From petty criminal to armed assasin

JAMES MARTIN CAHILL spent his 28th birthday carrying out the murder of Limerick bouncer Brian Fitzgerald.

That was three years ago and now the English assassin is behind bars and fearing for his own life, having asked to be taken into the State’s Witness Protection Programme.

The 31-year-old has agreed to inform on the Limerick crimelords who hired him to carry out the €10,000 murder contract.

What Cahill knows could be enough to put behind bars 11 of the leading players in the mid-west’s ferocious drugs trade.

Already the investigation into the murder has led to the jailing of two men from the sedate English seaside town of Morecambe, Lancashire, for re-activating guns.

Mr Fitzgerald’s days were numbered after he refused to allow drug dealers inside Doc’s nightclub in Limerick to sell their wares.

In December 2001, a warning shot was fired into his home, narrowly missing a child. Months later paint was daubed on his 4x4 vehicle. He also received death threats.

Mr Fitzgerald went to the gardaí and they arrested one of Limerick’s leading crime figures - who had a six-year suspended sentence over his head and faced serving the term if the case ever got to court.

Mr Fitzgerald as the main witness withdrew his complaints, fearing for the safety of his two children and wife but it was too late.

This is where James Martin Cahill enters the plot.

Cahill is from Birmingham, long a home to generations of emigrant Irish families who have now spread out across the English Midlands.

He lived in Quinton, a suburb on the city’s western fringes which lie next to the hardcore industrial area of the Black Country.

Although the suburb today boasts two Conservative councillors and one Labour member (an indicator of the suburb’s fair prosperity), Cahill’s home in Highfield Lane is on the kind of tough estate normally found in the Sparkbrook, Sparkhill and Handsworth areas of the city.

A community source, who spoke to the Irish Examiner on condition of anonymity, said: “People didn’t seem to know Cahill, though he may have had a coterie of people.

“I know the sort of criminals we have here in Quinton but he was never one of them and he is not known to the police in Quinton very well.

“He just kept his head down over here, he must have done. I don’t think he is part of a criminal gang. Where Cahill lives is on a housing estate and it has had its fair share of problems but he was not one of the problem families.

“There are problem families with Irish connections but he was not one of them. He was not involved with them as far as I can tell.”

In England, Cahill was just a petty criminal, appearing before Birmingham magistrates’ court six times between 1992 and 1997.

His record shows convictions for criminal damage, theft from a car, going equipped for theft and interfering with a motor vehicle (twice) and wounding.

The severest sentence he faced was a £200 (€290) fine for wounding and 150 hours of unpaid community work for theft offence.

Yet it is his criminal record here which is perhaps more telling.

In 1993, he was convicted of burglary, larceny and criminal damage and was fined, ordered to pay compensation and given a suspended 12-month sentence.

The dates on his British criminal record indicate he must have gone home to England for a long spell afterwards as his next conviction in the State was in 1999.

That July he was fined for an assault and later was sentenced to three years in Cork Prison on a deception charge.

By 2002, his reputation among criminals in Ireland had grown to such heights he was recruited to carry out a contract killing.

For €10,000 - payable in two equal installments - Cahill murdered Brian Fitzgerald on the orders of a city drugs boss.

In the early hours of November 29 - Cahill’s 28th birthday - he aimed a 9mm self-loading pistol at the back of Mr Fitzgerald’s head and fired twice.

By any reckoning it was a cowardly murder for such a derisory sum. Back in Birmingham €10,000 was worth £6,500, the price of a mid-range second-hand car.

Cahill fled the scene with an unidentified accomplice, dumping the getaway motorbike and throwing the gun into the Mulcair River on the outskirts of Limerick.

As a murder hunt began and outrage started to grow over the death, Cahill made his way to Dublin and boarded a ferry back to England.

He could easily have disappeared into the background in Quinton and any Irish lilt in his Birmingham accent would not have been out of place in the city.

But Cahill, who had connections to Co Clare, either chose or was called back to Ireland where the events of his 28th birthday would catch up with him, sparking a remarkable turn of events that could yet lead to the jailing of major crime figures in the mid-west.

