Martin Cahill

Martin Cahill
Born	(1949-05-23)May 23, 1949 Dublin, Ireland
Died	August 18, 1994(1994-08-18) (aged 45) Dublin, Ireland
Cause of death	Assasination
Nationality	Irish
Other names	The General
Spouse	Frances
Children	4
Conviction(s)	Armed robbery

Martin "The General" Cahill (May 23, 1949 – August 18, 1994) was a prominent Irish criminal from Dublin.

Cahill generated a certain notoriety in the media, which referred to him by the sobriquet "The General". The name was also used by the media in order to discuss Cahill's activities while avoiding legal problems with libel. During his lifetime, Cahill took particular care to hide his face from the media—he would spread the fingers of one of his hands and cover his face with that hand.

Early life

He was born in a slum district on Dublin's North Side. His parents were Patrick Cahill, a lighthouse keeper, and Agnes Sheehan. By the time he was in national school, Martin and his older brother John were stealing food to supplement the family's income. In 1960, the family was moved to 210 Captains Road Crumlin as part of the Dublin slum clearances. Martin was sent to a Christian Brothers School (CBS) on the same road where he lived but was soon playing truant and committing frequent burglaries with his brothers. At 15, he attempted to join the Royal Navy, but was rejected, allegedly after offering to break into houses for them and because he had a criminal record.

Career

At the age of 16, he was convicted of two burglaries and sentenced to an industrial school run by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate at Daingean, County Offaly. After his release, he met and married Frances Lawless, a girl from Rathmines where his family was now living.

With his brothers, he continued to commit multiple burglaries in the affluent neighborhoods nearby, at one point even robbing the Garda Síochána depot for confiscated firearms. The Cahill brothers soon turned to armed robbery, and by the early 1970s Gardai at the Dublin Central Detective Unit (CDU) had identified the Cahill brothers as major criminals, when they teamed up with the notorious Dunne gang in Crumlin to rob security vans escorting cash from banks.

Rise to prominence

In 1978, the Dublin Corporation began preparing to demolish Hollyfield Buildings. Cahill, then serving a four-year prison sentence, fought through the courts to prevent his neighborhood's destruction. Even after the tenements were demolished, he continued to live in a pitched tent on the site. Finally, Ben Briscoe, the Lord Mayor of Dublin, paid a visit to his tent and persuaded him to move into a new house in a more upscale district of Rathmines.

Cahill and his gang famously stole gold and diamonds with a value of over IR£2 million (€2.55 million) from O'Connor's jewellers in Harolds Cross (1983). The jewellers was subsequently forced to close, with the loss of more than one hundred jobs. In addition, he was involved in stealing some of the world's most valuable paintings from Russborough House (1986) and shaking down restaurants and hot dog vendors in Dublin's night club district.

Tango squad

Fearing the increasing role that forensic science could play in detecting his robberies, in May 1982 Cahill had a bomb placed under the car of chief forensic scientist, Dr James O'Donovan, partly disabling the scientist. As a result, the Gardai set up a Special Surveillance Unit (SSU), called the Tango Squad, to specifically target and monitor Cahill's gang on a permenant, 24/7 basis. Cahill was given the callsign Tango-1.

In February 1988, a Today Tonight report identified Cahill as the man behind the O'Donovan bomb plot, the Beit robbery, and the robbery of O'Connors jewellery depot. Resultantly, PD leader Dessie O'Malley raised in the Dail the revelations that Cahill owned such expensive property in Cowper Downs, despite having never worked, sarcastically remarking that Cahill must have needed the extra wall space to hang his artwork by the Dutch masters.

From July 1988, the Tango Squad upped their pressure on Cahill, making it obvious to Cahill and everyone who was looking where he went. They also placed a direct presence on the estate at Copwer Downs, placing an agreed survilence unit in the home of developer John Sisk, who's house backed onto Cahill's. Showing signs of getting at the criminal, he ordered the slashing of 197 cars tyres on one night, but after arrest on suspicion of ordering the crime, he returned home to find his own Mercedes-Benz smashed, with Gardai waiting to advise him of his rights.

