Murder at Lordship E-Book

Pat Marry

• Herausgeber: Allen & Unwin
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 447

Beschreibung

In January 2013, the nation was horrified when Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe was murdered as he carried out a routine cash-escort duty at the Lordship Credit Union in Dundalk, Co Louth. Aaron Brady, the chief suspect, fled to the United States where he built a new life for himself, starting a family. While in some ways he was careful to cover his tracks, his habit of bragging about the murder after a few drinks would eventually see him arrested and charged. Deported back to Ireland where he faced the prospect of a 40 year jail term, Brady coordinated a campaign of witness intimidation from his cell in Mountjoy Prison. Pat Marry, former colleague of Adrian Donohoe and the detective inspector in charge of the investigation, and journalist Robin Schiller take us inside the notorious case, describing the gardai's unprecedented collaboration with the FBI, the NYPD and Homeland Security which finally brought Brady to justice, following the lengthiest police inquiry and murder trial in the history of the Irish state. Filled with details not previously known to the public, Murder at Lordship is the definitive account of one of the most shocking crimes of this century.

Leseprobe

Also by Pat Marry

The Making of a Detective: A Garda’s Story of InvestigatingSome of Ireland’s Most Notorious Crimes

*

After being turned away by An Garda Síochána at 17 for being too young, Pat Marry joined the force eight years later. He went on to investigate some of Ireland’s most high profile cases, including the killings of Rachel O’Reilly and Garda Adrian Donohue. He retired in 2018 at the rank of Detective Inspector. In 2019 he published a memoir, The Making of a Detective.

Robin Schiller is a journalist for Mediahuis Ireland covering Independent.ie, the Irish Independent and the Sunday Independent.

First published in Great Britain in 2024 by Allen & Unwin

Copyright © Pat Marry and Robin Schiller, 2024

The moral right of Pat Marry and Robin Schiller to be identified as theauthor of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with theCopyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

All unattributed photographs featured in the picture section have been sourced by the authors.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Trade paperback ISBN 978 1 80546 122 7

E-Book ISBN 978 1 80546 123 4

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To all the members of An Garda Síochána whohave lost their lives in the line of duty

CONTENTS

Prologue – 25 January 2013: Murder of a Detective

1.  Policing Bandit Country

2.  A Pillar of the Community

3.  58 Seconds

4.  A Cross-Border Criminal Gang

5.  Key Personnel

6.  Rumours and Denials

7.  Suspects in the Wind

8.  ‘Imgunna Shoot a Policeman Haha’

9.  Lying Low in New York

10.  Enter Homeland Security

11.  The Breakthrough

12.  The Most Feared Man in Ireland

13.  ‘Keep Your Mouth Shut’

14.  Guilty Conscience

15.  The DPP Versus Aaron Brady

16.  A Campaign of Intimidation

17.  A Skilled and Practised Liar

18.  A Pictorial Admission of Guilt

19.  Holding out Hope

Acknowledgements

PROLOGUE

25 JANUARY 2013: MURDER OF A DETECTIVE

The four masked shadowy figures were crouched behind the wall of Lordship Credit Union car park, waiting patiently and out of sight for their moment to strike. One figure, wearing a dirty and soaked tracksuit as he stood out in the pouring rain, tightly held the long-barrelled shotgun in his hands as the convoy was about to leave. The credit union workers were transporting several thousand euro in cash and would make for an easy target. The gang’s only obstacle was the armed garda escort shadowing the employees, but they had planned for this; the shotgun was loaded and ready to use, while another raider was armed with a handgun. They were motivated by greed and were callously determined that nothing would stop them.

Suddenly, a dark-coloured Volkswagen Passat appeared from the main road and drove at speed towards the exit, its tyres screeching as it came to a sudden stop, blocking the convoy from leaving. It was the sign for the four robbers to move. Two of them vaulted over the four-foot wall and made their way directly and with purpose to the unmarked gardaescort car. Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe had stepped out of the passenger seat to establish what was happening, with his line of sight directed at the car blocking the exit. He didn’t even see the two masked men approaching out of the darkness from his right side.

The only visible detail on the first gunman’s face was his intense stare through the slits in his balaclava as he held the shotgun against his right shoulder, trained the firearm over the roof of the garda car and aimed the muzzle directly at the head of Adrian Donohoe. The masked man was intent on savagery and never said a word as his right index finger hovered over the trigger. No demands were made of the detective, and no warning was given. As the rain swept down on the dark credit union car park, he squeezed the trigger, applying the five pounds of pressure necessary to discharge the 12-gauge pump-action shotgun. A loud, thunderous bang erupted as he fired, discharging a cartridge containing some 250 lead pellets that left the muzzle of the shotgun at high speed.

