Secret recordings key to hitman plan
Gary O’Flynn, of Hayfield Drive, Castle Court, Whitechurch, Co Cork, was sentenced at Cork Circuit Criminal Court where he pleaded guilty to three counts of soliciting a man to murder accountant Patrick Sweeney; Revenue official George Ross; and Sergeant Mary Skehan of the Garda Fraud Squad at Anglesea Street, Cork.
Detective Sergeant Denis Lynch said a man who was approached by O’Flynn to get a hitman responded by going to gardaí to report the matter and tell them of his fears.
“The witness believed Gary O’Flynn was capable of getting someone to carry out these crimes. He was concerned for the safety of the three people named. He (O’Flynn) was willing to have three people killed,” the detective said, adding that the witness made a recording by dictaphone of the conversation he had with the solicitor.
On the recordings O’Flynn was heard saying: “There is €10k there I am fucking serious.”
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“Revenue are going to be bamboozled if something happens like that and that is the end of it.”
“Sweeney fucking did enough damage to me. I know that once Sweeney is gone, disappeared and out of my life it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. The man had my wife arrested and me arrested. Would you fucking stop.”
Once gardaí were contacted about these efforts to murder three people an investigation was set up at the highest level.
A meeting was set up between O’Flynn and “a hitman” by the man who reported the matter to gardaí in the first place. This meeting was also recorded as the person introduced to O’Flynn as a hitman from Dublin was an undercover member of An Garda Síochána.
O’Flynn — according to the defence yesterday — was out of touch with reality as a result of a depressive illness with a psychotic component and was behaving unusually at the meeting in the Maldron Hotel, constantly leaning across to shake hands with the man he believed to be a hitman and asking him personal questions about his life in Dublin.
Det Sgt Lynch said O’Flynn left the Maldron that day and returned with a €1,000 cash deposit for the hitman.
On the recording of that meeting the undercover garda posing as the hitman asked, “How soon do you want this done?” O’Flynn replied, “As soon as you can do it.”
In follow-up forensic examinations of his computers it was found that the accused had made searches on his computers for information on where the three parties lived. He had also made computer searches for “list of dead gardai” and “list of gardai murdered”.
Marjorie Farrelly, senior counsel, said that O’Flynn called a halt to the hitman’s efforts. She referred to his voice on a recording of a telephone conversation with the undercover garda saying, “There is no need for it, no fucking need for it to be honest with you. I owe you a few bob for it.”
