The General ‘prevented kidnap of Bono’s child’
Frances Cahill, a daughter of the late gangland criminal who is studying to be a solicitor, has revealed that her father stopped the planned kidnap attempt on the U2 star’s daughter, Jordan, for a €6m ransom after learning of the plot by another leading criminal associate.
The controversial claim is made in a new book written by Ms Cahill, in which she offers an alternative view to the many “urban myths” that surround her father.
She maintains that Cahill refused to take part in the kidnap with a gang who had staked out the rock star’s luxury home in Killiney, Co Dublin, for several months.
“He told them it was a bad idea,” writes Ms Cahill. “Martin had nothing against Bono’s family. They had never done him any harm and he wasn’t going to get involved.”
She recalls her dad kissing her goodnight then leaving their house with his gloves and torch to raid the homes of other sleeping families.
She also remembers how he would hurl bottles at squad cars from the balcony at their Rathmines flat while she and her siblings would throw rocks. But she insists he was a great father.
She describes her parents as a “happy couple” who rarely fought. And she says her father was a strict dad who insisted his children never used bad language or answered back. He never raised a hand to his children, she claims and wore a pioneer badge on his collar.
He insisted his children went to school: “My father didn’t like us to be a part of things he felt to be inappropriate to our upbringing.”
Her father rarely gave his children pocket money and “always encouraged us to earn a few bob instead”.
However, the story about the alleged kidnap attempt was yesterday branded as “sad and deluded” by one of the gardaí who knew Cahill intimately. Former Garda murder squad detective Gerry O’Carroll described the book as “a hate-filled rant against the police through the rose-tinted glasses of his daughter, Frances.”
“It is a very shoddy and pathetic money-making exercise,” said the retired senior garda.
He claimed any suggestion that Cahill had intervened to prevent the kidnapping of Bono’s daughter was “arrant nonsense with not a scintilla of truth.”
Speaking on RTÉ’s Liveline programme, Mr O’Carroll said Ms Cahill had glossed glibly over many of the violent, brutal crimes which her father was known to have committed.
“To portray him as a mixture of Robin Hood and Mother Teresa is totally disingenuous and a complete and total fallacy.”
However, Mr O’Carroll acknowledged that the General’s tough upbringing at an industrial school in Daingean, Co Offaly, was probably responsible for his decision to turn to a life of crime. He also accepted that Cahill had never engaged in drug-dealing and was a good father to his children.
Ms Cahill lives in Bray, Co Wicklow, with her husband and children. Martin Cahill, My Father (€12.95) goes on sale this weekend.
However, the author has refused to comment on the book before her scheduled appearance on the Late Late Show with Pat Kenny on October 12.
By Dan Collins
TO DESCRIBE Martin Cahill as an ordinary, decent criminal is to apportion a modicum of respectability where it doesn’t belong.
“Reform school was my primary school, St Patrick’s Institution my secondary school, and Mountjoy my university — they taught me everything I know,” he once declared.
He was a quick learner and became a ruthless and disturbingly violent crime lord who lived and died by the gun.
Born on Dublin’s northside, his parents were Patrick Cahill, an alcoholic, and Agnes Sheehan.
He had little or no interest in school and at 15, so the story goes, he attempted to join the Royal Navy, but was rejected when his petty criminal activities were discovered.
At the age of 16 he already had a hefty criminal record and soon became the boss of one of Dublin’s first and most feared armed gangs.
In 1978, Dublin Corporation prepared to demolish Hollyfield Buildings. Cahill, then serving a four-year prison stretch, fought through the courts to prevent this happening. When the tenements were razed, he continued to live, upon his release from prison, in a tent on the site.
Finally, Ben Briscoe, the lord mayor of Dublin, persuaded him to move into a new corporation house in Rathmines.
Cahill and his gang achieved considerable notoriety when they stole gold and diamonds with a value of more than IR£2million from O’Connor’s jewellers in Harold’s Cross.
He also masterminded the theft of some of the world’s most valuable paintings from Russborough House.
Cahill was shot dead outside his home in Rathmines on August 18, 1994, by gunmen believed to be IRA members who were unhappy with his UVF connections.
In 1998, John Boorman directed a movie about his life in crime. The General, starred Brendan Gleeson as Cahill.
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