Standing just seven feet away, Adrian Donohoe never stood a chance. He was struck on the right side of the face and dropped onto the wet tarmac beside his patrol car. Such was the speed and organisation of the attack that he didn’t even have a chance to reach for his weapon. It was still safely clipped into the holster on his hip. The recoil of the shotgun caught the masked gunman off guard and he stumbled back several feet, almost falling to the ground. He regained his balance and stood up before pointing the shotgun forward once again. The job wasn’t finished yet. They continued their violent mission, targeting the other armed detective and the volunteer staff in the car park. The raider with the shotgun this time focused his attention on Detective Garda Joe Ryan, who was sitting in the driver’s seat of the patrol car. Opening the door and training the firearm at the terrified detective’s head, the gunman shouted: ‘I’m going to fucking kill you, I’m going to shoot you. Give us the money.’ One of his accomplices had turned his attention to the car of Bernadette McShane, a credit union volunteer of 25 years, who was sitting in her Nissan Micra. He smashed the driver’s side window in on top of the traumatised worker, screaming at her: ‘Give me the money. Give me the fucking money.’ Another gang member focused on the Mazda being driven by Pat Bellew and secured a bag containing just under €7,000 in cash from the employee’s vehicle. Almost simultaneously, the four young, athletic men sprinted to their getaway car, which was still blocking the exit. They jumped in and its engine roared as it sped away from Lordship Credit Union and into the night. In just under a minute, the five-man gang had carried out a daring robbery that would shock the nation. In their murderous wake they had left Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe mortally wounded on the car-park ground. In those 58 seconds, they had also left his children fatherless, his wife a widow, and his local parish without a pillar of their community.

Over the next decade his colleagues at Dundalk Garda Station would lead an international manhunt for the killers that spanned three continents. The full resources of the Irish state were afforded to the murder inquiry with support from the Northern Irish security services, counter-terrorism officers in Australia, and federal agents in the United States. The suspects had fled to the far corners of the globe, boasting about their crimes in the bars of New York and living off their reputations as men to be feared, all while believing they were out of the reach of gardaí. But the investigation team were resolute, determined, and driven: they would never rest until they got justice for their murdered colleague.

1

POLICING BANDIT COUNTRY

With over 300 open crossings leading into a different jurisdiction, and an ambivalent attitude towards law enforcement passed down through generations, the border area has been one of the most difficult and dangerous areas of Ireland to police over the last 50 years. This wasn’t always the case, and for the first two-thirds of the 20th century towns like Dundalk in County Louth were policed like any other large provincial town in the country. The border, established in 1921 and dividing Ireland into two separate states, meant that there were higher rates of smuggling of illegal contraband, but the region was no more violent than any other garda district.

That all changed in the 1960s with the outbreak of the Troubles, the violent Northern Ireland conflict that spread south of the border and raged for 30 years. What started as a civil rights campaign over the treatment of Catholics in the North escalated into warfare, with the deployment of British troops to the region and the emergence of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). Known as the Provos, the terror group was formed in late 1969 following a split with the original IRA movement, and it adopted an approach of physical force republicanism, initially focused on defending Catholic communities but escalating to a guerrilla warfare campaign against the security forces by the 1970s.

A unique unit within the movement was the South Armagh Brigade, which became known for its militancy and independence, retaining a battalion structure throughout the conflict, and was the most active Provisional IRA unit during the Troubles. A senior figure within the brigade was Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy, who resided on a farm straddling both sides of the border in Armagh and Louth. During the conflict, he would also allegedly be elected a member of the IRA’s Army Council, linked to a bombing campaign in Britain and accused of stockpiling weapons imported from Libya.

The main base for the South Armagh Brigade was Crossmaglen, a small village with a predominantly nationalist community located three kilometres from the southern border. Despite a population of just 1,257 at the time, its proximity to the border, the rough terrain of the surrounding landscape, and a sense of rebellion stretching back centuries made the lawless enclave a stronghold for the Provisional IRA. The village became synonymous with much of the violence during the Troubles, and in August 1970 two Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers were killed by a booby-trapped bomb planted under a car near Crossmaglen. They were the first RUC officers killed by republicans during the conflict, and the incident set the tone for the area’s links to the ensuing bloodshed over the next decades. The Provos’ campaign in Crossmaglen escalated in 1971 after Harry Thornton, a 28-year-old sewage worker, was shot and killed by the British Army. The fatal incident led to heightened tensions in the village, with locals outraged at the killing of a civilian, providing new recruits to the republican movement and creating an even more hostile environment for security forces in the area.

From then until 1997, the South Armagh Brigade is estimated to have been responsible for the deaths of over 120 British soldiers and more than 40 members of the RUC, with many of the killings happening in Crossmaglen. In the same period, the RUC recorded more than 1,200 bombings and 1,550 shootings in a ten-mile radius of South Armagh. The region was branded ‘bandit country’ in 1974 by then Northern Ireland Secretary Mervyn Rees and became the most dangerous posting for members of the British Army. At one stage, soldiers stationed in and around the village outnumbered the local population, while elite paratroopers from the Special Air Service (SAS) were also deployed to try and combat the violence in the region. To add to the bloodshed, another dangerous dissident organisation was formed in 1974, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), which began targeting security forces in the North while also carrying out attacks on gardaí.

With the conflict escalating, the Irish government re-established the Special Criminal Court, first introduced under the Offences Against the State Act 1939 to prevent the IRA from subverting Irish neutrality during the Second World War. The court, composed of three judges and sitting without a jury, was reintroduced to prevent jurors being intimidated or swayed by the dissident campaign during the Troubles, and it remains in place to this day.