Lacey kidnapping

Main article: Lacey kidnapping

In early 1993 John "The Coach" Traynor met with his boss Cahill to provide him with inside information about the inner-workings of the National Irish Bank head office and branch at College Green, Dublin. Traynor told Cahill that the bank regularly held more than €10 million in cash in the building. The plan was to abduct NIB CEO John Lacey, his wife and four children and take them to an isolated hiding place. There they would be held with fellow gang member, but acting as a "hostage" Jo Jo Kavanagh, who would frighten Lacey into handing over every penny stored in the bank's vaults.

On 1 November 1993, Cahill's gang seized Lacey and his wife outside his home in Blackrock. Holding them at Lacey's home, Kavanagh was brought in and tied up, telling the family that he had been abducted two weeks before. On 2 November, Kavanagh drove Lacey to College Green to collect the ransom money, with Lacey eventually withdrawing IR£300,000 from an accessible cash machine. Kavanagh then drove the pair and the money to the local Gardi station, where he told them the pair had been kidnapped and forced to take part in a robbery.

With a ransom note requesting payment of €10 million in cash, the Gardi began investigating. They quickly found that Kavanagh had claimed child allowance during his two week "capture," and so arrested him. Cahill then planned with Kavanagh to "raid" Kavanagh's home, and show intent to kill the Lacey family by shooting Kavanagh in the leg. Kavanagh was then to call the Irish newspapers from his hospital bed, and claim he was a victim of the Lacey kidnapping gang.

However, the plan failed, and the gang were arrested.

Assassination

With all gang members from the Lacey kidnapping released on bail, on 18 August 1994, Cahill left his home in Rathmines and began driving to a local video store to return a borrowed copy of A Bronx Tale. Upon reaching a road junction (where Oxford road meets Charlston Road) he was repeatedly shot in the face and upper torso and died almost instantly. The gunman, who was armed with a .357 Magnum revolver, jumped on a motorbike and disappeared from the scene.

After a Roman Catholic requiem mass, Cahill was buried at Mount Jerome Cemetery. In 2001, his gravestone was vandalized and broken in two.

Aftermath

There are a number of theories about who murdered Martin Cahill and why.

Within hours of Cahill's murder, the Provisional IRA claimed responsibility in a press release. The reasons cited were Cahill's alleged involvement with a Portadown unit of the Ulster Volunteer Force. The Unit in question had attempted a bomb attack on a Dublin pub which was hosting a Sinn Féin fund-raiser on the 21 May 1994. The UVF operatives were halted by the doorman Martin Doherty. In the ensuing struggle, Doherty, who the IRA subsequently announced was a Volunteer in the IRA's Dublin Brigade, was shot dead. The Provos further alleged that Cahill had been involved in selling the stolen Beit paintings to the UVF gang led by Billy Wright.. The UVF then fenced the paintings for money, which they used to buy guns from South Africa. This act supposedly sealed Cahill's fate, and put him at the top of an IRA hit list. In a later statement, the IRA said that it was Cahill's involvement with and assistance to pro-British death squads which forced us to act.

Another theory surfaced after the publication of Paul Williams's The General, which claims to have insights from the Garda officers who investigated Cahill's murder. Reputedly, two of Cahill's underlings, John Gilligan and John Traynor, had put together a massive drug trafficking ring. When Cahill demanded a cut of the profits, Gardai believe that Traynor and Gilligan approached the IRA and suggested that Cahill was importing heroin, a drug that the IRA despised and were trying to curtail the distribution of within Dublin. Reputedly, this, and Cahill's past dealings with the Loyalists, gave the IRA reason to order his assassination; the hit was paid for and funded by Gilligan. This theory is put forward in Paul Williams's book Evil Empire. Additionally, Martin Cahill, My Father, a 2007 book written by Cahill's daughter, Frances, alleges he detested and steered clear of the drug trade.

