Speculation €100k was demanded just days before murder
Gardaí investigating the murder of suspected major drug dealer, Darren Falsey, believe it’s too early to say if he was killed by dissident republicans because he refused to pay them “protection money”.
However, it is believed the 36-year-old, shot in the hallway of his rented home in Carrigaline, was threatened some weeks ago that he risked being harmed if he didn’t pay up.
Gardaí won’t comment on speculation that up to €100,000 had been demanded from Mr Falsey who detectives believe had been a major player in the drugs distribution market in Cork for a number of years — although he had no previous convictions for dealing.
There are unsubstantiated claims that Falsey was also sent a bullet in the post a few days before he died.
However, senior garda sources have confirmed that as part of the investigation they are looking at the possibility that Real IRA members may be behind the brutal killing.
“All possibilities, including subversives, are being investigated,” a senior garda sources said.
He also said that Mr Falsey could have been killed by people in the drugs trade, or may even have crossed somebody who had nothing to do with the drugs scene.
The Real IRA hasn’t claimed responsibility for Mr Falsey’s killing. However, that organisation said it was responsible for the last gun-related murder in Cork.
They said they shot drugs dealer, Gerard ‘Topper’ Staunton, outside his house at Elm Close in Wilton in January 2010.
The dissident group also claimed they murdered convicted drug dealer Kieran O’Flynn in June 7, 2001.
O’Flynn’s killing bore similar hallmarks to the professional hit on Darren Falsey.
O’Flynn went to answer a knock at the front door of his house at Thorndale Estate, Dublin Hill and was shot a number of times in the hallway.
A number of other people involved in the drugs trade in Cork have also been killed in recent years.
They include the O’Flynn gang enforcer Michael Crinnion who was shot dead outside a pub in Barrack Street April 1995.
Eric Cummins was gunned down in Ballincollig in August 2005 and David “Boogie” Brett, who had been living in Charleville, was lured to secluded spot near Ballydesmond May 21, 2007 where he was also shot dead.
A large proportion of the drugs trade in Cork has been cornered by Limerick gangs who are notoriously vicious, especially if somebody crosses them or won’t pay up what they owe.
But senior garda say that there are still Cork-based gangs which control a large proportion of the “local turf”.
Some of these gang masters live in the city and some in its leafy suburbs, while others control their patches from bases abroad. They are living in Spain and Holland.
A few days before Gerard “Topper” Stanton died the Real IRA distributed a number of leaflets in pubs on the southside of the city proclaiming that they would rid the area of dealers who didn’t immediately stop selling drugs.
Senior gardaí believe the Real IRA is using the cover of protecting areas from drugs as a front to extort large sums of money from dealers, which they in turn use to buy weapons.
Seven years ago a Real IRA botched an attempt to firebomb the home of a relative of Falsey’s who they had been trying to get money off.
A team of up to 60 gardaí headed by Detective Superintendent Sean Healy are working on the Falsey murder.
Falsey’s brother, Ronan, said he had spoken to him an hour before he was shot in the head and upper body.
“He was a great guy, always smiling, loved a pint, travel and most of all his children. He was an out-and-out family man,” Ronan Falsey said.
“He was an exceptionally good brother. He was fanatical about Munster rugby and Tottenham Hotspur.”
Mr Falsey had been shopping in Cork City with his partner, Lorraine Conroy, the morning he died. She dropped him back to their home at Ashbourne Court at 2pm and left.
At 2.45pm she returned to the house with her son Dylan (8) to discover Falsey lying in a pool of blood in the hallway.
Shell casings recovered from the scene showed that he was shot with a 9mm handgun.
Gardaí are carrying house to house inquiries in the area and checking CCTV footage in an attempt to identify Mr Falsey’s killer.
They have appealed for anybody with any information about the murder to contact gardaí in confidence at Togher garda station at (021) 4947120.
IT IS widely acknowledged that the killing of Michael Crinnion in Cork on April 8, 1995 was the first gangland killing in this country.
Crinnion, 35, an enforcer for the O’Flynn crime family, was gunned down outside the Clannad Bar on the city’s Barrack Street.
He had gone outside the bar to answer a phone call, and died in a hail of bullets fired by a lone gunman armed with a .38 revolver.
Ballistics tests showed the weapon had never been used in a previous shooting in Ireland. Gardaí acknowledged the killing bore all the hallmarks of a professional hit.
Two months before the fatal shooting, shots were fired into the Steeple Bar on Shandon Street where Crinnion was known to drink with his associates.
At the time of his death, the O’Flynn gang controlled most of Cork’s drugs trade and Crinnion was involved in a number of punishment beatings of members of opposing gangs and errant members of his own gang. Despite an extensive investigation, nobody has ever been convicted of the killing.
