1

The
Little Man

Ballyfermot, West Dublin, circa 1960


The man out enjoying his evening stroll was the first to spot the group of small kids scurrying from cover at the edge of the golden field of wheat. It didn't take much deduction to work out that the little terrors were up to something. They tittered nervously and glanced back into the huge field of crops that was ready for harvesting.
The first hint of fire was a single pillar of smoke rising up from the crops about five hundred yards into the field. Within minutes the plumes of smoke were blocking out the sun as flames devoured the crops.
"I will never forget that day. Ever since the kids had moved out to the new council houses they were always messing in that field lighting fires, but this was the worst I ever saw. It was pure devastation," recalled the elderly gentleman forty years later.
He distinctly remembered one of those kids. The boy's cherubic face was full of excitement and his deep-set, hazel eyes twinkled with mischief. As fire engines rushed from the city to quell the raging flames, he and his chums giggled 'til tears streamed down their cheeks. This would not be the last time the eight-year-old would cause panic and mayhem in his lifetime. The child was called John Gilligan.
Forty-one years later, as Gilligan began the longest sentence ever given to a drug boss, the old man sat in his home and shook his head with disbelief. "When you look back you never think that an innocent kid like that would turn out to be such a gangster," he reflected somberly. "I always thought that he was a grand kid who just dabbled in a bit of ducking and diving…but don't use my name, I wouldn't like the trouble," he added cautiously.
It said a lot about little John Gilligan, the kid who would progress from childish vandal and petty thief to international gangster and boss of a dangerous criminal empire. Even old neighbours who had always liked and got on well with him were in fear of him. Despite being universally reviled and safely locked away in a maximum-security prison for the next twenty-eight years, a lot of people in "Ballyer" consider it safer to keep their views on little John to themselves.
* * *
John Joseph Gilligan was born on March 29, 1952. He was the fifth of eleven children, four boys and seven girls, born to Sally and John Gilligan, both of whom came from the Grangegorman area of Dublin's north inner city. The Gilligans were among the thousands of families who were moved from the squalor of inner-city slums to new, sprawling estates on the edge of the capital in the 1950s.
The governments of the day had done commendable work in clearing the appalling tenements in which impoverished Dubliners had been forced to exist for centuries. Unfortunately, the new public housing projects erected out in countryside areas such as Ballyfermot, Cabra, Crumlin, Inchicore, Donnycarney, Glasnevin and Marino would create a whole new set of social problems.
Despite having more space, privacy and decent sanitation, the new estates were lonely places for many of the new tenants. In the move to better living conditions, whole communities were uprooted and broken up. Lifelong neighbours found themselves living miles from one another. The new working-class suburbs had very little to offer apart from accommodation. They would later become notorious breeding grounds for the country's first generation of organised criminals.
The Gilligans were allotted number 5, Loch Conn Road, a modest three-bedroom house with running water and toilet facilities. Although a vast improvement on the slums, the new homes were small and pokey for large families. Loch Conn Road was on the edge of the maze of concrete roads and houses that marked the new border between city and country.
Just a few hundred yards away were the wheat fields which stretched as far as the eye could see. A kid could stroll through the fields of areas called Clondalkin, Palmerstown and Ronanstown, which would later also be gobbled up by voracious urban expansion. At the back of Loch Conn were open fields nicknamed the "California Hills" by the locals who had made the exodus to new lives in the "wild west" of Dublin. Like most of their neighbours, the Gilligans arrived with all their worldly possessions in prams and carts. When most of the residents moved into Ballyfermot the infrastructure was still not complete and the bus service did not go as far as the estates, so everyone had to walk the rest of the journey.
Gilligan's mother, Sally, had a hard life. Her husband, a heavy drinker and gambler, was also a well-known petty thief. In drunken rages he regularly beat his wife in front of his children. In between short periods in jail for house-breaking, John senior worked as a seaman with B and I and was away from home a lot. In a time when crime was still not a major problem in Ireland, John Gilligan senior was the first member of the family who would attract Garda attention.
The hallmark of his break-ins to houses was a lower door panel kicked in with the heel of a boot. One older detective who had arrested him recalled how Gilligan couldn't understand why the police knew so much about him. "Gilligan senior was one of our habitual thieves and he couldn't work out why we kept catching him. He often gave us information in return for dropping charges. His son obviously picked up a lot of his characteristics. He was a nasty, evil little man," the officer recalled.
However, the Gilligans were well liked in their area. Even though the family was poor, their mother ensured that the children were turned out clean and tidy in the best clothes they had. They were considered good, helpful neighbours. The parents of kids who had heard that the Gilligans' father was in prison warned their children not to talk about it, not because they were afraid but out of respect for Mrs. Gilligan. "I remember my Da saying that that woman was too good for John Gilligan. She was a very quiet, pleasant woman," one of her acquaintances explained.
Gilligan junior's sisters were hard-working girls and they helped babysit the neighbours' children. When they were older the children would not tolerate their father beating their mother and barred him from the house on Loch Conn Road until he had recalled his manners. One time when an elderly neighbour's wife died, Sally Gilligan ensured that her kids helped out the widower. "They were decent, hard-working girls," recalled a former resident. "You couldn't ask for better neighbours than the Gilligans."
Those who knew him growing up described John junior as a pleasant young guy but otherwise quite unremarkable. Some of his contemporaries thought he was not very bright. "Years later when he was caught robbing sweets we said, ‘Ah, sure, what would ya expect from that little dimwit?' Other lads were out robbin' banks and Johnny was nicking sweets," one of his contemporaries joked. Gilligan certainly wasn't a scholar. He attended the Mary Queen of Angels national school in Ballyfermot village but spent more time "mitching" (playing truant) than pursuing his education. He and his pals roamed around the wheat fields and rode the wild ponies and goats which wandered freely in the area. Gilligan left school when he was twelve years old to pursue his chosen career: crime.
* * *
In 1966, at the age of fourteen, Gilligan joined his father as a seaman with the B and I Line, the only legitimate job he would ever hold, but which he used to engage in criminal activity for the next ten years. During the 1970s the B and I Line, which had a passenger ferry and freight service, was being run into the ground. Successive governments were told that nothing could be done with the company because it was in the grip of the unions. An internal investigation was conducted and it was discovered that the Gilligans, father and son, and a small group of employees were running a major corruption racket on board.