Just 18 kilometres south of Crossmaglen across the border is Dundalk, a large town that also became a hotbed of dissident activity. Gardaí in the division, which at the time also policed areas including Omeath, Carlingford, Drogheda and Ardee, became all too familiar with the violence of the Troubles in 1972. On the night of 21 September, the garda barracks was attacked by a mob of around 200 people armed with firebombs and other missiles. The group also tried to force entry into the station and only retreated after a detective discharged several shots from a machine gun over their heads. Patrol cars and the private vehicles of gardaí were firebombed, and the army was called in to disperse the mob. It was one of the first major incidents linked to the Troubles involving Dundalk gardaí, but it wouldn’t be the last.

The area was also vulnerable to attacks from loyalist paramilitaries, highlighted by a no-warning bomb blast in 1975. Six days before Christmas, a car bomb was detonated at Kay’s Tavern on Crowe Street, resulting in the deaths of two civilians. In a coordinated attack hours later, a bar in the village of Silverbridge, close to Crossmaglen, was targeted and three men, including a 14-year-old boy, were shot dead. The atrocity was carried out by members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a loyalist terror organisation operating during the Troubles.

Two years later Dundalk gardaí were involved in investigating the abduction and murder of a British Army intelligence officer, Captain Robert Nairac, who was forcefully removed from a pub in South Armagh by the Provisional IRA during an undercover operation. He was brought from the bar in Dromintee across the border to Ravensdale and subjected to a violent interrogation during which he was beaten with weapons before being shot dead. Although several people have been convicted in relation to the incident, his body has never been recovered.

Gardaí in Dundalk were also involved in the investigation into the 1979 Narrow Water Ambush, across the waters of Carlingford Lough in the County Down village of Warrenpoint. The guerrilla attack by the Provos killed 18 British soldiers and injured 6 others. During the atrocity the soldiers, believing they were under attack from the southern side, opened fire. A civilian, William Hudson, had gone to the Omeath shoreline to see what was happening when he was hit by a bullet and died. Three days later there was large-scale sectarian violence in the town during a European Cup game between Belfast team Linfield and Dundalk at Oriel Park, during which the away fans rioted, resulting in some 100 civilians and gardaí being injured.

Members of the public and gardaí were at constant risk of serious injury or death as the sectarian conflict raged on both sides of the border. Several members of An Garda Síochána would be killed in bombings and shot dead in bank robberies, the latter being carried out under the veil of fundraising for the republican movement. In 1985, Sergeant Patrick Morrissey became the first garda member to be murdered in the Dundalk district during the conflict in a killing carried out by dissident republicans. On the afternoon of 27 June, 49-year-old Sergeant Morrissey was on duty when he was notified of an armed robbery at the local employment exchange in Ardee. He and two colleagues set up a checkpoint in the village of Tallanstown to intercept the raiders. They came across two men on a motorbike and gave chase, with the bike crashing into a car at Rathbrist Cross. The raiders, Michael McHugh from Crossmaglen and Noel Callan from Castleblayney in County Monaghan, were both connected to the INLA. They fled the scene on foot and were pursued by Sergeant Morrissey. As the officer caught up with the men, he was initially shot and wounded by McHugh, who then stood over Sergeant Morrissey, a married father of four, and shot him in the head.

The raiders were later arrested during a major search operation involving the army and tried before the Special Criminal Court in Dublin. They were charged with capital murder, a special provision relating to the murder of a garda or prison officer acting in the course of their duty, for which the punishment on conviction was death. Both men were found guilty and McHugh, then aged 23, shouted at the judges after the verdict: ‘Victory to the INLA. You are pro-British.’ He was initially sentenced to death for the murder, but this was commuted to 40 years’ penal servitude by then President Patrick Hillery, seven days before the execution was due to take place. For his courage and heroism, Sergeant Morrissey was posthumously awarded the Scott Gold Medal, the highest honour in An Garda Síochána. The death penalty was abolished under the Criminal Justice Act 1990 and replaced with a life sentence, with a minimum period of 40 years’ imprisonment. The legislation, which also has special provisions for politically motivated murders of the head of a foreign state or member of government, remains the most serious offence on the statute books. McHugh and Callan would be the last people convicted of capital murder in the 20th century.

The Provisional IRA announced its ceasefire in 1994, and its political wing, Sinn Féin, became involved in the Northern Ireland peace process, eventually leading to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. The accord also provided for the early release of prisoners jailed for crimes related to paramilitary groups as long as they agreed to an unequivocal ceasefire. The agreement ended most of the violence of the Troubles, although splinter groups such as the Real IRA rejected peace and were intent on continuing a violent campaign. On 15 August 1998, the group was responsible for the deadliest single incident of the conflict when it detonated a car bomb outside the courthouse in Omagh, County Tyrone. The bombing killed 29 people and injured over 200 others, leading to condemnation both nationally and internationally.

The Real IRA didn’t relent in its campaign, and the following year 10 suspected members of the group were arrested at a firearms training camp in Stamullen, County Meath. One of those detained was Dubliner Alan Ryan, who was later jailed by the Special Criminal Court for receiving training from other persons in the use of weapons. He subsequently moved up the ranks to become the leader of the Real IRA in Dublin, before he was shot dead in September 2012.