Just four months after the contract murder of Mr Fitzgerald, Cahill was driving around Dublin in a car stolen from Armagh. Gardaí had him under surveillance and pounced, forcing Cahill to stop the car in Garter’s Lane in Saggart, Co Dublin, after a chase involving armed detectives.

On the passenger seat of the car gardaí found an open bag containing a disassembled Uzi sub-machine gun and 15 rounds of 9mm ammunition.

The following year Cahill was convicted at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin of possessing the gun and ammunition.

The trial judge, Mr Justice Richard Johnson, said Cahill could not have had the weapon and ammunition for a lawful purpose.

Cahill was jailed for five years for the gun offences - and ended up in Portlaoise Prison.

Whatever happened to Cahill in prison subsequently or was said to him by fellow inmates was enough for him to request a meeting with gardaí in May last year.

He met gardaí and confessed to Mr Fitzgerald’s murder, saying: “They are going to kill me.”

He also told them: “I shot him and no one else. I want to get this out of my system. I want to get this out in the open.”

It was just what gardaí wanted - not only had they cracked the Fitzgerald murder case they also had a vital ally in the fight against the big players who governed Limerick’s crime scene.

Any doubt of Cahill’s willingness and ability to name names was banished when Cahill appeared before Mr Justice Paul Carney at the Central Criminal Court in Dublin in November last year.

Taking the stand, Cahill declared: “I am willing to say that I will testify if a further case is coming.”

He asked for the evidence and trial transcript to be kept on file in case he was unable to testify further, tellingly adding: “I feel my life is in danger in prison, not just from prisoners but from prison officers because of what I feel in this case.

“What I am trying to say is that I will testify against people and that’s why I feel my life is in danger.”

During the sentencing hearing, the court was told how Cahill had gone to a meeting before the Fitzgerald murder where he was shown how to use a firearm.

Cahill told investigating gardaí how a named individual had told him to “put one in that c***’s head” and then laughed.

On the night of the murder, Cahill said he was shaking with fear and had pointed the gun at the back of Mr Fitzgerald’s head before looking away and pulling the trigger.

As Cahill was led away to start a life sentence, he shouted: “Ask him (the judge) to bring the killers to justice.”

Meanwhile back home in Birmingham, news of Cahill’s conviction for murder and his willingness to name names had made it into the city’s tabloid Sunday Mercury newspaper.

The headline screamed: “£30,000 CONTRACT - Irish gangsters put price tag on Brum hitman.”

Readers were told how Cahill was terrified after agreeing to name names.

The paper breathlessly reported: “One fearless drug lord has even phoned a cop and boasted that Cahill was going to ‘get a bullet for his mouth’, according to sources.”

A senior garda spokesman, said the paper, has confirmed round-the-clock security had been placed on the gunman.

The spokesman was quoted as saying: “Cahill is a marked man now but he knew that when he took the decision to testify against these people.

“He knows from personal experience that they’ve just no respect for the law. They have only respect for a couple of things and that’s money and power.”

Keeping Cahill safe before any further case went to trial would be the Irish prison system’s biggest task, said the paper.

Referring to the €10,000 contract murder of Mr Fitzgerald, the source told the paper: “If they can cough up thousands to settle a grudge, you can imagine what lengths they’ll go to to keep their freedom.

“Even in prison, Cahill is not safe. It will cost the State a small fortune to keep him safe.”

To people in Quinton, this must have been staggering news - a petty criminal from their neighbourhood was not only a murderer but a marked man as well.

Since Cahill was sent down for life, one man has been arrested in London and another in Brussels in Belgium. In December last year a West Clare businessman left the country for fear of being named by Cahill, it is understood.

The timing of events could not have been better for gardaí after a Supreme Court ruling in late November paved the way for the use of supergrass evidence in court cases.

Cahill wants protection for him and his family in exchange for his vital information - and if gardaí keep their side of the bargain the year 2006 could be a turning point in Limerick’s crime scene.

And it could also mean that Cahill stands a better chance of reaching his next birthday.