A secret survey conducted among passengers illustrated just how much the company was being ripped off. On one sailing the manifest recorded two hundred and twenty passengers, but a head count found that there were actually more than seven hundred people on board. The little cartel had pocketed the other almost five hundred fares in just one sailing. In the early 1980s the then Minister for Transport, Jim Mitchell, reorganised the company and cleared the Gilligans and their associates out. Thirty years after getting the job Gilligan produced his seaman's record (number E 10214) to a journalist to prove that his conduct with the company had been "very good" during thirty-six voyages.
Within a year of joining his dad on the high seas, young Gilligan notched up his first criminal offence on dry land. He was convicted of larceny on July 3, 1967. His maiden crime was rather unremarkable compared to his later endeavours. Gilligan was caught stealing a farmer's chickens in Rathfarnham. On that occasion the District Court Judge decided to give the teenager the benefit of the doubt and applied the Probation of Offenders Act. The Act is intended as a slap on the wrist to a first-time offender and as an incentive to guide his return to a law-abiding life. Practically every gangster who ever made his mark in Ireland has the Probation Act typed on his record alongside his first conviction.
When John Gilligan was eighteen he met the woman who would one day be described in the courts as his able "partner in crime." Geraldine Matilda Dunne from Kylemore Road in Lower Ballyfermot was thirteen when she fell for the diminutive young thief. "Everyone wondered what Geraldine saw in him—the size of him—but she was mad about him. Everyone thought he was a bit of a gobshite and she was the real brains of the operation," recalled one of Geraldine's former female friends.
One of six children, Geraldine was born on September 29, 1956. Like her boyfriend, she dropped out of school when she was twelve. She was described by a former friend as a "real live wire." From the time she was a child she had a deep interest in horses. It wasn't unusual to see the fifteen-year-old "Dunne lassie" galloping bareback on a pied ball pony up Loch Conn Road to pick up her man. "She was a real character then, a real live wire. She used to drink Kiskadees and laugh that she had had several ‘kiss me gees,'" a friend recalled.
Geraldine worked in Abbots Belts, Buckles and Buttons and later as a basic line operative in a ladies underwear factory in Ballyfermot. At lunchtime she would go with friends to see Gilligan, who invariably was hanging around the house on Loch Conn Road. She would instruct her friends to tell her employer that she was sick and then would go off for the afternoon with her man. After several sick days she lost her job, so she went to sea for three months with Gilligan, working as a chef on board a merchant navy vessel.
In January 1974 Geraldine discovered that she was pregnant. She was eighteen. On March 27, just before Gilligan's twenty-second birthday, the couple were wed in the Church of Our Lady of Assumption in Ballyfermot. They moved to live in a flat at the North Strand in Dublin near John's "work." In 1977 the Gilligans moved to a local authority house in Corduff Estate, Blanchardstown, one among many such new estates built during the 1970s. In September Geraldine gave birth to a daughter, Treacy. A year later, in September 1975, the Gilligans had their second child, a son, Darren. John Gilligan was staunchly loyal to his family and twenty years later declared that he would murder anyone who upset them. It was a sentiment that would have sinister consequences.
Now that Gilligan had responsibilities to his wife and babies, he felt he had to knuckle down at his work and provide for them—by robbing. The following October he was taken away from home after he was convicted of larceny in the Dublin District Court. This time the judge was not as lenient and Gilligan was given a six-month prison sentence for his efforts. A young Garda called Tony Sourke had caught him breaking into a shop in Ballyfermot. When Sourke took Gilligan into the local station to be charged with the offence, the diminutive would-be gangster warned the cop: "I'll blow your fucking head off for this."
By now gangland was undergoing a major transformation. The burglar had been replaced by the armed robber and the level of serious crime was increasing at a dramatic rate. Gilligan and his pals were part of that new breed. Among his associates were the Cunningham brothers, Michael, John and Fran, from Le Fanu Road in Ballyfermot. John and Michael, career armed robbers, would gain notoriety when they kidnapped Jennifer Guinness, the wife of John Guinness, the millionaire chairman of the Guinness Mahon Bank. Fran, who was nicknamed the Lamb, preferred to spend his time in the fraud game, robbing banks with dud cheques and dodgy bank drafts. One of the Lamb's closest associates was another suave con man called John Traynor, who also befriended Gilligan. Traynor had also served on the B and I Line with Gilligan.
Among Gilligan's list of criminal associates was another up-and-coming underworld heavy-hitter, George Mitchell, also known as the Penguin, who would become one of the wealthiest drug traffickers in Europe. Through these contacts Gilligan was also acquainted with Martin Cahill, alias "the General," and several members of his mob, including Martin "the Viper" Foley and Michael "Jo Jo" Kavanagh, all of whom would play significant roles in the story of Gilligan's evil empire. In the 1970s Gilligan was associated with members of the Dunne family from Crumlin, the first truly well-organised armed robbery outfit in Dublin. The Dunnes were the first major league criminals to move from heists to heroin in the early 1980s and gave the lead to other criminals. They were singularly blamed for sparking the heroin scourge in Dublin, though eventually it destroyed them too.
Gilligan and his father were useful to the new crime gangs. They helped smuggle firearms sent from Britain and other European ports when they worked on the ships. By the mid-'70s Gilligan was "working" with various members of the young crime families. At weekends he and the rest of the criminal community would meet on the beach at Portmarnock for trotting races, where they also planned various jobs. Gilligan was gaining a reputation for violence and was fond of handling firearms. Like his father he developed a serious gambling problem. Sometimes he combined both. In September 1976 he was caught and charged with an attempted robbery of a bookmaker's shop on Capel Street in Dublin's north inner city. He had begun to make a name for himself.
The following year Gilligan received three prison sentences. In July he was sentenced to eighteen months for receiving stolen goods, the load of a van that he had liberated from a shop. In September he got another three months for larceny and a year for the botched bookmaker's job.
Gilligan developed a particular area of criminal expertise. From his time on the container ships he realised that they were veritable floating Aladdin's caves, with every conceivable type of domestic product rolling off the ramp into Dublin. Security was lax and he had solid, corrupt contacts in the shipping business. He saw a comfortable niche for himself in the burgeoning crime industry. He would have no problem selling a container load of goods in the working-class estates across west Dublin. The punters would appreciate a bargain and he would turn a tidy profit in a short time.