Dundalk became a central area of operations for the dissident group, who were carrying out attacks on security services in Northern Ireland. Gardaí in the district, supported by counter-terror units, were pivotal in curbing the threats posed by the terror group at the beginning of the 21st century. In one operation in 2010, a dissident arms dump was discovered in Dunleer, County Louth, which included a homemade mortar, three kilos of TNT, bomb-making equipment, a pipe bomb, and ammunition. It highlighted the constant threat posed by dissidents operating in the border area long after the conflict had ended.

One investigator with vast experience of policing the border region in the post-Troubles era was Pat Marry. Graduating from the Garda Training College in 1986, he was first stationed in Dublin before being transferred to Clones in County Monaghan. Upon being promoted to detective sergeant, he moved to Balbriggan Garda Station in north Dublin and led the investigation into the high-profile murder of Rachel Callaly, a mother of two who was killed at her home in Naul. Her husband, Joe O’Reilly, would later be convicted of her murder and is currently serving a life sentence. Upon further promotion, Marry served two years as detective inspector in Drogheda before moving to Dundalk Garda Station in 2010, overseeing the gardaí’s response to serious crime in the area. While the violence of the Troubles had dissipated, splinter groups such as the Real IRA remained active in the region. Speaking about policing the region, Detective Inspector Marry says:

In my two years in Clones I got a fair taste of border life with people from the town and surrounding areas. At the time there were only two pubs in Clones that gardaí were comfortable drinking in. There was a blanket of suspicion and pure silence with people having to encounter the gardaí. Dundalk was no different, and in fact worse. This was because of the political factors at play in the area, while 34 border crossings in the district of Dundalk alone made it impossible to police. Did the criminal dissident fraternity know this? Policing was difficult and the gardaí would regularly chase a car to the border but weren’t allowed to follow and the criminal would get away.

Dundalk was where I first heard the term ‘IED’ [improvised explosive device]. These were explosive devices which dissident republicans engaged in making. These people were highly skilled fabricators, and it was clear some of them were trained in chemistry, as evidence was present of mercury fulminate in detonators. These people took an innovative approach to the technical issues; they used airbags as gas generators to propel the devices. They used plastic pipes as the bomb body, easily shattered. They had a good command of multifunctional digital rail timers. The dissidents were very active between 2008 and 2012, placing roadside IEDs to murder mostly PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) officers. I got to know what a mark 21 IED monitor rocket was as, when I was not long in Dundalk, in November 2010, one was discovered in a roadside near the border. It was with the brave work of both past and present detectives from Dundalk, and support from colleagues in the Special Detective Unit and intelligence from the Garda Crime and Security branch, that individuals were identified and associated with this new group, the Real IRA.

By 2005 the British government had announced a full demilitarisation plan, and it closed all army bases in South Armagh two years later. The full responsibility of policing the area was handed over to the PSNI, which had replaced the RUC in 2001. While many of the landmarks from the Troubles were removed from Crossmaglen, the heavily fortified police station surrounded by high fences made of corrugated iron remains in the centre of the village and is a reminder of the violence that raged for decades. Located directly behind the barracks are the grounds of Crossmaglen Rangers, whose pitches were used to land army helicopters during the conflict. The club would become one of the most successful Gaelic football clubs in the country at the turn of the century.

Despite efforts by many to move on from the area’s past, the historical prominence of the IRA on both sides of the border would have an impact on the generations to come, with a deep distrust of authority remaining to this day. ‘The Fighting Men of Crossmaglen’, a rebel song lamenting the area’s fight against the British forces, remains popular among younger generations in the village. There also continues to be an especially malevolent attitude towards informers, colloquially referred to as ‘touts’, with the code of silence of omertà deeply engrained in the community. One investigator who spent most of his career policing the border region said of this: ‘People in the area would be subjected to severe threats, or threats to life, if found to be speaking with the authorities about criminal activity of any nature. There are a lot of decent people there, but there are sections that would have an extreme ambivalence towards gardaí, sympathies towards certain groups, and vested interests in areas such as smuggling.’ Another investigator, when explaining the attitude specifically towards those who cooperate with law enforcement in the South Armagh village, said: ‘There is a saying among certain groups in Crossmaglen: the only thing worse than a paedophile is a tout.’ Cross-border smuggling and diesel laundering – the process by which dye is removed from discounted agricultural diesel and sold as regular fuel at an inflated price – became the most lucrative forms of criminality in the area, with Crossmaglen a key location for both. Crime groups involved in robberies and burglaries would also take advantage of the border to cross between jurisdictions without fear of being pursued. Gardaí in Dundalk had to deal with not just their own local criminals, but also those from the North who would cross south for their criminal exploits, with uniformed gardaí and detectives attached to the crime unit at the forefront of efforts to stop them.

2

A PILLAR OF THE COMMUNITY

One of the members of the crime unit in Dundalk tasked with investigating violent gangs and dissident republican groups was Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe. Born on 14 January 1972, to Hugh and Peggy, he grew up on the family farm in Kilnaleck, a small village in County Cavan. Adrian was the eldest and had five siblings: Mary, Alan, Colm, Anne, and Martin. He attended St Patrick’s College in the village, where he was a model student. He was also an accomplished Gaelic footballer, playing in midfield and at forward for the school’s team while also lining out for local club Crosserlough GFC. In 1989 he scored four points from midfield as the club won that year’s minor championship, and a month later he fisted the winning goal in injury time as Crosserlough won the U-21 title. The following year he played on the school team that made it to the semi-final of the MacRory Cup and sat his Leaving Certificate exams that summer. His footballing ability was also recognised at inter-county level, where he represented both the Cavan minor and U-21 teams.

