Gardaí fail to find body in hunt for missing criminal

A GARDA hunt for a missing criminal, suspected of being murdered, is at a standstill after searches near his burnt out car drew a blank.

Detectives are investigating theories that low-level criminal James Kenny McDonagh was abducted and murdered on the orders of a notorious crime boss from Ballyfermot, west Dublin.

Mr McDonagh, 28, from Kilmainham, in the south inner city, was last seen in nearby Bluebell last Wednesday week.

A Garda spokesman said Mr McDonagh was a “high-risk missing person” and they had “serious concerns for his safety”.

Mr McDonagh was last seen driving a wine-coloured Mazda 626, registration number 02 D 68758. The car was found burnt out in the Newcastle area of Co Dublin, near lands previously bought for investment, but now idle.

Gardaí carried out two days of searches in the fields but found nothing.

Garda sources said while the location could have been a decoy, they searched the lands as a number of individuals from Ballyfermot had connections there, including keeping horses, and there was fresh digging.

“We concluded the search on Wednesday evening, but it turned up negative,” said a source. “It’s a waiting game now. There’s not much we can do unless we get an indication he’s somewhere else.”

Sources said Mr McDonagh was not a major criminal. “He’s has very little serious convictions. He probably facilitated the movement of stuff.”

A Garda source said there have been “loads of rumours” about what happened Mr McDonagh and “one of two heads from Ballyfermot” were claiming they had killed him, but these were unconfirmed.

He said they were treating a notorious criminal in Ballyfermot as a suspect and Mr McDonagh would “know a lot” about this individual. The criminal was a suspect for a gruesome double gangland murder.

Gardaí said this criminal was a “serious player” and involved in drug dealing and debt collection. He is linked to a top crime boss in the Ballyfermot area.

Gardaí said there was an incident in Inchicore a couple of months ago, in which an associate of the Ballyfermot criminal was shot at.

This might have been an attempt to set up the Ballyfermot criminal.