He was also growing tired of prison. Like the other young turks of organised crime, he was learning to play what the General referred to as the "game." During Gilligan's sojourn in Mountjoy Prison in 1977 he spent time with Cahill, who was doing time for car theft. There were many loopholes in the law which could be exploited using a clever lawyer to play the "game." Trials could be scuppered by scaring off potential witnesses or simply shooting them. In fact, Gilligan's sixteen convictions over a thirty-year period of intense criminal activity, which were recorded before the Guerin murder and most of which carried relatively short jail terms, are evidence of how he used both legal and criminal means to thwart the law. During the same period he was charged over thirty times with larceny, burglary and robbery.
When Gilligan came out of prison after serving less than a year of his combined three sentences, he organised a team of local criminals around him and went back to work. One night in November 1978 Gilligan hijacked a truckload of frozen bacon as it left a storage depot at Grand Canal Harbour off James Street in Dublin. Gilligan produced a .45 pistol and dragged the driver from his cab. He chained the terrified man by the neck to a lamp post and left him there in freezing temperatures.
A few days later the young policeman who had arrested him four years earlier, Tony Sourke, heard information that Gilligan had been behind the robbery. His informant led him to where part of the haul had been hidden by Gilligan, behind a ditch in a field near Ballyfermot. The rest of the haul was hidden in a shed belonging to a certain husband and wife. Sourke discovered that Gilligan had been paying the couple for the use of the shed for several months to hide various truckloads of goods. He found that Gilligan was robbing everything from frozen bacon to sheets of galvanised metal.
The husband and wife were arrested and taken in for questioning. The wife was the first to crack. She described "John Gilligan, a small, little man who wears a big crombie overcoat" as the man who paid them for the use of the shed. Gilligan was arrested and the woman identified him in a line-up in Kevin Street garda station. On November 17, 1978 Gilligan was charged with the crime and freed on bail.
Three months later Gilligan was again arrested by Sourke. This time he was charged with taking part in an armed robbery at the Allied Irish Bank branch on the Naas Road in Bluebell, West Dublin. Almost six thousand pounds had been taken in the heist by a team of three armed men. When Gilligan was being questioned he swore on his children's lives that he hadn't been involved. Geraldine arrived at the station in tears, pleading her husband's innocence. She told the detective that Gilligan had been with her at the time of the heist.
Gilligan was not convicted on either the hijacking or armed robbery charges. In the hijacking case the woman who identified him later withdrew her statement after Gilligan threatened to harm her and her husband if she went into court. In the armed robbery case forensic evidence was not strong enough to sustain the charge and the State bowed out. Before that, however, Gilligan had the audacity to offer a policeman in Ballyfermot three thousand pounds for the name of the person who informed on him and his cronies in the AIB robbery. The officer declined the offer.
The police were particularly interested in the .45 pistol that they knew Gilligan carried with him on his various jobs. Some time later they got another tip that he and his team were organising a major factory job on Bluebell Avenue in Ballyfemot. Gilligan had organised the theft of a truck and was to be the driver. As usual, a night watchman was to be tied up, the truck loaded and the cargo taken to a safe warehouse he had rented in the country.
While a team of detectives from Kevin Street station were keeping the area under surveillance, they spotted another group of men hiding some distance off. They turned out to be detectives from Ballyfermot who had received the same information. Neither team knew that the other was in the area and both were after the prize: little John Gilligan, his team, the stolen goods and his .45 pistol. On the second night of the operation the Kevin Street team, again led by Tony Sourke, was about to abort the operation when they spotted the stolen truck pull up outside a flat in Bluebell not far from the factory. Gilligan was behind the wheel with two members of his mob. They got out and went into the flat.
At this stage Sourke's back-up team had moved off. He and another detective, Gary Kavanagh, decided to move in and arrest the three in the flat. When they burst in, Gilligan and his two pals were sitting on a couch. They were arrested and searched, but the woman who lived in the flat was left behind. Outside they found that the truck was empty. Unfortunately for the police, the thieves had been on their way to do the job. There was no sign of the gun. They later discovered that Gilligan had wanted to open fire when the detectives first banged on the flat door. He quickly changed his mind and handed the weapon to the woman, who shoved it down her panties.
* * *
Gilligan began organising an impressive network of fences (receivers of stolen goods) and hiding places for his loot around the country. He made a point of acquainting himself with truckers in a Ballyfermot pub frequented by drivers. They would tip him off about the various cargoes coming in and he would pay them for the privilege of hijacking their loads. He branched out and began hitting large warehouses and factories in the sprawling industrial estates across west Dublin. The Robin Hood estate at Tallaght was one of his favourite targets. By now he had earned such a reputation that other criminals would not encroach on certain industrial estates because they were known to be "Gilligan's turf."
Gilligan learned how to short-circuit alarm systems and often knocked holes in factory walls to get inside. In fact, Gilligan's robberies during the 1980s were so frequent that they caused alarm and security companies to utilise more sophisticated systems to prevent the heists. But, in case the security system was too elaborate for him, Gilligan often had a few security men on the payroll to ensure that things went smoothly. He was meticulous in carrying out surveillance work and knew the response times of both security staff and the police. He became known in the underworld as "Factory John."
* * *
Of that time he later bragged: "It was great fun and I got a buzz out of it. Sometimes we got stuff and other times nothing. We were chased by the cops now and again and we had plenty of near misses. There were a lot of times when we were in and out of a place and no-one knew a thing for ages afterwards. The strokes [crimes] were a win-win situation for everyone. The victims, the owners of the truck or the factory got the insurance money…and me and the lads [got a few bob]. It was the perfect crime and doing no harm to anyone."
Gilligan's favourite time of year was winter. The long, dark nights provide excellent cover for a thief. As the evenings grew shorter each year the police in stations covering the big industrial estates braced themselves for a string of burglaries. In November 1981 members of the crime task force attached to Ballyfermot station had a lucky break when they spotted Gilligan and two of his pals driving his van near Greenhills Industrial estate in Walkinstown. When they stopped the van they found three thousand pounds worth of chocolates which had been stolen from a warehouse. Factory John was stocking up for the Christmas market.
