first time since the murder, it all became too much. She was stunned. All they left was a child’s pony and four horses that she didn’t own. The seizure of the animals brought her back to her senses, and in a bold move she walked out the gates and spoke to the media for the first time. The dogs followed.

She had only one message. ‘I couldn’t answer any tax assessments because the police have all my documents of returns, and everything else, so I didn’t have any documentation to answer with,’ she said. Asked how much was sought in the tax assessment she received, she said: ‘Mine was IR£882,000, but the one that I got on the 14th of this month has gone up with interest to IR£1,292,000.’ She came across as a genuinely wronged woman, almost breaking down crying.

The sheriff’s men left at 5.10 p.m. It was bitterly cold and almost dark by the time they had removed everything. During the course of the day, detectives from the CAB made an inventory of the property seized. This was handed to Geraldine who ran her eyes down the list. There she noticed a Nissan Micra car. She remarked to the detective that no one in the family owned a Micra. ‘Oh, that’s John’s girlfriend’s,’ the detective responded, with a smile.

She said nothing. Once inside the door of her bare home, she fell to the floor and started crying. She had no choice. There were no seats or furniture left to sit on. Everything was gone. Darren and Tracy comforted her, and her friend Jean Bolger wiped away the tears.

The press were everywhere outside. Eventually, they started calling to the door. She refused to answer it. She cried all night. She couldn’t believe that Gilligan had a girlfriend, young enough to be her daughter. She asked how he could do this to her. Then when sense began to prevail, she asked how he could have a relationship with such a young girl. ‘It’s not her I’m annoyed with. It’s him,’ she said.

Tracy was more direct. She wanted to go straight to Rooney’s house and tell her what she thought of the relationship. ‘My ma’s been crying all night because of her. I could kill me fucking da.’

Carol Rooney was the least of her worries. Public unrest began to manifest itself with vigilante attacks on Jessbrook. Her car windows were smashed. People started sending her pornographic hate mail in the morning post. The gates to Jessbrook were vandalised. ‘Drugs bitch out’ was sprayed on the walls. In an attempt to give her side of the story, she spoke to the press, painting a rather bleak picture of her existence.

‘I still believe John had nothing to do with the murder. The papers have made him out to be a killer,’ she told the Sunday Business Post.

‘My life has been turned upside down, so much so that I can’t describe it. It’s just all gone. All that’s left for me to do is just die, then everyone will be happy. I’ve even lost my brothers and sisters. It kills me to think that my family wouldn’t even stand by me, even though I’ve done nothing wrong. You know last week a newspaper article said my life ended when the sheriff and police came, but my life really ended when Veronica Guerin was killed.’

Though her interview was polished, she could not explain her wealth. She carefully avoided mentioning the cash withdrawals, or where the money was now. ‘I’m not interested in what people think. The money came from gambling as far as I am concerned. I don’t believe John was involved in the drugs trade. If people believe that you can’t win money gambling there would be no bookies’ shops. Are the people of Ireland telling me that you can’t win money gambling? John even had limits placed on his bets in some bookies. I have never seen any evidence which made me believe that John was involved in drugs.’

Making herself out to be a victim, she said her separation was legitimate: ‘I wish it wasn’t because I still love him in some way. The media pressure has brought us back together again. Our marriage started to fall apart when we moved to Meath in 1994 because I was engrossed in my horses and he was into gambling. A lot of our problems were caused by the lack of space in the house. When John would show up, all my friends would be staying so we had no time to ourselves. In ´95 we called it a day because I had more time for my horses than I did for him. The separation agreement was that he would finish the construction of the centre. It was an unorthodox split up because we remained friends.’

Then, in a direct reference to Gilligan’s relationship with Rooney, she said: ‘John and I are separated; he is free to do his own thing.’

The interview lasted for three hours during which time a helicopter hovered above the centre carrying a film crew. Finally she avowed that she had never been a bad person.

‘I want to see Veronica Guerin’s killers caught. I watched her husband on
The Late Late Show
and felt the same as everyone else. I know he doesn’t want to hear that, but it’s the truth. I so believe that John had nothing to do with it. The papers have made him out to be a killer. The reason why I’m giving this interview is because papers are printing stories about me and John which are not true. I don’t have to prove anything to anyone. The media don’t know me so how can they write about me? The future holds nothing. I don’t think anyone wants to see me get justice. It’s as simple as that.’

The Criminal Assets Bureau attracted a great deal of controversy due to the anarchic laws empowered in it. Fachtna Murphy was acutely aware of this and refrained from prosecuting cases where there was little or no hard evidence to link cash to drug trafficking. But the powers invested in CAB still caused genuine concern among civil rights activists and people like Ó Siodhacháin, who was still in regular contact with Geraldine. He didn’t like CAB for ideological reasons more than anything else. In one of his many meetings with Geraldine, he advised her to speak with Michael Grimes in Cork. He was a man who would help, he told her.

Grimes was a spindly little man who revelled in trouble. He introduced himself as a tax expert—at other times he was a liquidator. ‘It depends on what day of the week you get me,’ he said. Without having any formal legal qualifications, he is revered for his highly tuned legal mind, which has struck the fear of God into those who have crossed swords with him. Geraldine, out of desperation, said she wanted to meet him. A week later, she did.

They met in his office in Cork. Grimes studied her case paperwork. He looked Ó Siodhacháin straight in the eye and said, ‘I can see the way their minds work.’

