The time of death was 1.45am. Just 12 hours earlier the
victim, Shane Geoghegan, had turned out as captain for Garryowen Rugby Club’s
third team in their match against Shannon. Later walking home from a friend’s house through the Kilteragh housing estate in Dooradoyle on the
outskirts of north Limerick, Geoghegan had, as far as is known from the
fractured picture police have managed to build up, tried to run from his
attackers. Cornered, four shots were fired. Two hit his torso and the fatal
bullet hit him in the head. A dark Renault was seen leaving the scene of the
crime and was later found burned out in another part of the city.
As details of the death emerged over the following 24 hours,
Limerick became outraged. The popular rugby player had become the 14th person
to die in a terrible, bloody gang feud stretching back for more than a decade.
Might his innocent death prove to be a tipping point for the Irish community
cynically known as Stab City?
Mayor John Gilligan has seen his city portrayed as a
murderous, lawless town, and he is furious. ‘You could not get a bigger divergence between Shane and his
killers,’ he says of the Geoghegan murder.
‘The killers are scumbags and the sooner they are taken out, the better. And 99 per cent of the people of Limerick would agree with me.’ Hard work to improve the city is being overshadowed by a
tiny criminal hardcore, and Gilligan thinks the drug feud is being cynically
exploited by the media.
A case in point: investigative journalist Donal McIntyre is
using Limerick (along with Washington DC, Chicago and Jerusalem) as one of a
series called The Toughest Towns. ‘The fact that the police are afraid of going
in and confronting these Limerick gangsters head-on is crazy,’ McIntyre says. ‘Of course, the place has fantastic scenery
too but the violence and proliferation of guns really makes Limerick unique.’
Mayor Gilligan is incensed. ‘This is nothing more than sensationalism from someone who
appears to be on an ego trip. What does he hope to achieve other than give
credence to those who have been bringing misery to our city for years?’
Two tribes go to war
The Mayor’s frustration is understandable. But who are these
people who have brought misery to Limerick for years? Speak to anyone in
Limerick today and they’ll tell you there are two rival drug gangs fighting for
control. The McCarthy-Dundon gang – generally agreed to be the dominant force –
is based in the South Hill and Ballinacurra Weston estates and controls the
south of the city. The
Keane-Collopy gang is based around Moyross and St Mary’s Park, and controls the
north. Parish priest Pat Hogan sees it quite simply. ‘Drink, drugs, poverty and intimidation,’ he says, ‘have created a sense of lawlessness that has only grown in its barbarity with the increasingly huge sums of money to be made from
drugs.’
Father Sylvester Mann, an American Franciscan monk who has
worked in the city for years, says it isn’t as simple as writing off the
criminals as bloody-minded scumbags. ‘The St Mary’s Park Area is
stigmatised,’ he claims. ‘People here can’t get work using their
own addresses, and nobody would know the place even existed if tragedies like
this killing didn’t happen. It is cut-off and ignored, and used as a scapegoat
for everything bad that happens in the city.’
Seeds of the conflict
While the two tribes feuding goes back years, the current state of play is directly linked to Kieran Keane and Eddie
Ryan, who, just 10 years ago, were on the same side. In 2000, the two teenage
daughters of another Ryan, John, attacked Anne Keane as she picked up her
daughter from primary school. Anne, the wife of Kieran’s brother Anthony Keane,
was brutally beaten, pinned to the ground and had her face slashed with a
Stanley knife. Although both sides in the fight belonged to the north Limerick
Keane gang, things escalated quickly. A catalogue of tit-for-tat attacks ensued
as the bitterness between the two families spiralled out of control, a
situation which culminated with Eddie Ryan trying to kill Christy Keane, the Keane family boss, in a power-play which he thought would bring him control of
Christy’s drug empire. He failed when his gun jammed, and sealed his fate.
In November 2000, drinkers watched in horror as gunmen
pumped 11 bullets into Eddie Ryan in the crowded Moose Bar in Cathedral Place.