The three were arrested, taken to Ballyfermot and charged with burglary. Gilligan's van was impounded and the three were freed on station bail. The following night an eagled-eyed officer spotted Gilligan and his two friends in the process of trying to steal the van and the chocolates from the police station yard. The audacious thieves were again arrested and charged.
The following March Gilligan was given a twelve-month prison sentence and banned from driving for fifteen years for using his van to commit a crime and then trying to rob it back from the police. Two months earlier he had been given another twelve-month sentence for burglary. But Gilligan didn't mind. The two sentences would run into each other and he would be out in a few months. He was beginning to play the system. In the course of 1981 Factory John was arrested and charged a total of nine times for larceny and burglary offences. He was convicted of only two.
It wasn't cunning or luck alone that kept Factory John in business. He utilised his favourite "get out of jail free" card—terror and intimidation. He threatened to murder anyone who crossed him or might consider giving evidence against him on behalf of the State. The members of his gang were too scared to begin touting to the police. They knew Gilligan was a potential killer. According to some of those who "worked" with Gilligan, he would conduct his own "court-martial" to see if there was an informant in the gang.
Once when a member of his gang was arrested for the offence of buggery Gilligan quickly identified a potential weak link in the gang. At the time homosexuality was still a criminal offence and the police used it to put pressure on various gangsters who were known to be closet gays. In testosterone-charged gangland, calling a hard man a "queer" was as bad as calling him a tout (an informer). The man they nicknamed "Jeremy Thorpe," after the British politician who had been at the centre of a gay scandal, was exiled from Gilligan's inner sanctum. At one stage members of the gang thought he was to be murdered.
Gilligan was never afraid of the police. When they sat outside his house monitoring his various underworld visitors Factory John would confront them, hurling abuse and threats. When he was arrested he threatened to murder officers and burn down their homes.
In the early 1980s a factory involved in making Atari computer games was burgled in Tallaght. The night before the burglary Gilligan and his crew had set a large fire there, made from wooden pallets and other debris from around the industrial estate. The fire caused the mortar in the rear wall to dry and had the effect of weakening it. The next night the gang attacked the wall with sledgehammers and even a truck to break a hole in it to get into the premises and bypass the security system. It was part of Gilligan's notorious modus operandi. The police immediately suspected him.
A few weeks later they got tipped off that Geraldine Gilligan was selling the Atari games to unsuspecting workmates in a factory in Blanchardstown, West Dublin. Detectives from Tallaght began to investigate. A woman who had bought one of the games made a statement to the detectives and Geraldine was charged with receiving stolen goods.
Geraldine sought depositions in the case. This is a form of pre-trial hearing during which the various witnesses for the prosecution relate the testimony that they intend giving in the actual trial. It was a tactic Gilligan used many times to delay trials; it gave him an opportunity to convince people that the witness box was bad for their health.
On the Friday before the depositions hearing John Gilligan arrived at the home of the woman who had made the statement against his wife. He pushed his way inside and threatened to have her fourteen-year-old son shot if she gave evidence. The woman was deeply disturbed and by Monday withdrew her statement. Similarly, a nineteen-year-old youth who had also bought one of the games pulled out of the case after Gilligan threatened him on the morning of the hearing. The police informed the court of the intimidation but no action was taken.
The case eventually foundered and Geraldine was off the hook. Gilligan openly scoffed at the detectives when his wife walked. In the meantime Geraldine was fired from her job. Thanks to her husband's efforts, she actually sued the company for unfair dismissal and received ten thousand pounds in compensation. Geraldine went on disability benefit for the stress which she claimed was caused by the regular police raids on her home. She never worked again.
By the mid-1980s John Gilligan and the Factory Gang were among the top three organised crime gangs on garda intelligence files in the country. Gilligan ranked next to Martin Cahill, the General, and the north-side-based gang led by the clever young villain Gerry Hutch, who was known as the "Monk." Intelligence reports describing Gilligan as the most prolific large-scale burglar in the country were being circulated to detectives in every police division in the Stat. Gilligan and his associates were being spotted by garda units throughout the country and at one stage it was estimated that he was responsible for one major "job" every week. At any one time Gilligan and his network were plotting up to a dozen robberies around the country.
One detective who took a particular interest in Gilligan and would remain his nemesis for over twenty years was Felix McKenna. In 1978 McKenna, who was originally from County Monaghan, was appointed a detective and sent to the Tallaght garda district. This was the area where Gilligan was committing most of his crimes; he treated the industrial estates in the area as if they were his exclusive turf. As an investigator McKenna earned a formidable reputation for his abilities and tenacity in pursuing serious crime. Throughout his career he would be on the cutting edge in the fight against organised crime and would be one of the founding officers, and later chief, of the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB).
Shortly after he arrived in the M District in the winter of 1979, McKenna had his first encounter with Gilligan when he caught him in possession of a stolen lorry and charged him with larceny. The case was dropped when the owner of the truck refused to give evidence because Gilligan had threatened him.
On Saint Patrick's Day, 1981, McKenna and his colleagues thought that they had at last nabbed Factory John. Gilligan and his team stole a truckload of colour televisions from an electrical engineering warehouse in the Cookstown Industrial Estate. The haul at the time was valued at one hundred and forty thousand pounds, the equivalent of around a million pounds in 200I. Gilligan broke in and disabled the alarm. He reversed a full-length transport lorry, stolen especially for the job, into the factory. After Gilligan and another criminal figure from Ballyfermot loaded it up, they drove the truck to Sligo where it had been arranged that the televisions would be sold to a local specialist in the sale of smuggled goods.
Within a few weeks of the heist McKenna and his colleagues, Det. Sgt. John McLoughlin and Det. Garda Noel Whyte, received intelligence about who had carried out the crime and the name of the fence who was selling the televisions. By the time the three detectives arrived in Sligo most of the televisions had already taken pride of place in the corners of dozens of living rooms. In the early '80s colour televisions were considered an absolute luxury. The unsuspecting customers thought they were getting a smuggled bargain. McKenna and McLoughlin raided the fence's house and recovered thirty sets. The list of customers included some of the most respected people in the town. Over the following days word filtered out into the community that detectives from Dublin were tracing stolen televisions. For weeks unsuspecting customers were handing in their television sets to the local garda station or hiding them in attics. In at least one case, a television was broken up and dumped.
