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Chapter 1: What is the significance of Veronica Guerin's role in exposing gangland crime?
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Hey there, we are Indosport. With me, John Molloy, we cover sport and we have things like this.
I was kind of blunt. Well, yeah, world's not fair. You have stage four cancer. Oh, well, world's not fair. But sometimes I think that bluntness helps me. And like me and Tommy have a terrible sense of humour. I think it's really hard for people who don't know us very well because sometimes we throw out something really, really dark and people are like, Jesus, Ciara.
They haven't been around me on this process long enough just yet for me to throw out a little bit of that. But me and Tommy find our ways to cope.
This is an Irish Independent Podcast.
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Chapter 2: How did John Gilligan's empire impact Ireland's criminal underworld?
Now, if we publicise it and highlight it, Politicians are forced to address these issues.
And as Veronica continued to transport readers of the Sunday Independent into the darkest corners of Irish society, the criminals within it were taking note of their rising profile. I'm Kevin Doyle, and today in this second of our three-part IndoDaily special, we discuss Veronica's rising star and her pursuit of the truth.
The Geareans was fun-loving, robust, typical Irish family in the 60s and 70s. We were very, very close. We had many, many rows. We had loving parents. It was three girls, two boys. I was the youngest.
I'm speaking to Jimmy Gearan, Veronica's brother. He remembers fondly their childhood growing up in North Dublin.
There was less than 12 months between myself and Veronica. So we would have been very close growing up. And, you know, it was your typical Artyne Northside house with the green outside where you kicked ball and whatever else.
In a busy household, Veronica stood out from an early age.
Well, they say the middle child is always the one to watch her, to be careful with. I would say the fourth out of fifth was probably the one in our house. She was extremely competitive, but she was also extremely loving and kind. Veronica was very sporty. She loved sport. She loved to challenge. She was a great footballer. She loved football. And it used to be annoying.
And again, people don't see it nowadays. But back when we were growing up, you see, all children would gather in a green and there'd be a football match. And two people would get to pick their team. And Veronica might be the only girl playing. And it would really drive people mad that she would be picked before them. He idolised United.
So she used to go over regularly, and there's a funny story about the witch which we told her mother, but when she was shot, Lord Restoran, part of the homily or in conversations, the parish priest in the airport spoke about how good Veronica was at attending mass and how she would often be at the church and would pray and he would drive by her, he'd be walking and he'd see her car.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Veronica Guerin face in her investigative journalism?
He had been successful at Fianna Fáil and the New Ireland Forum and all that. She liked PR and she dabbled in that. She liked accountancy and dabbled in that. But I think she found a niche there. When she got to tourism, it might have been ego. You know, she might have seen it and said, well, I did that. And I think that's what brought her into the journalism.
And I don't believe that a year before she was in it, she thought, this is something I might do.
Despite having no real pull towards the papers in those early days, her rise was meteoric. By 1995, she was almost a household name across Ireland. And here she joins Pat Kenny on Kenny Live.
My next guest is indeed a crime reporter, but as you will see, not the toughest nut in the world. Although in the course of her work, she has come to mix in very dodgy circles from time to time. Why does she do it? Why does she take the risks? Let's find out. Welcome, please, the Sunday Independent crime reporter, Veronica Gearan.
The 1990s were an unusual time for organised crime in Ireland. Drug gangs were going to war against each other, vigilante groups were committing violence in order to stop the developing gangs and dissident groups were still causing trouble as a peace process was worked on in Northern Ireland. It was messy and the Gardaí were on the back foot.
do you think the guards have sufficient powers to handle no not at all not at all not at all i mean i mean do they feel their hands are tied and that they get an odium from the public because yeah we're all critical of the guards um myself i get a lot of stick from the guards because occasionally i have to write critical stories about them but i would have to say i mean it would be like steve collins trying to go in and fight chris ewbank with one
arm tied behind his back.
Everything favours the criminal in this society. Tell me about the guards in all of this. How much activity did they have in the criminal underworld at the time?
For a certain number of people, cohort of people who listen to this podcast, they would probably find it impossible to picture the kind of world we lived in that time. And that was that the banks could not tell you how much money somebody had if they were an armed robber or a criminal.
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Chapter 4: How did Veronica's childhood influence her career in journalism?
Exactly. Well, that has always been one of the questions that has never been answered. There was, it was claimed afterwards, an operation about to be set up to follow the money and to follow the hash trade. It was a unit operation.
what was called the Garda National Drug Unit at the time, that they were about to launch and had done a lot of intelligence gathering on the movement of monies between Bureau de Change in London and particularly in Amsterdam. But they were only starting to look at them and they were running their hash trade on an industrial basis. It was a finely tuned business.