At his funeral in Togher, an RTÉ television crew was attacked.
ERIC Cummins, 31, was shot dead while holding his 18-month-old son, in a gangland-style execution in the driveway of his partner’s house in the Oldcourt area of Ballincollig on August 13, 2005.
Cummins, a plasterer, was shot four times by a lone gunman armed with a high-powered handgun who had lain in wait for up to half an hour before the attack.
The gunman left a parked car, strolled across a green area where several local children were playing, retrieved the handgun from bushes and jogged calmly towards his victim.
He leapt onto a wall and blasted Cummins four times as he, his partner, their child and a friend stood in the driveway of the house after returning from an outing.
The gunman escaped in a dark-coloured Honda car driven by an accomplice. It was later found burnt out.
Cummins had a conviction for a drugs offence in Portlaoise and was known to gardaí.
He may have been shot following a dispute with a drug dealer.
Nobody has ever been convicted for the killing.
CONVICTED drug dealer David ‘Boogie’ Brett, 33, was shot dead in a secluded spot near Foyle National School, off the Tower Road, 7km from the village of Ballydesmond in north Cork on May 21, 2007.
Gardaí believe that Brett, who was originally from Greenmount in Cork city but who had moved to Liscarroll near Charleville in an effort to escape his past, had been lured to the area.
It is believed he owed a substantial amount of money to one of the city’s main drug gangs.
His body was left lying in a ditch beside his silver Audi. Brett had several convictions for drugs-related offences since the late 1990s.
In 1995, he was jailed for four years at Waterford Circuit Court for possession with intent to supply.
In February 2001, Brett was given a suspended sentence for driving another man to collect €50,000 worth of ecstasy which was stashed at Ballymartle, Kinsale.
Brett’s older brother John was one of the region’s biggest ecstasy dealers.
In November 1999 he was caught by gardaí in a Glanmire warehouse with €500,000 worth of ecstasy tablets stashed in truck tyres. He received an 11-year jail sentence.
GERARD ‘Topper’ Staunton, 41, originally from Kilkieran Close in Hollyhill, on the northside of the city, was shot by a lone gunman as he was getting into his car outside his rented house at Westlawn in Wilton at around 7.50pm on January 20, 2010.
The convicted drug-dealer, who was known to gardaí, was blasted in the chest at close range by a man armed with a double-barreled sawn -off shotgun, in front of his partner and her two children.
The gunman fled in a red 92 C -registered Toyota Liteace van with distinctive bull-bars. It sped off along Sarsfield Road and was later found burned out in a field four miles away at Castlewhite, near Waterfall, at around 8.30pm.
Gardaí later traced the van to Carrigaline, where it had been bought 24 hours before the shooting. Less than a week later, the Real IRA issued a statement through the 32 County Sovereignty Movement, in which it claimed responsibility for Staunton’s murder.
The Real IRA distributed leaflets in a number of pubs on Cork’s northside in which it again warned that it was targeting drug-dealers, naming a man who had been convicted of possessing heroin for sale or supply but had received a suspended sentence.
The group also claimed responsibility for the shooting of another man, Pat Jones, 36, who was left paralysed after being shot through the window of a house in Knocknaheeny on September 28, 2008.
The dissidents have also claimed responsibility for Kieran O’Flynn’s murder.
MICHAEL Crinnion’s brother-in-law, Kieran O’Flynn, 38, was gunned down in the hallway of his home on the northside of Cork city on June 7, 2001.
His eight-year-old daughter answered a knock at the door of their home at Thorndale, off Dublin Hill, at about 10.45pm to a man who asked for her father. He left when she told him O’Flynn wasn’t at home. But a balaclava-clad gunman returned at around 11pm and knocked at the door again.
O’Flynn, a convicted drug dealer, was shot twice as he opened the door.
The gunman fired twice through the door’s glass panel, then stepped into the hallway and fired a third shot through the dying man’s throat as he lay on the ground.
O’Flynn’s partner and three young children were in the house at the time.
O’Flynn had been arrested by gardaí and customs officials after a high-speed boat chase in Cork Harbour in December 1992 as he tried to bring some 50 kilos of cannabis resin ashore at Hop Island. He was subsequently convicted for the offence.
Gardaí arrested and questioned more than 80 people. No one has ever been charged with the killing.
One of O’Flynn’s brothers, Donal, was involved in the attack on the RTÉ camera crew who covered Crinnion’s funeral, and he received a 26-month jail sentence.
Another brother, Seanie, served prison sentences in Holland and Spain for drugs trafficking.
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