The Dublin detectives recovered seventy percent of the stolen haul and charged four people with receiving stolen goods. The fence identified Gilligan as the man who had offered him the televisions and had actually delivered them. In the end, despite the opportunity of making a deal with the State, the fence opted to take the rap. Gilligan and one of his cronies had visited him in Sligo, produced a gun and threatened to blow the fence's head off. Like Gilligan's other erstwhile "clients," the fence was terrified. The risk of a stretch in prison was better than a stretch in intensive care or the grave, he told the frustrated investigators. Meanwhile, it was business as usual for the factory thieves. Demand was booming and the money was flowing in.
On the morning of January 6, 1982 the head of the State's forensic science laboratory, Dr. James Donovan, was driving to his workplace in Garda Headquarters when a bomb device ripped his car apart. The country was shocked by the horrific leg injuries that the scientist suffered in the attack. It was the work of Gilligan's old pal, Martin Cahill. The forensic expert had been about to give vital technical evidence in an armed robbery case against the General and his close friend Christy Dutton. Dutton was from Ballyfermot like Gilligan, another of his associates. The General and Dutton had held up an amusement arcade and left vital forensic clues on the motorbike they had used to get away after the heist. The Donovan attack would have repercussions for Gilligan.
As part of the huge follow-up investigation involving the Murder Squad, Special Branch and local detective units, every piece of information received at the incident room in Tallaght station was processed in detail. One caller reported seeing a suspicious white van and a car in the Belgard area of west Dublin where Dr. Donovan lived a few nights before the bomb attack. Det. Sgt. John McLoughlin and Felix McKenna were given the job of tracing the van and car. The detectives discovered that the van belonged to a security man who patrolled the Cookstown Industrial Estate. He was a highly respected individual who had been appointed a peace commissioner with the power to sign garda search warrants and other sensitive police documents. The investigators then uncovered something sinister. The security man was also associated with Gilligan. On the night that the white van had been spotted, Factory John had met the security man.
Over a number of weeks the investigation team pieced together the case and found that the security man had been working for Factory John as an inside man on various robberies. It was estimated that, in the year before the attack on Dr. Donovan, Gilligan had robbed goods in the estate to the value of around a million pounds at the rate of one job every month. If an alarm was raised the security man would head off the local police coming to investigate, assuring them that everything was fine. The security man confessed to his involvement and detailed his dealings with Gilligan. There was enough evidence on which to bring a criminal case against Factory John. The case, however, was a non-starter. Once again the principal witness, this time the security man, was too afraid to testify. He preferred to plead guilty to complicity in the crimes.
One of the incidents in which the security man had been of assistance to Gilligan was a burglary from the RTV Rentals warehouse on the Cookstown Estate. The gang punched a hole in the warehouse wall, even though it had a state-of-the-art alarm system. This time Gilligan headed off in a stolen truck with half a million pounds worth of video recorders. At the time these were the first of the front-loader video machines to come on the market in Ireland.
McKenna and Det. Garda Noel Whyte got information that Gilligan had this time transported the stolen goods to the midlands. He had hidden them with a farmer near Mullingar who was helping to sell them. The investigation team uncovered half of the stolen machines in a hay shed in a raid on the Mullingar farm. Most of the video recorders that had been stolen were eventually recovered, although there was one that they had some difficulty bringing back. A local priest had bought one to watch the Pope's special commemorative video. After the priest had watched his favourite tape, the detectives got the machine back. The farmer later agreed to make a statement outlining Gilligan's involvement in the crime. A file was prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions and a decision made to charge John Joseph Gilligan with burglary and receiving stolen goods.
Gilligan used every legal device open to him to stall the criminal case. On the morning that it finally went ahead, the farmer arrived in court shaking and ashen faced. "I met John Gilligan last night and he stuck a shotgun in my ear and told me if I give evidence I am a fucking dead man," he told the police. The farmer was adamant that he would not testify. He would take the rap himself. The Director of Public Prosecutions was forced to enter a nolle prosequi in the case and drop the charges against Factory John. Gilligan laughed across at the detectives as he strutted confidently from the courtroom.
As his confidence grew, so did the size and frequency of the Factory Gang's "jobs." Just keeping tabs on the number of large-scale burglaries being reported throughout the country was an awesome task. Whenever Gilligan was in custody, the police, the factory owners and freight operators were given a respite. When he was released, urgent Criminal Intelligence Bulletins, including a photograph, description and list of associates, were sent to every station in the country with the warning: "Gilligan has returned to active service organising burglaries on a grand scale."
The Factory Gang was robbing everything that could be sold on the black market. The astonishing "shopping list" included cattle drench, hardware goods, double glazed windows, pharmaceuticals, clothes, lingerie, chocolates, household foodstuffs, alcohol, cigarettes, computer games, television sets, video recorders and music systems. The gang hit warehouses, factories, large stores and hijacked freight vehicles throughout the length and breadth of the country. Gilligan's fleet of trucks was purloined from transport companies around the country. The size of truck being taken depended on what the gang intended stealing.
Gilligan began travelling independently of the loot while in transit, scouting ahead of the stolen goods and watching for police checkpoints. He used walkietalkie radios to co-ordinate the various burglaries. If the truck carrying the loot ran into the police, Gilligan would move to distract them. He and his gang were always armed. The gun was a helpful persuader if a security man became stupid. Officers were warned to approach the Factory Gang with caution and with armed backup. In Dublin the experienced officers involved in the investigation of serious crime were finding it impossible to get the resources to place around-the-clock surveillance on the Factory Gang.
Garda management had switched resources away from such specialist areas of investigation with the result that the organised crime gangs had virtually free rein. An internal report, colloquially known as the "Three Wise Men's Report," directed a move away from specialist squads. The theory was that every man and woman in the force should be able to do any job required. Gilligan was taking full advantage of the inadequacies in the system. Inaction was creating a monster. Ironically, Factory John would single-handedly be responsible for a dramatic change in the standard and style of policing in Ireland.