With the state playing catch-up, it wasn't just Gilligan cashing in. as the Monks gang sealed their place in history with a heist worth almost three million pounds, the biggest cash robbery in Ireland at that stage.
It may have been business as usual for workers at the Brinks Allied security firm today, but behind the scenes in the rear of the building, Gardaí forensic experts were trying to piece together how five men last night carried out one of the most daring robberies in the state's history. In turn, the Monk became the focus of Veronica's latest investigation.
And as attention turned to his gang's exploits, his rivals saw an opportunity. One which would play out on January 30th, 1995, the night of the Sunday Independent's belated Christmas party. Niamh Collins remembers it well.
It was a kind of a theme. I don't know how it developed, but everyone was so busy around Christmas and, you know, at the time. There was an awful lot of socialising going on around that time and we would be invited here, there and everywhere. So the Christmas party was put off until the end of January.
Angus Fanning, the editor of the Sunday Independent, lived in Dun Laoghaire on the outskirts of Dublin.
So we all had to troop out to a restaurant that he favoured and I think Paddy Cole would be there to play a few tunes on the clarinet and Angus would join him. But we had kind of assembled at the restaurant when word came through that Veronica had been shot.
The shooting happened shortly after seven o'clock this evening. A man dressed in motorcycle clothing came to the door of Miss Guerin's home in Cloughran, North County, Dublin. Nights like this don't get any better. The atmosphere is buzzing. The excitement is soaring. The racing is speeding. Your heart is beating. The food and drink is flowing.
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Chapter 5: What led to the escalation of threats against Veronica Guerin?
It was attempted murder. Nothing sure. How did you hear about it? I got a call that night from a guard to say, did you hear what just happened? Because Dublin was a small place that time.
I think it was a Tuesday evening, probably, and I think we adjourned to the pub to... And it was an air of shock that something like that could happen. I mean, people kind of forget that, you know... journalists, reporters went through the troubles where there was an awful lot of people killed and blown up.
And yet no journalist up to that point had been killed either for their writing or even accidentally. So it was a great shock to discover that one of your own had been attacked in her home in such a manner.
Remember, this came after there was a shot fired at her house. But there was confusion about that. Nobody was injured. It didn't seem to make any sense, that particular incident. But this was the real deal. And what emerged afterwards was that the person who was the author of this attempted murder was John Traynor, Veronica's source, the coach.
It may be hard for listeners to understand the motivation behind Trainor's decision to have Veronica shot. The true size of Gilligan's gang empire was not yet known and neither was Trainor's involvement in it.
Even though I was talking to Traynor at the time, I did not know what he was involved in with Gilligan. I did not know how heavily involved the drug trade he was.
But put simply, Traynor saw value in playing both sides. As Veronica's source, he thought he was able to control the narrative, making sure his enterprise with Gilligan continued to stay underground, away from the media spotlight.
It also coincided with the big robbery that had been pulled off by the Monk, Jerry Hutch's gang. And again, what Traynor was playing at, because he was a manipulative, spineless creature who was always playing games with people's minds. He wanted...
Hutch blamed for shooting Veronica because ergo she was writing about this guy the monk it was the first time the term the monk was used in the newspapers after a big robbery and she'd written about him next thing comes along she's shot who's the obvious suspect and secondly he was able to demonstrate his underworld credentials proving to Gilligan that while he was talking to journalists it was purely for their own advantage
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Chapter 6: How did Veronica Guerin's reporting change public perception of crime?
How long did it take you to decide, I'm a crime reporter, this is what I do, I'm going to keep on doing it?
Well, I think my immediate reaction was that I'm a crime reporter and I'm going to keep on doing it, but I was probably high as a kite on drugs or on medication when I decided that. The Kenny Live interview remains one of the most revealing pieces of archive featuring Veronica Guerin. She openly acknowledges the uncertainty her work brought.
But as she wrestled with the risks, the belief that her work mattered brought her back in. I went through a whole series of emotions. I mean, I did consider getting out of it. And then I just realized that that would probably pay. more of a strain than staying in it. And it's my job. It's what I do.
And somebody has to do it. I'm not the only crime reporter that, you know, does this. And I think that the regrettable thing is that we're all probably targets, unfortunately.
You see, the thing about Veronica, and I do accept it's competitive, Veronica competed with herself. Veronica wasn't interested in who was getting a story here, who was getting a story there. Veronica competed with herself. People remember the Bishop Casey story.