Apparently nobody saw the killing, and people joked at the time that The Moose Bar must have the biggest
toilet in Ireland with the amount of people who were in there at the time of
the attack. Kieran Keane and associate Paul Coffey were charged with murder but
the case collapsed after initial statements were withdrawn in the face of
relentless intimidation. After Eddie’s murder, the Ryan family teamed up with
the McCarthy-Dundon gang, but this three-way power split eventually came to a
bitter end with the killing of Eddie Ryan’s brother John, shot as he laid a
patio in 2003, and the murder of Frankie Ryan, shot dead in his car in 2006.
Other innocent people have fallen. In 2002, doorman Brian
Fitzgerald was shot dead outside his home. His crime was refusing to allow
members of the McCarthy-Dundon gang to sell drugs in Doc’s Nightclub. On 4
November 2005, an 18-year-old apprentice electrician, Darren Coughlan, was
walking home after a night out when three teenagers beat and kicked him to
death. Joseph Keane, convicted of Coughlan’s manslaughter, laughed as he left
the court. He is the son of Kieran Keane. In March 2006, 17-year-old
Richard ‘Happy’ Kelly was shot
dead, his body weighed down with bricks and dumped in Lough Brigid in east
Clare. He was found when an angler’s line became entangled in his skeletal
remains. A petty criminal, the act that earned him a death sentence was
stealing a car that was, unknown to him, owned by one of the gangs and
contained drugs and guns.
Reaction to murder
Kieran Keane himself would become a bloody footnote in the Limerick drug wars. In an extraordinary series of
events in January 2003, Eddie and Kieran Ryan (the late Eddie Senior’s sons)
were abducted at gunpoint. The two
were eventually released unharmed, but several hours after their release Kieran
Keane was lured to his death. Called out to a business meeting, Keane and his
companion Owen Treacey, were ambushed and driven out to a lonely hillside on the outskirts of Limerick. Keane had his hands tied behind
his back and was shot in the back of the head. The killer’s gun then jammed
so Treacey was stabbed 17 times
and left for dead. He somehow managed to drag himself to a nearby house, and
tell the police what had happened.
The killing was initially seen as revenge for the Ryans’s
abduction, but the consensus is that the abduction was a ruse, staged to give
reason to kill Keane. Five men were convicted of Keane’s killing in 2006. One
of the convicted, Anthony
‘Noddy’ McCarthy, sent an
ominous message out as he was led away.
‘For every reaction, there’s a reaction!’ he shouted at Keane’s
relatives as he was led away.
‘Remember that!’ Dessie
Dundon was also convicted of the murder.
The police and politicians haven’t been complacent: hundreds
of firearms have been seized and 40 criminals from both gangs are behind bars.
Over £5million worth of drugs have been seized in the past year. There is even
a special unit being built to replace the unit at Cloverhill Prison, where it
was known that gang members were running operations by mobile phone. In
response to Geoghegan’s murder, 30 houses were raided in Limerick, Cork and
Dublin, and two men arrested: a local man aged 19 and a 23-year-old accomplice
hired from north Dublin by the McCarthy-Dundon gang. Irish security sources
have revealed that the men’s real target lived near the rugby player’s home.
The intended victim was a known member of the Keane-Collopy gang. Geoghegan was
simply a tragic case of mistaken identity.
More than 2,000 mourners attended Shane Geoghegan’s funeral
in November. He should have been getting married this year. His former teacher,
Jim Maher, said he hoped the attack would become a turning point in the
gangland war waged by the city’s violent criminals. Garryowen Rugby Club have
retired his Number 3 jersey.
Not my town
The final word should be left to an anonymous Limerick man
who left this post on a message board after Geoghegan’s murder. Responding to
press reports that Limerick was in the grip of a generation obsessed with what
it called the ‘gangster
lifestyle’ the man wrote, ‘The people of Limerick are sick and
tired of the label their city of 80,000 has been given. An idiot sub-culture
has adopted this lifestyle, not an entire generation of young Limerick men and
women. Not my son. Not my daughter. Not any of their friends. Not the thousands
of university students in this city.
Not the artists. Not the sports people. Not the Olympic oarsmen and
boxers. Not the musicians. Not the craftspeople. Not the theatre companies. Not
the writers, nor the composers, nor the painters. Not the honest hardworking
people of my town.’
MORE FEATURES
Bookmark this post with: