Cocaine Wars (25 page)

Gardaí had issued an arrest warrant for the twenty-three-year-old suspect gunman, but had not been able to track him down. Investigations had linked him to the Subaru. Four days before Gary Bryan's murder, a man was shot in the head and shoulder during a drive-by attack on a house at Windmill Hill in Rathcoole, Co. Dublin. A BMW that was used as the getaway car was found burnt out in a remote field, not far from the shooting, soon after the attack took place. Because of the remoteness of the field, the culprits would have needed other transport to leave the area. Gardaí from Clondalkin called to petrol stations in the area, to see if anybody had noticed the BMW or if anything suspicious had occurred around the time of the shooting. They called to the Esso station on the Naas Road in Rathcoole, and were told that somebody had purchased a can of petrol on the evening of the 22 September, just hours before the shooting. They viewed copies of Esso's CCTV footage, and it became apparent that the petrol was bought by the occupant of a silver Subaru Impreza car with the same registration that would be used in Gary Bryan's murder four days later. Photographic stills were produced from the CCTV footage. Gardaí Kelly Dutton and Pat Fagan later identified the man buying the petrol as a twenty-three-year-old from Drimnagh. This twenty-three-year-old, who Gardaí believe actually carried out Gary Bryan's murder, and the nineteen-year-old suspected of driving the Subaru away from the murder scene, had been stopped together in Waterford a week before the murder. The Garda who stopped the two gave a statement saying that the twenty-three-year-old had a tanned complexion, like he had been away on holidays. This tallied with Valerie White's description that the man who shot her boyfriend was tanned. On 21 January 2007, the twenty-three-year-old was arrested in Co. Wicklow, after a high-speed chase in which Gardaí pursued him for over 32 km. He was a passenger in the car, which was being driven by the nineteen-year-old believed to be the getaway driver in the Bryan murder. He was taken to Crumlin Garda Station and was interviewed on seven occasions, but exercised his right to silence and said nothing. He was shown CCTV footage of him driving the Subaru into the Esso station in Rathcoole and buying a can of petrol, but didn't show any reaction. It was the same story when he was told that that this Subaru had been used in Gary Bryan's murder. The man initially agreed to take part in a formal identification parade but changed his mind. When he participated in an informal ID parade, a witness was unable to pick him out. He was subsequently released without charge.

On 7 February 2007, Gardaí finally had enough evidence to arrest Graham Whelan. Detective Garda Eamonn Maloney detained him that evening. He was arrested under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act, for Possession of a Firearm with Intent to Endanger Life at Bunting Road on the day of Gary Bryan's murder. He was taken to Sundrive Road Garda Station. He refused to provide a sample of blood or DNA, so a doctor was called, who took two buccal swabs from the prisoner. After having his photo and fingerprints taken, Whelan was allowed to sleep for the night. He was interviewed the following morning. He was interviewed a total of seven times throughout the day. The Graham Whelan who ‘spoke' to Gardaí was very different to the Whelan that was portrayed in court when he was jailed in 2001 for his involvement in the Holiday Inn seizure. He might have been described as a naïve youngster then, but in February 2007, Whelan was a pro when it came to answering police questions. He didn't. Throughout the course of the day he did not even answer one question from detectives. Any criminal who deals with Gardaí knows that the cardinal rule is to shut your mouth and say nothing. The reasoning is that if you do not give Gardaí the rope, then they will not be able to hang you with your own words. The people who are usually charged with murders on which the evidence is patchy are invariably the ones who engage with Gardaí. An effective way of making sure that you never see the inside of a courtroom is just to remain silent, as is your constitutional entitlement. Graham Whelan knew that Gardaí did not have a smoking gun against him, and that the evidence they did have was circumstantial. Gardaí used all the tricks in the book to try to get him to open up. They asked him about his friendship with Freddie Thompson. Whelan remained silent. They asked him about his girlfriend and whether or not she was aware of his involvement with the murder. Whelan remained silent. He was asked if he had an alibi for the day of the murder. Again, Whelan remained silent. Evidence of his mobile phone use in and around the murder scene was put to him. Again, he said nothing. Gardaí had no choice but to release Graham Whelan and send a file to the DPP, in the hope that they would come back with a direction to charge him.

When detectives analysed the calls made by Whelan's mobile phone on the day of the murder, they discovered that Whelan had been in touch with a man called Stephen Carlile on fourteen separate occasions prior to Bryan being shot dead. The Garda theory of the murder was that Graham Whelan saw Gary Bryan on Bunting Road, and made a phone call to Stephen Carlile, who then phoned the twenty-three- and nineteen-year-olds, who actually carried out the murder. Carlile was twenty-two at the time of the murder and was originally from Ballyfermot but was living in an apartment in Áras Na Cluaine in Clondalkin. Freddie Thompson had an apartment in the same block as Carlile, and he often spent time there with his girlfriend, Vicky Dempsey. Stephen Carlile was a petty junkie who had become caught up in the Thompson gang to earn money to feed his serious cocaine addiction. He owed tens of thousands of euro to the gang for drugs. He was used as a mule by the senior members, who knew that Carlile could not afford to repay his debts. In the weeks after the Bryan slaying, he started to appear on the investigating team's radar. He was not known to Gardaí and had just three previous convictions for minor road traffic offences. However, on 24 October, Gardaí, acting on a tip-off, raided Carlile's Clondalkin apartment and discovered over €11 million worth of heroin. At the time it was the biggest heroin seizure in the history of the state, and the drugs belonged to a number of serious criminals throughout the city, including Freddie Thompson, Graham Whelan and a Ballyfermot gang led by Karl Breen. It was probably no coincidence that Thompson was in such close proximity to the massive haul of drugs and could keep his eye on them, without ever having to touch them. The haul again showed how criminal gangs throughout Dublin co-operated with each other in importing massive drugs hauls, which were then split up and distributed in each gang's separate and defined territories. Carlile was caught red-handed with the drugs and later pleaded guilty to possession for sale or supply of over €10.6 million worth of heroin, €839,000 of cannabis, and to unlawful possession of a machine pistol, 1,609 rounds of ammunition, four magazine pistols and two silencers. Carlile told Gardaí that he was paid €400 a week to mind the drugs and firearms. The €1,100 a month rented apartment was described in court as ‘effectively a drug warehouse in which heroin was prepared for sale'. Carlile was only a minor cog in the Thompson gang, but he knew the score and refused to co-operate with the investigation into the drugs, because he feared that he or his family would be murdered if he named names. Carlile was remanded in custody after the drugs haul and was later sentenced to twelve years in jail.

The week after the seizure of the drugs found in Stephen Carlile's apartment, Gardaí received a massive and unexpected boost after Freddie Thompson was arrested in Rotterdam. He was nabbed in close proximity to 7 kg of cocaine and six machine pistols at an apartment he had rented. The seizure was the result of a phone tap laid by Dutch police and not Garda intelligence after the Clondalkin seizure. It came about through co-operation between the GNDU and its Dutch counterpart that had been going on for over a year. Thompson was arrested on 27 October, although when police swooped he was in the lobby of the apartment complex in a middle-class part of the city. To cast further doubts on the strength of the case, the drugs and guns were found in a garden adjoining the apartment, but police were confident that fingerprints and DNA would link them to the gang boss. Thompson was in the Netherlands with a twenty-three-year-old female friend from Ireland and an Irish couple – a fifty-one-year-old man and a forty-one-year-old woman with an address in Hull. The three people were also detained, but were later released without charge. However, ‘Fat' Freddie was remanded in custody by a magistrate while police investigated him. Under Dutch law, suspects can be sent to jail while the authorities try to build a case against them. The remand period can only be for a maximum of three months, however, before the evidence has to be presented to the magistrate who then decides whether there is sufficient evidence to warrant a prosecution. At the time the three people were released without charge, a spokeswoman for the Rotterdam Public Prosecutions Office said: ‘They are not allowed to leave the country; they are still suspects in the case and they have to make themselves available for questioning during the investigation. The man we are holding, Freddie T, is the main suspect in the case. He will be brought to court again within fourteen days. We will seek to have his period of detention extended. It is going to take some considerable time to complete the investigation and we want him kept in jail.'

A spokesman for the Rotterdam police confirmed that the Irish authorities had not been in contact with them about extraditing Thompson, and added: ‘This is a Dutch case. There was information from Ireland concerning these people's activities and that they were suspected of having large amounts of drugs and weapons, but there was no Irish involvement beyond that. None of the Irish people arrested were armed. They were taken completely by surprise and they had no time to make a run for it. It was a smoothly run operation; there were plenty of officers waiting for them.'

The Dutch arrest was a massive blow to ‘Fat' Freddie. He had, seemingly, been caught with a large haul of drugs and was looking at a prison sentence of at least ten years, maybe even life, depending on the quality of intelligence and evidence garnered by the Dutch. It is believed that he was in Rotterdam arranging shipments of drugs to be imported back to Dublin to sell on the streets. It had long been suspected that the Thompson gang moved several million euro worth of drugs through Rotterdam Port each year. The arrest was proof positive, if it was needed. However, not for the first time, Thompson struck it lucky and managed to beat the rap. In the first week of February 2007, the magistrate struck out all the charges. The Dutch police moved too quickly and arrested Freddie while he was in the apartment complex, even though he had not actually touched the drugs or guns. Had they waited and kept him under surveillance, they might have caught him red-handed, but Thompson was too cute. There was also no DNA or fingerprint match, so there was plenty of room for him to wriggle out of any charges. It was a serious error by the Dutch police, and one that the Gardaí would come to regret. Freddie could scarcely believe his luck, and to rub salt into the wounds, Dutch law dictates that if a person is remanded in custody while their case is being investigated they are entitled to a payment of €50 per day when they are released. Thompson was in jail for nearly three months and received the princely sum of over €4,000. He booked himself a business class ticket back to Dublin. He arrived in the airport hopelessly drunk, after treating himself to champagne during the flight. Gardaí from the National Immigration Bureau literally could not believe their eyes when the drunken Freddie fell through customs taunting them. The Dutch police toyed with appealing the decision of the judge, but it came to nothing. They had no choice but to move on – as did Freddie.

On 26 February 2007, Detective Sergeant Barry Butler arrested Freddie's former neighbour Stephen Carlile. He was brought from Cloverhill remand prison, where he was in custody following the Clondalkin drugs seizure and was taken to Sundrive Road Garda Station for questioning about Gary Bryan's murder. He told Gardaí that he had nothing to do with Bryan being shot. He said he owned the phone that had been in regular contact with Graham Whelan. However, he knew better than to name Whelan, and denied that he had ever heard the name or even met the drug dealer. He couldn't explain why he had spoken to a complete stranger on fourteen different occasions in only a few hours, but Gardaí had little option but to send him back to jail after he had been interviewed for more than six hours.

David Byrne was also arrested as part of the murder investigation. The twenty-four-year-old from Raleigh Square in Crumlin was Thompson's cousin. He was also a key member of the gang and was one of Graham Whelan's best friends. He was arrested on 14 May 2007, because Whelan's phone records showed that a phone registered to his mother was in frequent contact with Whelan on the day of the murder. Gardaí believed that Byrne had been using his mother's phone. While he was in custody, Byrne refused to answer a single question and would not account for his movements or acknowledge his friendship with Whelan. When Graham Whelan was first arrested in relation to the murder on 7 February 2007, he was held for nearly two days. On 8 February, David Byrne called into Crumlin Garda Station, where Whelan was in custody. Byrne handed newspapers and other items to Sergeant Andrew Duncan for Whelan. Sergeant Duncan examined the newspapers carefully and found a message on one of them which said: ‘Loose lips sink ships.' Gardaí believe that Byrne was telling his mate not to co-operate with Gardaí, but there was little in the way of proof, so he was released without charge.

Gardaí also arrested Freddie Thompson on a separate offence and they used this opportunity to question him about the murder, but he was not taken in until 10 September 2007. When he was questioned, the offence he was being held for was not the Gary Bryan murder.

Gardaí got their chance to arrest him after an incident at about 9.00 p.m. that day, when they received a call saying that a man from Clogher Road in Crumlin received minor gunshot wounds to the chest, after he was hit with rounds fired from a sawn-off shotgun. The incident was to do with Vicky Dempsey's previous friendship with the man Thompson stabbed in 2004; Thompson was still jealous and out for revenge. The shots had been fired from a passing car. Thompson was arrested, not far from the scene at Kildare Road, and was held on suspicion of having information about the shooting. While he was in custody, Gardaí took advantage and quizzed him about Bryan's murder. They had little doubt that while Thompson may not have been directly involved, he knew what was going on as the leader of the gang. That coupled with the fact that an
Irish Independent
newspaper taken from the boot of the Fiat Punto that left the scene of the murder was found to have his fingerprint on it. Even putting questions to Thompson was a waste of time. He was released without charge. He was not charged with either the shooting on Kildare Road or any aspect of the Bryan investigation.