In the meantime, while the police continued to play catch-up, Gilligan began doing business with Tommy Coyle, the country's biggest fence on either side of the border. Coyle also had extensive underworld contacts in Britain and Europe. The fence, who lived and operated from Drogheda, County Louth, was an extraordinary character in gangland terms. He was the middleman for every illegal group, both paramilitary and criminal, on both sides of the border and the Irish sea. Both loyalist and republican terrorists were among his clients. A policeman once commented that to be handed a list of Coyle's contacts would be every investigator's dream. He was the essential cog that kept the wheels of organised crime and terrorism turning.
A lot of gangland observers still wonder why Coyle was never murdered by one of the many disparate groups he played footsie with (he died from cancer in October 2000). The truth was that, in addition to his complicated working arrangements, Coyle developed a relationship with the police and acted for several years as a double agent. It was also suspected in garda and criminal circles that Coyle worked as an agent for Britain's MI 5. His death from natural causes was testament to the fact that his usefulness outweighed the damage done by his wagging tongue.
In 1985 Coyle took delivery of a consignment of half a million pounds worth of televisions from Gilligan and Michael "Jo Jo" Kavanagh, which had been liberated from Sony's main warehouse in the Cookstown Industrial Estate. Kavanagh, from Crumlin in Dublin, was a key player in the General's gang but frequently took part in jobs with Gilligan. He also organised his own armed robberies.
This was part of a now-regular arrangement between the Factory Gang and Coyle, who had an impressive network of safe warehouses and distributors for practically any merchandise. Gilligan stole the goods and dropped them off to Coyle. In turn Coyle had them stored and distributed within days. On this occasion the police were on to the scam and arrested Coyle. After a long interview the fence agreed to show Det. Inspector Mick Cannavan, an experienced serious crime squad officer, where most of the televisions were hidden in a shed near Slane, County Meath. In the following weeks the police "recovered" a number of other hauls of stolen merchandise around Counties Meath and Louth. Coyle gave no evidence or statement to link Gilligan or Kavanagh to the crime. He was subsequently charged but was let off on a legal technicality.
Gilligan and Coyle were rumoured to have fallen out over the busts but nevertheless continued to deal with each other. In November 1985, for example, Coyle helped dispose of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds of cigarettes stolen in a hold-up from a warehouse in Clondalkin. The truck stolen for the heist was later found in Newry.
In some respects, despite being greedy and volatile, Gilligan could be pragmatic. Part of a stolen consignment could be recovered by the police as long as it did no long-term damage to the operation. It was an acceptable occupational hazard. On his part Gilligan was suspected of informing on some of his partners in crime. However, investigators who tried to break him during the heady days of the Factory Gang recalled how he would steadfastly refuse to give the names of any of his fences. They were his bread and butter and therefore non-negotiable.
In January 1986 Gilligan had one New Year's resolution: to keep on robbing 'til he was gangland's wealthiest hood. Two days into the new year he was doing just that. At 6 P.M. a gang of armed and masked men burst into the Nilfisk warehouse in Tallaght. Gilligan used a stolen van to get into the complex belonging to Initial Services, an office sanitation company which serviced many of the factories across Dublin. The foreman was tied up at gunpoint. Gilligan's men used a stolen tractor unit to reverse an also stolen forty-foot container truck inside and began loading it with hundreds of brand new vacuum cleaners. The gang made off with over a hundred thousand pounds worth of Nilfisks. If there had been prizes given out for the country's most efficient cargo loaders, Gilligan would have had difficulty finding space for the trophies his gang would have won. With so much experience, they were incredibly efficient.
Felix McKenna, who by now had been promoted to sergeant and moved out of Tallaght, was brought back for the investigation because of his experience in dealing with Gilligan. He was under the command of Det. Superintendent Ned Ryan, known as "Buffalo," the tenacious serious crime squad chief and the General's sworn enemy. McKenna had an impressive network of informants throughout the underworld. Within three days he got the tip he had been looking for. Gilligan had stashed the vacuum cleaners in a safe warehouse in the Weatherfield Industrial Estate in Clondalkin, only three miles away.
This time Ryan ensured that McKenna got the manpower he needed. He was given the go-ahead to mount a long-term surveillance operation, if necessary. Detectives from Clondalkin, Tallaght and the Central Detective Unit were involved. During a discreet search of the warehouse McKenna and his men discovered most of the stolen vacuum cleaners. In addition to the Nilfisk loot they found the stolen tractor unit and forty-foot trailer which had been used in the robbery, a stolen Leyland truck and a Ford Sierra car. The team pulled back and waited for their target to appear.
Eight days later the squad's diligence paid off. A van drove into the estate and stopped outside the warehouse. John Gilligan got out of the passenger seat. He carefully scanned the area for anything unusual and then opened the warehouse doors. He directed a van inside that was being driven by a young member of his gang, 22-year-old David Weafer from Finglas. Gilligan looked around again before closing the doors. McKenna waited for ten minutes to allow Factory John to feel comfortable inside his Aladdin's cave before the team pounced.
Eight armed detectives burst through the doors with weapons drawn, screaming at the two men to get down on the floor. Gilligan, who was in the process of loading the Nilfisks into the van, soiled himself with the shock of the bust. Det. Sgt. Tony Hughes almost threw up as he arrested Gilligan and brought him in for questioning under section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act. On January II Gilligan was charged with the aggravated burglary in Tallaght and placed in custody.
Two days later another of Gilligan's jobs went ahead as planned without him. This time an armed gang struck at Connolly Haulage in the Bluebell Industrial Estate in Inchicore and drove off with a truck full of $107,000 worth of cattle drench. During the robbery the truck driver was locked into the back of a refrigerated lorry and almost died of hypothermia. Two old friends of Gilligan's, George Mitchell and Gerard Hopkins, were caught with the drench and subsequently sentenced to five years each in prison.
When he was released on bail a few weeks later, despite his friends' misfortune, Factory John was back at work. On April 6 he took a truckload of video recorders from the Kersten Hunik warehouse in the same Bluebell Industrial Estate. They were never recovered.
As a result of the ongoing Sony television investigation the police discovered that the gang was also using a lockup shed in Finglas, north-west Dublin. A team placed the lockup under surveillance for a number of days when a locally-based criminal associate of Gilligan's turned up. Just before the detectives moved in, Gilligan turned up in his car with the wife and sister-in-law of another major criminal. The officers moved in and everyone was arrested. Inside the shed the detectives found clothes which had been part of a truckload stolen from a factory in County Kildare, crates of cooking oil taken from a warehouse at the Dublin docks, and pharmaceuticals purloined in a $138,000 burglary from the Glaxo factory in Rathfarnham, Dublin.