In 1994 he applied to join An Garda Síochána and departed for the training college in Templemore, County Tipperary, becoming a sworn member of the force on 28 September 1995. His siblings looked up to him, both literally and metaphorically. Standing at 6 feet 4 inches, he was a large presence and described by those who knew him as a gentle giant, and Colm and Martin later followed his career path by also joining the guards. Upon graduating from Templemore, with the reg number 26222F, he was allocated to Dundalk Garda Station and moved to the north-east coast. Despite the three-hour round journey back home, Adrian never missed family occasions and made a point of returning for the many gatherings back in Kilnaleck. The following March another trainee, Darren Kirwan, was placed on Adrian’s unit. The two young recruits became close friends and later joined St Patrick’s GAA club, known as ‘the Pats’. While in the Garda College Adrian had also met Caroline Deloughery, a trainee from the coastal village of Kilkee in County Clare, who was also later transferred to Dundalk and worked in the immigration unit. The pair began dating, later marrying and having two children, Amy and Niall. The family lived in Lordship, a small village on the Cooley Peninsula overlooked by the Slievenaglogh Mountains and looking out onto the shore of Dundalk Bay.

Around 500 people live in the village of Lordship, which sits on the outskirts of Dundalk on the R173, known as the Carlingford Road, that loops around the Cooley Peninsula. The village has several cafés and shops dotted around it, while St Patrick’s GAA club is located at the heart of the parish and close to where the Donohoes lived. Adrian became a central part of the community, playing for the senior team while also helping to coach the under-age footballers. In 2003 he won a county medal with the Pats, and that same year he was appointed as a detective to the crime unit. His and Caroline’s children were enrolled in Bellurgan national school, a short drive along the R173 towards Dundalk, where Adrian would give talks to the children about the role of gardaí and the importance of road safety. The school sits directly across from Lordship Credit Union, an old single-storey building facing out onto the Carlingford Road. Its large car park is surrounded by four stone walls, around four feet in height, with the rear wall facing onto fields with rough terrain leading to the shoreline of the bay. While one of the smaller credit unions in the area, it provides an important financial service for the local communities in Bellurgan, Lordship, and Jenkinstown. After being moved to the crime unit, Detective Garda Donohoe worked under Detective Inspector Marry, who had command of serious crime in the Dundalk district. Recalling the man with whom he worked on a daily basis, Detective Inspector Marry says:

Adrian was an exceptional detective, but he was much more than a garda. He lived his life giving to others and was embedded in the local area, a real pillar of the community. GAA was his love, apart from his family, whom he adored, and he was an exceptional husband and father loved by all and highly respected. The Donohoe family, both in Cavan and Louth, were well known and well respected.

As far as work went, I always found Adrian to be very aware of his job and his interactions with dissidents and the criminal fraternity. He knew them all and he pursued criminals without fear, favour or malice towards them. He was someone who, when tasked with a job by myself, would always do it within the timeframe necessary. His attention to detail was exceptional and his report writing was excellent. I didn’t regularly socialise with the detectives, and I mainly knew Adrian from a work perspective. In December 2012, we all went on a night out to the dogs in Dundalk where we placed bets, had some food and pints. I was sitting beside Adrian and we engaged in chit-chat, and I could see how much of a decent guy he was. That night at the same dog meeting were a cohort of border criminals who had gathered not far from our table, and we had no doubt they were trying to intimidate us. Adrian and some of the detectives paid them a visit and asked them to leave, which they did. They would later become of particular interest to gardaí in the area. Adrian was a decent human being with an appetite for all things good: family, community, and the job of being a detective.

Outside the metropolitan area of Dublin, the Dundalk garda district was one of the busiest in the country, as it dealt with dissident crime, drug-related shootings, smuggling, and robbery gangs that exploited the border. At that time there were several high-profile crimes in the area, including the murder of Irene White in April 2005. The 43-year-old mother of three was stabbed 34 times in a frenzied attack after answering the door to her home on the Demesne Road in Dundalk. A year later drug dealer Paul Rea was shot dead at Marley’s Lane in Drogheda, a murder inquiry which was also overseen by Detective Inspector Marry and his team. There was also a criminal inquiry into historic allegations of sexual assault against Michael Shine at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, while detectives were investigating the cold-case murder of Ciara Breen, who was aged 17 when she disappeared from her home in Dundalk in 1997.