Grimes later said, ‘I reached the conclusion that she might have a claim for half the property, but in my view she didn’t because the money she used was his. On the face of it, she seemed hard done by, because she said she was separated from her beloved, though at that time she didn’t quite use the word beloved.’

Geraldine Gilligan didn’t know what to make of the eccentric Cork man but, left with no other choice, asked him to help.

‘Then she asked if I would look after John’s representation and my viewpoint on that was it was an English case, it dealt with English law, it was highly specialised and there was no point in involving Irish lawyers of any kind. She then asked me if I would go see him.’

She left the meeting content and dined with Ó Siodhacháin that evening, before catching the 6.30 p.m. train home. She didn’t know what to think of Grimes. ‘I don’t know if he’s mad or what,’ she said. Meanwhile Grimes went to see Gilligan in prison.

‘Belmarsh gave us our own room. You presume everything is bugged, so we wrote little notes to each other. His was, “I don’t fucking care if this room is bugged.”’

They discussed Gilligan’s case strategy, the CAB raid on Jessbrook and the murder.

‘As far as he was concerned, he was going to be out in three weeks, it was a terrible mistake,’ said Grimes.

‘I was quite blunt with him. I realised that even if I wanted to defend him, I wouldn’t last 20 minutes because nobody who disagreed with him got anywhere. He knew exactly what he was going to do, because he was totally innocent of everything and he never heard of people like Paddy Holland or Brian Meehan. Now when he tells you straight to your face that he never heard of these guys, well you know what you’re up against.’

Grimes subscribed to the belief that in court, people should never ask questions they don’t know the answers to. Gilligan struck Grimes as a dogged and determined person.

‘John had a habit of deciding something, which was totally unreal. The real problem with him and Geraldine is facts don’t influence anything. Once they decide something is true, well that’s the end of it. The fact that the facts scream to high heaven to the opposite is neither here nor there. John would say that it was really her property and it was her decision. And she would say you’d have to ask the boss. So between the two of them, you never got an answer to anything. Not that he would give you an answer to anything.’

Grimes, who speaks with an alarming bluntness, later concluded that Geraldine was the person he should talk to. ‘She was the cleverer of the two. John was plain stupid. John’s only answer to everything was, “I’ll bump him off.”’

Grimes set about devising a method to halt the CAB in its tracks.

Gilligan was in the act of fighting a losing battle at Belmarsh Magistrates’ Court. Customs and Excise were pressing ahead in conjunction with the gardaí. The murder inquiry arranged for Dunne to be flown to London to testify for Customs in a move also aimed at frightening the rest of the gang who were operating from the shadows. When Gilligan heard that one of his own was going to give evidence, he was dumbstruck. He didn’t really believe it was going to happen until Dunne took the stand. Gilligan watched from the dock in disbelief while Dunne told the judge that he never knew he was importing drugs.

‘I was not told what was in the containers. I was not told what was the weight of them. There was no discussion.’ It was comical. ‘There was something not quite right,’ he said with a degree of smugness.

Gilligan’s lawyer, Clare Montgomery, saw through this and tore the witness to shreds, prising apart his evidence.

The case lasted for three days. The media had arrived en masse. Many of the journalists assembled were startled to discover that Gilligan was a small man. He took no notice. He sat back smiling. Sometimes he fiddled with his glasses while generally surveying all about him. At other times, he stared up at the ceiling, leaning back on his bench to rest his arms behind his head. He was outwardly jovial.

On the third day, the chief prosecutor told the court that Dermot Cambridge, a van driver innocently duped into the conspiracy by Dunne, was refusing to travel to England to give evidence because he had received a number of threatening phone calls and was ‘frightened for his life’. Cambridge said anonymous callers were threatening to kill him, his girlfriend and his child.

Gilligan was remanded in custody until 20 February.

The Sunday Times announced to the world that Grimes planned to reopen Jessbrook a week after the committal hearing had ended. Grimes, by a miraculous stroke of coincidence, said he had been hired by Joseph Saouma to retrieve a IR£4 million loan given to Gilligan. Grimes had also, without anyone’s knowledge, been appointed by a British court as receiver to Gilligan’s assets, including Jessbrook and two houses in Dublin.

‘It is my intention to reopen the equestrian centre. It is the finest in Europe, it holds 2,800 people in an indoor arena,’ he said, adding that he never worked for Gilligan. The CAB didn’t know what to make of it all.

The Gilligans in the meantime were waging an all-out legal battle to stop the CAB. Immediately after the raid on Jessbrook, Geraldine sought a High Court injunction preventing the Bureau from selling off her property. The CAB contested the injunction but lost. It was a temporary setback. Seven days later, on 12 February, lawyers acting for Gilligan failed to prevent the State from appointing a receiver over his properties. It was another blow to the cartel. But Gilligan was granted permission to challenge the constitutionality of the Proceeds of Crime Act 1996.

The tide turned six days later when Geraldine initiated an appeal against the seizure of her property. Her case centred on her claim that she was not liable for Gilligan’s taxes.

‘If I was taxable, then every separated wife in the country would be taxable for their ex-husbands. It made no sense to me.’

Her lawyers argued that she was a married woman and that she and Gilligan were living as husband and wife at the time of the tax assessment. Because neither had opted for a separate tax assessment, it was her husband who was chargeable under the tax laws.