Gilligan was charged with the Glaxo burglary on July 9, 1986. He was also charged with receiving the other stolen goods in the shed. Gilligan opted for trial by judge and jury, but his associate made a statement and pleaded guilty. The man was then subpoenaed as a witness against Gilligan, but when it came to the case being heard, the State's only witness disappeared and Gilligan walked free yet again.
A month after he was charged with the Glaxo burglary Gilligan was in Limerick, this time with two associates, robbing mail bags from the city's train station. On September 14 the three were arrested, charged, and then freed on bail. The growing number of outstanding charges was not putting Factory John off his stride. Two weeks later he took part in an armed robbery in Portlaoise with members of the General's gang. On the job was Martin Cahill's brother, John, Martin Foley and Eamon Daly, one of the General's closest lieutenants. The four got away with a total of one hundred thousand pounds in cash, cheques and registered letters.
In December the Limerick case was dropped in the District Court, much to Gilligan's amusement, on a legal technicality. On the same day he was arrested and taken to Portlaoise for questioning about the armed robbery. He was released after two days. No charges were laid.
For every seizure being made by the police there were several they never managed to recover. In one case Gilligan and his team robbed two forty-foot container loads of the latest Adidas sportswear. The robbery took place in Cork on a Saturday night. By Wednesday the residents of Crumlin and Ballyfermot were wearing the very latest Adidas sports gear, including some designs which hadn't made it into the shops yet.
In another job Gilligan, with the help of Martin "the Viper" Foley, robbed a truckload of Aran sweaters from a factory in Falcarra, north Donegal. Somehow Gilligan headed back to Dublin with the load of sweaters and forgot to take Foley with him. The truck was later recovered in Dublin and taken to Crumlin garda station for examination. Gilligan stole it back from the station yard and it was never seen again.
In April 17, 1987 the police pressure on Gilligan was mounting. For the second time they nabbed him red-handed. This time he and two associates were in the process of loading a truck with eighty thousand pounds worth of sweets at Rose Confectionery in the Robin Hood Industrial Estate in Tallaght. A security man had spotted them and called the police. When a member of the gang spotted the squad cars Gilligan remained calm. He joked that one of the gang should put him into a sweet jar and close the lid. But the fun wore off when he was charged again. Prison was now inevitable for Factory John.
Meanwhile, Geraldine Gilligan was enjoying being the wife of one of the country's most notorious criminals. Police on the Gilligan case always suspected that she was his loyal partner in crime. Geraldine drove her husband to meetings with other gang members, as he was now banned from driving for a total of forty years as a result of various convictions. Geraldine was also privy to the planning of various jobs.
But she had plans of her own. Geraldine harboured pretensions of respectability which she felt she could buy with the proceeds of her husband's crimes. She still had a deep interest in horses and had eight stabled in Kilcock. Treacy was also taking riding lessons. Geraldine was ingratiating herself into the horsey set on the proceeds of crime. They were attending riding schools around the country. In order to pursue her ambitions, she decided to buy a farm in the country which she intended developing into an equestrian centre.
In September 1987 the Gilligans bought a derelict farmhouse on five acres of land in a secluded area called Mucklon, near Enfield, County Kildare. Geraldine spotted the place for sale one day as she was driving through the village. She paid seven thousand pounds in cash for the property. The couple immediately began reconstructing the house and building stables for horses at the back. Like his wife, Gilligan had a wish to appear respectable and they both joined the Meath Hunt. Gilligan also began describing himself as a horse breeder and trainer. In the country very few people knew anything of their new neighbour's real profession.
In December 1987 and the first six months of 1988 garda management finally launched a major offensive against organised crime in Dublin. It was long overdue. In 1987 alone there were almost six hundred armed robberies throughout the country, with five hundred of them in Dublin alone. Only one hundred had been solved. The number one target of the campaign was the General and his gang. Cahill had cajoled and embarrassed the authorities so much that they were finally forced into all-out action. He had robbed the Beit paintings, blown up the car of the State's forensic scientist, robbed millions of pounds in cash and jewels and, out of spite, actually burgled the offices of the Director of Public Prosecutions and stole several sensitive crime files.
* * *
The Tango Squad was a novel approach to taking on the criminals. Young, enthusiastic officers from around the city were recruited for an overt surveillance operation which forced the gang to make mistakes. Most of them were arrested and jailed, except Cahill. Among those targeted were Christy Dutton, Seamus "Shavo" Hogan, Martin Foley, Eamon Daly, Michael "Jo Jo" Kavanagh and Cahill's brother-in-law, John Foy.
The intense pressure on gangland was unearthing intelligence about other criminal gangs. Det. Sgt. Felix McKenna was now one of the Tango Squad's team leaders. He received a tip-off that Gilligan was planning to hit a hardware store in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, and stash the stolen goods in a yard at Ballymount, in west Dublin. Gilligan had begun concentrating on robbing hardware stores around the country in order to equip his new ranch in Kildare. On January 26, 1988, Gilligan and gang members Christy Delaney, from Finglas, Robert O'Connell and James "Fast 40" Kelly, both from Tallaght, hit Bolger's hardware in the town and took off with fifteen thousand pounds worth of materials. In the previous weeks another large hardware store had been hit in Athlone. The next evening McKenna and his Tango team moved into the yard they had been told about and found a lorry with half of the stolen hardware goods inside. The rest had already been moved.
The owner of the yard, Maurice Griffin, admitted to McKenna that Gilligan had left the loot there for safekeeping and would be returning later to pick up the rest. Nine officers concealed themselves in and around the yard and the stolen goods and waited for Factory John. At 11 A.M. two men drove up to the container in the yard and began transferring the stolen gear to their van. As the two villains, Delaney and Kelly, chatted away, detectives were listening to them from under the truck.
McKenna decided not to arrest the two thieves in the yard. He ordered his men to allow the pair to leave the yard and arranged for them to be intercepted a mile away on the motorway. With a good result, McKenna bosses back at Harcourt Square wanted them to pull out and go back to watching Cahill. But his immediate superior, Det. Superintendent Noel Conroy, agreed to leave the Tango squad in situ for the rest of the day in the hope that Gilligan would walk into the trap.