Gangland criminality in Dublin would also spill out of the capital and up to the border region. In March 2012, Dubliners Joseph Redmond and Anthony Burnett were found shot dead in a burnt-out car in Ravensdale Park, a forested area within a kilometre of the Northern Ireland border. The two men had been lured to the secluded area in a double-cross after falling foul of Dublin criminals. The Real IRA and other dissident groups also continued to hold a presence in the region and were the targets of many investigations by Dundalk gardaí. Detective Inspector Marry said that the work of his colleagues helped solve many of the crimes while they dealt with the ever-present threats of dissident criminals:

It was the tireless work from the detectives in Dundalk, Adrian Donohoe being one of them, that kept these dangerous dissidents at bay by constant coalitions, intelligence, and active policing, including regularly stopping and searching these individuals. I relied on a handful of detectives to keep me informed of what was new or concerning with the dissidents. The Irish public don’t know how the detectives from Dundalk, with their dedication and knowledge, saved lives and recovered bombs, firearms, and the proceeds of crime while bringing very dangerous characters before the courts. Detective Garda Donohoe was a very skilled investigator and he knew each and every dissident. He was an invaluable detective and servant of the state. The border was then a very difficult region to police; diesel laundering was rife and cigarette smuggling also. These activities were very profitable and generated huge sums of money for dissident activity.

As the financial crisis gripped the country and led to increased crime rates, police agencies on both sides of the border had to deal with a spate of armed robberies. In a two-year period, between 2011 and 2013, gardaí and the PSNI investigated 12 armed robberies that all had a similar modus operandi. In many of the crimes, gangs used the border to escape from police in one jurisdiction, knowing they couldn’t be pursued. One of these raids happened on 5 August 2011, when Lordship Credit Union was targeted. John Kenwright was working in the branch that night and in charge of transporting the cash takings to the local bank in Dundalk. Credit unions in the area had been seen as a soft touch, with mostly volunteer employees tasked with transporting thousands of euros. A decision had been made that they would be shadowed by armed detectives to offer protection and ensure that the staff could safely deposit the large sums they were carrying.

That night, after the other staff had left, Mr Kenwright sat in his Toyota Corolla as he waited for the armed escort to arrive. The armed garda on the cash escort that night was Detective Garda Donohoe, but the credit union was hit before the gardaí got there. Shortly after the employee sat into his car, a black Audi A3 drove at speed from the Dundalk direction through the credit union gates and reversed towards the entrance door where he was parked. Two masked men got out and one, holding a shotgun, shouted at him: ‘Give us the money.’ The terrified credit union worker feared for his life as the firearm was pointed in his face. The gunman then ran to the passenger-side door, smashing the window and reaching in to grab the money bag before jumping back into the Audi, which sped out of the car park. The raid was well-planned and meticulously executed, netting the gang over €22,500 in cash in just 27 seconds.

After the gang fled, John Kenwright called the emergency services and relayed what had happened. ‘I’ve just been robbed outside the credit union in Lordship,’ he told the garda operator before confirming that money was taken from the car. In a statement later given to gardaí, he described the raiders as youngish, aged in their early 20s, having ‘fairly local accents’, being of average height and of stocky build. He also said that the weapon produced was a sawn-off shotgun and that the getaway car had a Northern Irish registration plate. Detective Gardaí Stacey Linnane and Andy Barron made their way to the scene that night and took the initial information from the injured party. The Audi A3 was later recovered burnt out in the Flagstaff area, a remote location across the border in County Down, and investigations established that the car had been stolen in a creeper burglary earlier that month.

While inquiries were being carried out into that crime, a similar robbery took place nearby several weeks later. The racecourse in Dundalk was and remains a popular Friday-night venue for local punters and once again drew a sizeable crowd for the racing on 28 October 2011. Fionnan McCoy was a bookmaker working at the track who had a relatively successful night. The racing finished shortly after 9 p.m. and around 25 minutes later he was walking through the car park with £1,725 and €6,825 in cash. As he made his way towards the main entrance of the stadium, two masked men, who had been crouching behind a vehicle, emerged in front of him. One was armed with an iron bar and the other was holding a double-barrelled shotgun. Mr McCoy was threatened before being forced to hand over his profits from the night’s racing. The raiders then fled to a waiting grey Audi car, with two men getting into the front and another lying across the back seat, before it drove off. As the bookmaker attempted to give chase, he noticed that the raiders had dropped the shotgun while fleeing the scene. Gardaí were alerted and Mr McCoy later told them that both suspects were of average height and wore balaclavas. Detective Garda Donohoe was tasked with investigating both robberies, and his inquiries would lead him to a cross-border crime group.

In a five-month period the following year, 10 armed robberies were carried out on a number of financial institutions and shops in Louth and Armagh. On 9 September 2012, a cash-in-transit van was robbed at the Ballymascanlon Hotel, just a four-minute drive from Lordship Credit Union. Workers from a private security firm were collecting cash from the premises when they were approached by a lone man armed with a hammer, who threatened them before fleeing the scene with a cash box. On 6 October, the Esso garage in Omeath was targeted by a four-man gang armed with a hammer and a pole, during which a worker was struck in the face. On 10 October, McKevitt’s Filling Station in Newry, County Armagh, was hit and would be targeted again less than two months later. On 5 November, an establishment at Morgan Fuels in Ravensdale was robbed. The gang fled with less than €1,000 while an employee was also shot in the knee by one raider brandishing a firearm. On 23 November, the credit union in Forkhill, County Armagh, was raided when three men, one armed with a black handgun, hit the premises and forced workers to hand over cash. The same branch was once again robbed on 7 December by two men, one armed with an orange-handled hammer. A week later the Spar store in Newry was the scene of a robbery while the Riverstown Post Office in Louth was another premises to be targeted twice in a short space of time, once on 14 November and again on 11 January 2013. In the second raid a stolen car was used by the gang, who were armed with a hammer and a gun. While not all the crimes were carried out by the same gang, gardaí believed that several, including the robberies at Lordship, the Dundalk racecourse, Morgan Fuels, and Forkhill, were all the work of the same criminal network. While in most of the raids security staff and employees escaped physical harm, the crime at Morgan Fuels showed that the criminal gangs had no qualms about inflicting violence and using their firearms.

