Cocaine Wars (38 page)

The Gardaí at Ballyfermot Garda Station were tasked with handling the investigation into Anthony Cannon's murder. The probe was led by Superintendent John Quirke, with Detective Inspector Peter O'Boyle leading the plain-clothes officers who would investigate the shooting on a day-today basis. The investigation is still ongoing and it is known that Anthony Cannon had started to encroach on the drug-dealing territory in Dublin 22 that had once been controlled by Karl Breen, prior to his (Breen's) jail sentence.

Rattigan had seen ‘Fat' Freddie and his mob cannibalise a lot of his territory in Crumlin and Drimnagh because of the gang's sheer size and the fact that it had far more muscle than his side. Rattigan ordered his associates to broaden their horizons and to expand in order to keep making money. This was obviously a very dangerous tactic, because areas are traditionally well defined, and a gang only starts dealing in rival areas if it is prepared to fight for the privilege. The Rattigan gang simply did not have the appetite or the strength to fight anyone, so Cannon was playing a dangerous game. The man suspected of ordering the hit on Cannon is a well-known figure in organised crime in Dublin. He has been responsible for at least three gangland murders over the last decade. He was implicated in the murder of suspected informer Keith Ennis, who was followed to Amsterdam in March 2009, dismembered and put in a suitcase before being thrown into a canal. When the thirty-four-year-old finished a jail sentence, he took over Karl Breen's former business in Ballyfermot. He also became embroiled in a feud in Dublin 22, in which several men were murdered. Anthony Cannon was blamed for an assassination attempt on this man in 2006 in Tallaght, in which the crime lord was hit in the arm. Cannon owed him money and decided to murder him rather than pay the debt, but the hit did not go down as planned. Cannon always knew that revenge for that botched hit was on the cards at some point, and once he and other gang members started dealing in Ballyfermot, there was only one way things were going to go. If it wasn't the thirty-four-year-old that got Cannon, somebody else would have. It can't have failed to have struck Thompson and his gang that he was the last remaining rock in Rattigan's crumbling foundation, especially because Cannon had shot at ‘Fat' Freddie's grandparents' house, which was like putting a red rag in front of a bull. When you live by the sword you invariably die by it, and Cannon knew that as well as anyone. He probably knew that it was inevitable that he would breathe his last breath staring down the barrel of a gun.

With McNally jailed and Cannon dead, the Rattigan gang had effectively been defeated. There were still members on the streets, but they were only concerning themselves with moving drugs around the place and had no real interest in taking up arms against the Thompson gang. According to prison officer sources, when Rattigan heard of the murder of his right-hand man, he was deeply depressed. He put on a brave face and continued to direct operations from his prison cell but he must have privately known that the game was up and that his power base was destroyed, probably forever. It might have been different if he was on the streets himself, taking the fight to the other side, but there was only so much you could do in jail. Even if he managed to get off on the Declan Gavin murder, it would be 2012 before he was a free man. Probably by then he would be forgotten, subsumed by the even more ruthless next generation of criminals who were already starting to smell blood and wanted to take over his patch for themselves.