Luckily for the police, mobile phones were not yet widely in use. When Kelly was taken in, he tried to make a phone call to Gilligan to warn him off, but couldn't make contact. At 5 P.M. another van drove into the yard. This time it was being driven by Robert O'Connell and Gilligan was in the passenger seat. The pair loaded up the rest of the stolen material in canvas bags and threw them into the back of the van. Again McKenna waited until they had driven down the road before he had them arrested. Gilligan, already on bail for the sweets burglary, was given bail again. He told the arresting officers that he had only been "getting a lift" from O'Connell. Gilligan would use every delaying tactic possible and the case would not come to court for two years.
Three nights later Gilligan, Kelly and O'Connell were again arrested. This time uniformed officers caught them stealing wood from Chadwick's builders suppliers in Sandymount, south Dublin. They were released on bail. Gilligan assessed the cases facing him and opted to plead guilty to both in the hope of getting shorter sentences. On May 13, 1988 he was given eighteen months for the burglary at the Rose Confectionary warehouse. At Gilligan's hearing in the Circuit Criminal Court Det. Inspector John McLoughlin, who had been stationed in Tallaght as a detective sergeant, took the opportunity of publicly exposing Gilligan for what he was.
He told Mr. Justice Frank Roe that Gilligan was "one of Ireland's biggest criminals in organised crime." McLoughlin said he had known Factory John for fifteen years and he was the leader of gangs which robbed warehouses all over the country. His only source of income was crime. On the other hand, a woman with whom Gilligan stabled three horses said that he was a "kind, generous and considerate person who placed his ponies at the disposal of disadvantaged children." Two months later Gilligan pleaded guilty to the Sandymount job and was jailed for four months.
When he was released from prison in July 1989 Gilligan was still facing charges for the Nilfisk case, which he had decided to fight. Because of his previous convictions and the size of the haul of stolen goods recovered, he was facing a much longer stretch. David Weafer had pleaded guilty to the charge and had been jailed for two years. Gilligan believed that Weafer had secretly done a deal with the police and was informing on the gang. He decided to send Weafer a message in prison. One day while he was showering Weafer's face was slashed with a knife by one of Gilligan's associates. He was rushed to hospital for stitches. The attack was also intended as a message for any other would-be snouts in the gang.
Before the trial anonymous calls were made to Nilfisk's headquarters in Dublin threatening that the place would be burned down if employees gave evidence. The matter was reported to the police and Gilligan was placed in custody for almost two months. After pre-trial hearings Gilligan had been returned to the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on a charge of receiving the Nilfisk cleaners. The trial lasted for two weeks. In the witness box Gilligan directly addressed the jury and claimed that he had been offered a lift in the van by Weafer. He protested that he had been helping a mate move a few things when the police burst in.
Gilligan's lawyers made an application to the court on a point of law. They pressed the case that there was substantive evidence that Gilligan had in fact actually robbed the vacuum cleaners. Quoting English legal precedent, they pointed out that you cannot receive that which you stole in the first place. Gilligan had only been charged with receiving. Factory John's major gamble paid off. He was acquitted and walked free. The case caused consternation in the offices of the Director of Public Prosecutions, who sent an edict to all District Court judges informing them that when a defendant was returned for trial, he should be returned on all the charges outlined by the police. Gilligan had played the system again and won.
Factory John was still facing the Enniscorthy case. Every time he appeared in court Gilligan and his pals created a sense of fear and intimidation. He would stare out policemen, witnesses and jurors. McKenna and his colleagues were determined that Gilligan would not disrupt the system for his own advantage this time. In the meantime, Gilligan used Geraldine in a bid to compromise an individual on the prosecution side by blackmailing him.
McKenna furnished an extensive report on John Gilligan's history for the Director of Public Prosecutions. He itemised the number of times Factory John had used intimidation and fear to get off various charges and that he was suspected of threatening jurors. He urged the D.P.P. to issue a certificate returning Gilligan for trial to the non-jury Special Criminal Court.
At a pre-trial hearing for Gilligan, James Kelly, Robbie O'Connell and Christy Delaney, Gilligan's lawyers argued that he should not be returned for trial because of insufficient evidence. The judge, having read the book of evidence, said there was a case to answer. He was about to return Gilligan for trial by jury at the Circuit Criminal Court when the prosecution's barrister stood up. She handed the judge the D.P.P'.s certificate directing that Gilligan be sent forward to the Special Criminal court. Gilligan was stunned and he turned pale with shock. His three co-accused were sent to the Circuit Criminal Court. O'Connell got three years while Kelly and Delaney's sentences were suspended.
During the day-long trial Maurice Griffin, the owner of the yard, was called to give evidence for the prosecution. He contradicted his earlier statements to the police and claimed that stolen goods had been brought to his yard before the Enniscorthy robbery. He said he had been visited by a Mr. Gilligan but that he wasn't the man in the dock. Felix McKenna told the court that Gilligan was the leader of the gang and heavily involved in serious crime. On November 7, 1990 the court cleared Gilligan of a burglary charge but convicted him for receiving and jailed him for four years. Mr. Justice Robert Barr, in handing down the sentence, said that he accepted Gilligan was the gang leader.
"He has been involved in serious crime for many years and it appears probable that he has never had lawful employment," the judge said. Leave to appeal was denied and Gilligan was sent to serve his sentence in Portlaoise maximum security prison on E Wing, where other members of organised crime gangs were incarcerated. As he left the court, Gilligan was white with rage. It was a significant victory for McKenna, the Tango Squad and the Serious Crime Squad. The Factory Gang had finally been smashed.
A number of subsequent appeals by Gilligan were turned down, but he wasn't finished with the courts. While serving his sentence he was also charged with a vicious assault on a prison officer in November 1992. An additional six months were added to his sentence and he was moved to Cork prison. In September 1993 he was granted temporary release and in November was given his full freedom.
John Gilligan left prison a changed man. He swore he would never serve another jail sentence in his life. With a new ambition and new associates, he was determined to be a big-time drug smuggler. He was about to build an evil empire.

Copyright © 2001, 2002 by Paul Williams