But had that been her last story, we wouldn't be sitting here today, nor would she be regarded as one of the best investigative journalists ever. She would have been regarded as a journalist who got a lucky break with the Eamon Casey interview. And I think that's the difference. But yes, competitive. Veronica competed with the best, which was herself.
Jimmy believes the roots of Veronica's crime reporting can be traced back much further than those early days in the Abbey Street newsroom. Long before she became a household name, he says she was deeply troubled by the impact drugs were having on families and communities around her. It was a concern that would shape her outlook for years to come.
Well, Veronica was always interested in the effect that drugs was having on society. And I'll just give you an example of that. In 1982, it was the centenary of Eamon de Valera and Fianna Fáil, which Veronica and myself would have been members of, had a debate, a national debate, to present one of these big busts of Eamon de Valera. And I entered that.
And Veronica and I, she worked with me on London's Beach, but in that debate in 1982, we called for a body to seize the home of then Christie Dunn, who was one of the big heroin dealers. So that was 15 years before the criminal assets bureau. We were working in our area with children. We had seen the effects of drugs and the difficulties that it was causing to people's lives.
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Chapter 7: What were the events surrounding Veronica's attempted murder?
And look, you can't speak for your sister, but if she was still here today, what do you think her view of the world would be?
That's a very good question. I think she would be horrified. But, you know, I do think if she was here today, the world would be a better place because I don't believe she would have sat idly by for the last 30 years and not continued with her work. What would she think of the world today? She would be horrified at it.
On a personal level, she'd be delighted because she'd be able to see her grandchild, who she's never seen. On a social level, she'd be horrified at what's going on in the world today. And probably the one that would be on par with the family one, she would be happy that United finished third this season because that was one of her real passions in life.
As Veronica's profile continued to grow, I was curious how Jimmy felt she dealt with the fame now attached to her success.
I think she dealt with it unlike many others. It didn't get to where Veronica was happy to go on, was happy to pursue and happy to give her views and happy to try and bring about change. But she didn't go from there to Leeson Street or out socialising. She went home and spent time with her family.
Jimmy is sure Veronica felt things had reached a peak.
I don't believe for one moment, and I knew her. I knew her well, well, well. I don't believe for one moment she thought that it would have got any worse than the shooting at her home when she was shot in the leg. I don't believe anybody was aware of the fact that somebody might decide we're going to take her life. Had she been aware of that, would it have changed her?
the right thing for me to do is sit here and tell you yes the honest thing is to tell you no because in that house in our town we were brought up not to be intimidated not to be bullied and not to give in had she known the eventual price would she have started on the journey no would she be intimidated away from the journey no I don't believe she would have been
By the summer of 1995, Gilligan was being referred to as the new godfather of the Irish underworld. But there was no trace of evidence against him and he remained untouched. A police source, though, told Veronica about his unexplained newfound wealth, beginning a chain of events which would have disastrous consequences for all involved.
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Chapter 8: What legacy did Veronica Guerin leave behind in journalism?
It was a good question. It was a legitimate question. And he wasn't going to answer it.
Veronica was determined to go after Gilligan for assault following that attack at Jesbrook, and she made a formal complaint at Coolock Garda Station, setting in motion an investigation that should have seen Gilligan in court for the attack.
But she was determined to show that she was not afraid, that she would stand up in court and give her evidence against him. So Veronica made statements, the guards arrested him, and he was charged with assault.
And this would have driven him into a state of, would it be panic or anger or both?
Poplectic with anger. Who the fuck does she think she is? I heard that and I've read that a thousand times. And all of the people who spoke to the guards subsequently said that it became his total and absolute obsession. Who the fuck does she think she is? And there was never any doubt in the minds of the people around them that they were going to murder Veronica Gearn. It was never in any doubt.
Only thing was, it didn't leak out. None of us outside their bubble knew about this.
So he becomes obsessed with her, you reckon? Totally obsessed. According to Paul, the whole operation was too reliant on the violent mob boss and ultimately too lucrative to allow fail.
Basically at this stage, Gilligan was pulling in, if you think about it in terms of money, around 300,000 Irish pounds a week. This is 30 years ago. Now do the maths. But this was one of the biggest operations in the British Isles. And because of his record, it was a foregone conclusion that John Gilligan was going to get at least 18 months to two years to maybe three years behind bars.
He and his gang couldn't afford that because he was a control freak as well. He controlled the whole operation. Everybody had bit parts, and it was a very elaborate operation, but he was the central focal point. So every week he was away, they could lose 300,000, 400,000.
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