With Gardaí quietly confident that the worst of the feud was now over and that a victory of sorts was in sight, the boys in blue also got their chance of a first ever feud-related murder conviction. This chance came when Craig White appeared before Dublin's Central Criminal Court charged with the murder of Noel Roche on the Clontarf Road on 15 November 2005. The trial kicked off on 14 July 2009, in front of Mr Justice George Birmingham. Senior Counsel Anthony Sammon told the jury during his opening statement that they would hear that on the night of the murder, Noel Roche left the Point Depot with friends suddenly at around 9.30 p.m. in a Ford Mondeo. A stolen Peugeot drove up alongside the Mondeo near the junction of Seafield Road and Clontarf Road, and a number of shots were fired, killing Roche. Some time later, a lady on nearby Furry Park Road saw two men abandon the Peugeot. The Gardaí arrived and the vehicle was forensically examined. Evidence was found linking twenty-three-year-old Craig White to the car. Sammon continued that a brown paper bag containing a balaclava, a gun, a tea towel and gloves was found in the rear seat of the Peugeot. White's fingerprints were found on the bag and his DNA was also recovered from the handles of the bag. Two gloves that were found along Furry Park Road both contained White's DNA, and fibres on the gloves could also be linked to the abandoned Peugeot. A container of petrol was found in the footwell of the car, and Sammon said that the inference could be drawn that there had been the intention to burn the car and destroy all the evidence. He said that the bullet casings found at the murder scene could also be linked to the Glock semi-automatic pistol found in the car. While there were no actual witnesses to the murder, the jury would be shown a video taken by an American tourist on a passing bus. The jury was told that Eddie Rice, who had been driving the Mondeo when it was ambushed by White, would not be giving evidence. The prosecution also made the point that White was involved in Roche's murder as part of a joint enterprise. It was not necessary to establish whether White had actually pulled the trigger or just driven the car. Sammon added that White was one of those two people, and each was as guilty of murder as the other. During the trial the elephant in the room – Paddy Doyle – was brought up in evidence. Detective Inspector Willie McKenna agreed with Defence Senior Counsel, Brendan Grehan, that Gardaí had been told by other sources that Paddy Doyle had been the one who had shot Roche, and that he was on the back of a motorbike when he pulled the trigger. The jury was told that Doyle had been murdered in Spain in 2008, and was known to Gardaí. DI McKenna also said that when Noel Roche's mother, Caroline, arrived at the scene, she named Paddy Doyle as having been responsible. McKenna added that sources, other than Mrs Roche, had given information about Doyle's alleged involvement, and that the Garda investigation could find no evidence that a motorbike had been used in the murder. He added that the driver of the Ford Mondeo in which Noel Roche was shot provided no helpful information to Gardaí. The most interesting part of the trial – and certainly the part that had the potential to cast the most doubts in the minds of jurors about Craig White's guilt – was when Detective Garda Ray Kane from the fingerprint section of the Garda Technical Bureau gave evidence. He told the prosecution that he found three fingerprints and one thumb print on the paper bag that was found in the Peugeot. He subsequently compared them to the prints taken from Craig White. Detective Garda Kane said that he had no doubts that the finger marks found on the bag matched White's prints. He himself had taken fingerprints from White at Raheny Garda Station on 5 December 2005, after White was first arrested. DG Kane matched White's right thumb, left little finger, right forefinger and right middle finger to the fingermarks that he took from the paper bag.

When Brendan Grehan took to his feet to cross-examine the Garda, he said that he accepted that Kane made statements in April 2006 and May 2008, in which he said he had identified the thumb print as belonging to Craig White, but Grehan said that he was of the view that the other three prints on the bag did not reach the required standard for presentation as evidence in court. The detective replied that he was never in any doubt that the finger marks were made by White. He then said that the usual standard for print evidence to be accepted in court is if there was a minimum twelve-point match. Detective Garda Kane agreed with Brendan Grehan that he had heard about the case in which the FBI had wrongly identified a man as a suspect in the Madrid bombings based on incorrect fingerprint analysis. The Garda said that he has heard that an independent expert in that case who had agreed with the FBI's inaccurate findings may have been influenced by a database search that came back with a name that had been flagged as being linked to terrorism. Ray Kane stated that he had searched the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) using a thumbprint that had been found on the paper bag found in the car, and that Craig White's name had come back as a match. He added that no prints had been found from the Glock in the paper bag, and White's prints were not found anywhere in or on the Peugeot, apart from the bag. Other unidentified prints were found. Detective Garda Kane agreed that while he was of the opinion that Craig White had handled the bag, he could not tell when he had touched it. He accepted that prints could persist for years in the right sort of conditions and also accepted that the presence of prints on the bag did not necessarily mean that White had put the gun into it. Nor could he definitively say that White had put the bag into the car and could not rule out the possibility that other people, maybe people who wore gloves, had handled the paper bag.

