The businessman, the publican and the brains: net closes in on Limerick’s crime bosses
With two of the main players involved in importing drugs into the mid-west now in custody, a third member of the powerful criminal triumvirate, a West Clare businessman, has plenty of reasons to worry about his liberty as he fears he may be implicated in the Brian Fitzgerald murder.
Hired killer James Martin Cahill, who was jailed for life last week for the murder of nightclub security man Fitzgerald, told the court he is prepared to give evidence about the gang, who paid him €10,000 to carry out the murder.
The Limerick crime boss arrested in London, said to be the brains behind the drugs operation, ordered Fitzgerald’s murder after he reported to gardaí that the criminal had threatened him for refusing a gang member entry to Docs nightclub, where he was head of security.
The crime boss had a six-year suspended sentenced for another crime hanging over him and feared that if the gardaí brought a case with Fitzgerald as the main witness, he would go to prison for the six years.
The crime boss engaged the services of hired assassin Cahill, with the help of the West Clare businessman, with whom he ran his drugs empire.
Cahill and the businessman are known to have travelled to England on a Dublin ferry hours after the murder.
Jim O’Brien’s house in the Annacotty area was used after the murder by Cahill and his accomplice to wash before he fled the city - the murder weapon was found by garda divers when they searched the Mulcair river adjacent to O’Brien’s house.
O’Brien, aged 41, made his entry to the big-time drugs scene through his contact with the Limerick drugs lord now in custody in London.
This man originally came from the Ballinacurra Weston area and, with the west Clare businessman, drew up the masterplan to run one of the biggest drugs operations in the country.
O’Brien became their mid-west regional manager and supplied a large network of pushers.
One of O’Brien’s key employees was Limerick grandmother Ann Keane.
She and a younger man, Brian Ahern, whom she subsequently married, were arrested in Limerick on March 13, 2002, when she was in the process of handing over €500,000 worth of drugs to a member of the deadly McCarthy Dundon gang, who was then aged just 16.
A search of the house used by Keane in Holy Cross turned up evidence that it was a major drugs distribution hub.
A ledger found on the kitchen table showed item-by-item drugs transactions totalling over €1 million during the previous nine months.
Keane was sentenced to six years in jail at Limerick Circuit Court on February 14, 2003.
Ahern, who she had married by that time, got three years.
The youth, who acted as the pick-up, got a suspended sentence.
That sentence was recently activated for another crime and he is now serving a three-year sentence.
But O’Brien had always proven an elusive customer.
When he ran the Chaser O’Brien’s pub in Pallasgreen, one of his barman was found processing drugs packages and was jailed.
But O’Brien escaped the net.
He later ran the Henry Cecil Bar in Limerick, which was the scene of a horrific murder, not involving O’Brien.
He was one of the first people arrested in the after the murder of crime boss Kieran Keane in February 2003.
The gang who carried out the killing, like the killer of Brian Fitzgerald, are understood to have cleaned up after the deadly deed in O’Brien’s house.
They left the city in a car owned by O’Brien.
O’Brien was released without charge, but left the city fearing for his life.
Five men convicted of the murder are due to have their appeal against the conviction heard shortly.
After moving to the continent, O’Brien set up a network moving drugs from South America and Africa via Spain, Belgium and Holland to his drugs allies in Limerick.
O’Brien comes from what gardaí describe as “decent farming stock”, who still farm in the Lough Gur area of Co Limerick.
He came to Limerick to work in a pub owned by the late Jim Hickey, a highly respected publican.
It was no surprise that after some years he went into business on his own and acquired a well-established licensed premises, The Chaser, in Pallasgreen, about 14 miles from the city.
Whispers then began to develop that he was bringing in looted consignments of drink from the North.
He then turned to drugs.
One senior garda in Limerick said: “His family are decent people and he is not someone you would think should get into this level of crime.
“But there must have been some kink there in him.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