Up until that year, district detectives had been equipped with the Israeli-designed Uzi, a powerful submachine gun capable of penetrating body armour with an effective range of 100 metres. But in 2012 garda management decided to withdraw the weapon from use, stating that it no longer fulfilled requirements, and detectives were instead issued the Swiss SIG Sauer 9mm semi-automatic pistol. The decision was heavily criticised by gardaí, not least those in the border areas, with Detective Inspector Marry sending an internal submission to his superiors on how the withdrawal of the Uzi would impact frontline services. At the time he had planned to initiate armed checkpoints to enhance anti-terrorist operations along the border, but he submitted that this would now be greatly restricted. In his report he stated: ‘The border area around Dundalk is unique both in terrain and dissident activity. Authorising detectives in Dundalk to use the Uzi machine gun in limited circumstances, in particular on checkpoint duty and in doing searches, is something that has to be seriously considered.’ Speaking about the withdrawal of the submachine gun, he says:

It was all over the newspapers that the Uzi was withdrawn from detectives along the border. Representative bodies highlighted this, and how right they were that their members were being put in a vulnerable position. The authorities replied by stating that there was now adequate armed cover with the newly formed regional support units. At that time there were two regional support unit hubs, one in Letterkenny in County Donegal and the other in Dundalk. When the unit in Louth were resting, the Letterkenny unit would be working, so the unit in Donegal would have to respond to an armed incident in Louth and vice versa. Figure it out: there was no armed cover in the Louth divisions for vast periods of time.

I remember one incident where the gardaí in Drogheda stopped a car at 5 a.m. and discovered the lone driver had a shotgun between the consul in the car. When questioned, he drove off at speed. The gardaí found the car parked up in the quay area of Drogheda and on approach the occupant of the car discharged a shot. The uniform car pulled back and requested armed assistance. There was no armed assistance available, no regional support unit. I was contacted and I requested that command control in Dublin be contacted, and they sent an armed unit to Drogheda from Naas. Eventually the regional support unit gathered, having been contacted. They conducted the approach to the car and on doing so discovered the body of the lone occupant. He had taken his own life with the shotgun. It’s all very well saying there are regional support units to deal with armed incidents, when in reality that degree of cover was not there and detectives on the border were vulnerable. The training and the refresher courses for the Uzi users, which happened three times a year, were costly and this move to revoke the gun was purely to save money on the garda budget.

Just two weeks after the second Riverstown Post Office robbery, a criminal gang would once again show their predisposition to violence, but this time on a cold, calculated, and appalling scale.

3

58 SECONDS

The evening of 25 January 2013 started like any other normal work night for Adrian Donohoe. He left the family home in Lordship, saying goodbye to his wife and children, before making the short car journey across to Dundalk Garda Station. He hadn’t been due to work that night but, true to his selfless nature, filled in for a colleague at the last moment to ensure there were enough armed members to police the vast region the station covered, including the busy town centre and rural hinterlands. His detective duties required him to wear plain clothes, as opposed to the operational uniform worn by many frontline members. Dressed in a white checked shirt, black trousers supported by a black leather belt, dark laced boots, and a black zipped jacket, he set off from home into the rainy evening.

His first task that night would be to shadow the credit union officials transporting cash takings from the four branches across the Cooley Peninsula and safely escort them to the bank in Dundalk town centre. There was good reason for the armed escort following the previous robbery at the credit union in 2011. The branches were seen as a lucrative target, with workers transporting tens of thousands of euros in cash on any given Friday night. That night Adrian would take part in the escort with Detective Garda Joe Ryan, an experienced member of the local crime unit. At the time Joe Ryan had more than two decades’ service in the guards, having joined in 1991. He was first stationed in the sub-district of Dromad before moving to the district headquarters in Dundalk three years later. In 1995 he was transferred to the crime unit before being appointed a detective in 1998.

That evening Joe Ryan took up duty at 6 p.m. and was catching up on some paperwork when his colleague arrived in the office to begin their first job of the night. Adrian clipped his garda issued SIG Sauer P226 semi-automatic pistol into the black leather holster on his right-hand side, and at 8.05 p.m. they left the station in their unmarked patrol car, a grey 06-registered Toyota Avensis. Their call sign for the night, to make them identifiable to other garda units, was Papa Bravo One-Six. The weather conditions that night were miserable as heavy rain and wind swept across the Cooley Peninsula. The detectives set out into the dark January night and would first head to Omeath Credit Union, then travel to the branches in Carlingford, Cooley, and Lordship, before escorting the convoy to Dundalk. Detective Garda Ryan was driving the patrol car with his colleague acting as observer in the passenger seat. They stopped off at Ballymascanlon service station on the way to get petrol, while Detective Garda Donohoe went in to get a packet of chocolate peanuts and a bottle of water. As they pulled out of the service station they were contacted by Garda Kevin Cleary, stationed in Omeath, enquiring if they were on their way. Detective Garda Ryan apologised to his colleague for the delay and said they would be there shortly, making their way over the Cooley Mountains towards Omeath.