The rest of the trial was straightforward and uneventful. Craig White did not offer a defence for himself. When the jury was sent out to deliberate on 29 July, Gardaí were quietly confident of getting a conviction, but most agreed that the cross-examination on the fingerprint evidence could have thrown up reasonable doubt. In any event, the jury of seven men and five women took little more than half an hour to convict Craig White of Noel Roche's murder. It was a major victory for the Gardaí who had investigated the murder, and proved that gangland criminals could not simply get away with murder and would be held accountable for their actions. Still, the swiftness with which the jury came back with their decision shocked everybody who had attended the court case. The worry was that it would give White grounds for appealing the decision down the line. Mr Justice Birmingham imposed a mandatory life sentence for the crime, which he said that all sides in the case had agreed was an ‘assassination' and a ‘gangland hit'. He thanked the jury for presiding over what he described as a ‘sensitive trial'. It was indeed sensitive, and the jury roll call had to be held in private each morning, rather than the usual procedure of taking place in open court, because of fears that jury members could be tampered with. Craig White has also been linked to the murder of innocent Latvian mother-of-two, Baiba Saulite, who was shot dead outside her home in Swords in November 2006. Detectives believe that it was White who knocked at Baiba's door before she was shot, pretending to be a pizza delivery man. The unsuspecting Latvian turned him away, saying she did not order a pizza. In reality the man was making sure she was at home. A few minutes later, a gunman shot her dead as she smoked a cigarette outside her door. White is believed to have driven the getaway car. White had links to the gang run by Martin ‘Marlo' Hyland, and it was Hyland who set up the murder. Saulite's estranged husband, Lebanese national Hassan Hassan, is suspected of organising the hit because of a custody dispute. In January 2010, the DPP decided that there was not enough evidence to charge Hassan Hassan in relation to Saulite's murder, but the investigation remains open, and Gardaí have not ruled out the possibility that White could face charges in the future in relation to the murder, but as time goes by this looks increasingly unlikely.

Although Craig White will spend a long time in jail, he did gain respect in criminal circles for keeping his mouth shut and not trying to implicate Paddy Doyle in the slaying, which he could easily have done. Paddy Doyle's DNA was also found at the scene, and if he had returned to Ireland prior to his murder, he would have been arrested and charged with Noel Roche's murder. Nevertheless, White's conviction was a very welcome development.

During the trial of Craig White, Paddy Doyle's father broke his silence on his son's murder and involvement in the Crumlin-Drimnagh feud, when he gave an interview to Niall Donald of the
Irish Daily Star Sunday
. Donal Doyle claimed that Paddy had been trying to turn his life around and give up his life of crime when he was murdered. ‘He wished he could start his life over, that's the hardest thing.' Donal Doyle admitted his lad was ‘no saint' but was a ‘brilliant' dad who wanted to turn his life around. ‘Patrick told me he wished he could start his life again and do it all differently. He said, “I'd give anything to be able to go out, do a week's work and come home and have my dinner.” But he had got in too deep and didn't know how to get out.' Donal Doyle was a staunch anti-drugs campaigner and had fallen out with his son because of his involvement in crime and drug dealing. However, they made up shortly before he died. ‘We had cut our ties with Paddy and we hadn't spoken for six years. But following a family illness, he got a message to me apologising for the past and we both picked up the phone. I hadn't spoken to him in a long time and it seemed we were able to open up to each other a lot more. He told me he felt, by not being here, he had let his two brothers down because he wasn't around for them. Paddy had his wild years, like a lot of young men, and now he was sitting back and taking stock. In October, I visited him in Spain and we talked about getting a bit of stability into his life and start moving away from these people he had classed as friends. Five months later he was dead.'

Donal Doyle also spoke about how Darren Geoghegan's grandfather had contacted him to tell him that he didn't believe that Doyle was responsible for Geoghegan's murder. ‘Darren was raised by his grandfather, and after Patrick was killed they came over and told us how much they loved our son – the two of them were very close friends. They told us they had never dreamed even for a second that Patrick was involved in Darren's death. We were gobsmacked. We have kept in touch ever since. They are lovely people and are going through hell just like us.'