It was a busy night in the garda district, and as they drove through the mountains in the torrential rain they received a callout over their radio from the garda control room about an incident in the town centre. The cash escort was mandatory, and the detectives informed control that they would be unable to attend the other scene. The adverse conditions were also causing issues on the roads around the peninsula. As the gardaí reached the post office at Jenkinstown, they came across heavy flooding and barely managed to pass through the roadway. Detective Garda Ryan checked his rear-view mirror to ensure they weren’t being followed by any motorists who could come into difficulty with the deluge, but nobody else was in sight.

In Omeath, Gardaí Alan Lynch and Tony Golden, who later lost his life in an unrelated tragic incident, decided to begin the escort and meet their colleagues along the way so as not to delay matters. Deirdre Campbell was working in Omeath Credit Union that night and was in charge of transporting the cash to her colleagues in Cooley. She placed roughly €3,500 in cash as well as cheques into a laptop case and got into her car to begin the 7 kilometre journey to Carlingford. She was shadowed by the marked garda patrol vehicle and would later recall that she didn’t notice anything unusual as they drove along the windy coastal road running alongside Carlingford Lough.

While the cars were in transit, a group of men were getting themselves into position several kilometres away near the Lordship branch. At 8.49 p.m. a car travelling along the R173 slowly drove past the building and turned right on to New Road, a small lane leading towards the shoreline and on to lands directly behind the credit union. A minute after entering the laneway the car returned and drove back along the R173. Out of sight from the main road and credit union CCTV cameras, four young men wearing dark clothing and balaclavas had emerged from the car. They were also heavily armed, with two carrying loaded weapons. The gang forced their way into a barn on land nearby to keep themselves out of the tumultuous weather conditions as they waited. As the minutes passed, they moved themselves into position at the credit union’s rear wall, making sure to conceal their presence from the view of the car park. Another car integral to their plan was being put into position near the credit union, watching it from a distance. Everything was now in place, and all the gang had to do was wait for their target.

Detective Gardaí Ryan and Donohoe would have been unaware of the sinister developments taking place as they caught up with the escort at Cooley at 8.45 p.m. The grey Avensis pulled into the credit union car park, where the armed detectives exchanged pleasantries with their uniformed colleagues, discussing the torrential weather conditions. Garda Lynch also informed them that the licence plate on the front of their Avensis had partially come off. Detective Garda Donohoe got out of the car to inspect the damage and adjusted the plate before Gardaí Lynch and Golden left to let the armed officers take up the escort. Mary Hanlon was working in the Cooley branch that night and was responsible for transporting the cash and cheques to Dundalk from the three credit unions. In total four bags, containing €27,375 in cash made up of notes and just under €90,000 in cheques, were put into her black Nissan Qashqai. While the workers would on occasion chat with the gardaí ensuring they could travel safely, it wasn’t a night to stand outside on ceremony. She signalled to the detectives that she was ready to go, and the two cars set off at 9.12 p.m. towards their penultimate stop.

Working in Lordship Credit Union that evening was Pat Bellew, a retired engineer, along with Bernadette McShane, who had volunteered there for 25 years. The branch had closed its doors at 8.30 p.m. and the employees spent the next hour balancing reports and sorting out cash. Ms McShane was looking after the takings that night and placed just under €7,000 in cash as well as cheques into a zip-locked AIB bag. The cash float had initially been reduced following the previous raid and had only been increased again in recent weeks. Security measures put in place after that raid also meant that the two employees had to wait inside the building until the garda escort arrived.

At 9.26 p.m. Pat Bellew looked up at the monitors in the back-office, which displayed a real-time feed from the cameras overlooking the credit union car park. Two cars had just pulled in, and at the same time he received a phone call from Mary Hanlon telling them that they were outside. ‘We’ll be out now shortly,’ he told her as he keyed in the alarm code and secured the building while turning off the car-park lights. The Nissan Qashqai and Toyota Avensis were stationary outside as both workers exited the building, gesturing to the convoy while making their way towards their own cars. Bernadette McShane had parked her red Nissan Micra facing the wall that looked out onto the main road, and she waited a moment to start the ignition so that the convoy knew it would be Pat Bellew joining them that night. He had made his way to his gold Mazda parked on the opposite side of the car park, facing the wall that looked out on to land and fields. Mr Bellew opened the rear door of the car and placed a laptop bag with documents in the back, before getting into the driver’s seat and putting the cash bag down beside him. He got into the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition to join the convoy. The three cars began slowly making their way out of the car park towards their final destination that night. They never made that journey.

As the cars were about to drive out, a dark-coloured Volkswagen Passat, which had been watching from a distance, sped towards the credit union from the Carlingford direction and parked across the exit, blocking it with perfect timing. Mary Hanlon would later tell gardaí that the driver, who she initially believed was a woman with blonde hair wearing a black beanie hat, had their eyes fixed straight ahead and their hands tightly gripped on the steering wheel. Simultaneously, the four masked men that had taken up their positions in the field vaulted over the credit union wall beside Pat Bellew’s car. It was obvious to him that a robbery was now taking place and they were being hit.