Yet another theory claims that John Gilligan was ultimately responsible for the murder. Depicted in the film Veronica Guerin, this theory was outlined by journalist Henry McDonald as follows,

"In 1993 Gilligan gets out jail and borrows IR£400,000 from Cahill, which the General had raised from the proceeds of his daring theft of the Beit Dutch masters paintings. Gilligan then uses the loan to finance the importation of tonnes of cannabis from Holland into the Irish Republic. When Cahill demands IR£1.5 million in return for his loan, Gilligan decides to rid himself of the troublesome crime boss. Gilligan ... goes to the so-called commanding officer of the Irish National Liberation Army in Dublin and asks him to shoot Cahill. In return, Gilligan offers the INLA killer IR£26,000. Gilligan then bribes a senior member of the IRA in Dublin, who also controls a security firm in the city, to claim responsibility for the shooting. When Cahill is gunned down in Rathmines, the IRA figure with links to organised crime manages to convince the Provo leadership that his unit carried out the assassination. The IRA then admits responsibility for the murder."

McDonald cites an unnamed Garda officer involved in the investigation as saying that the film "showed the true picture of what happened, not only to [Veronica Guerin] but also to Cahill".

The unnamed officer continued: "In the Boorman film, the Provos are depicted as the ones who dispatch the General because he is working with the UVF. The fact is Cahill had no direct links with the UVF, only indirect ones through a criminal fence who managed to get rid of some of the stolen Beit paintings ... I'm glad this new film shatters the myth that the IRA killed Cahill for some sort of noble reason."

McDonald also quotes Jimmy Guerin, the murdered journalist's brother, as saying: "The film shows Gilligan procuring the murder of Cahill and that as far as everyone involved in both investigations knows is the real version of events."

However this version of events ignores the fact that the INLA had been severely weakened following the assassination of Dominic McGlinchy and would have lacked either the intelligence on Cahill's movements or the manpower in Dublin to conduct such an operation. Furthermore the PIRA were curtailing armed operations as part of the peace process. Any operation would have had to be sanctioned by the PIRA's Southern Command. If the IRA individual had claimed responsibility for the operation if it had not been sanctioned by Southern Command, he would have been subject to court-martialed in accordance with IRA regulations.

CAB Asset seizure

Main article: Criminal Assets Bureau

Following the 1996 murder of journalist Veronica Guerin, the Dial set up the Criminal Assets Bureau, to seize assets of those who were both convicted of crimes, and also seemingly had no obvious means of income. The CAB was set-up to focus mainly on high-profile drugs dealers, but had an open approach to all convicted criminals. Cahill denied that he was ever involved in drug dealing, however his brother Peter was convicted of heroin supplying in the 1980s.

In 1984, Cahill had bought his growing family a house on the Cowper Downs development, on the southside of Dublin, paying IR£80,000 cash despite having no paid formal employment since he left his first and only job in 1969. On 1 May 2005, under an agreement with his widow Frances, the CAB seized and subsequently sold the property.

In popular culture

In 1998 John Boorman directed a biopic titled The General, starring Brendan Gleeson as Cahill. The movie won best director award at the Cannes Film Festival. The movie was based on the book by Irish crime journalist, Paul Williams, who is also the crime editor of the Irish tabloid the News of the World. Boorman himself once had his home burgled by Cahill, who stole the gold record which Boorman had won for the Deliverance soundtrack. This incident is alluded to in the film.

The 2003 film Veronica Guerin, implies that John Gilligan ordered Cahill's murder. In the film Gilligan and Traynor are not portrayed as Cahill's subordinates. Instead, Gilligan appears as a rival mob boss, and Traynor as a lower level associate.

The film Ordinary Decent Criminal, starring Kevin Spacey, is loosely inspired by the General.

In 2004, a book written by Matthew Hart was released entitled The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art, which depicted the story of the Russborough House heist in 1986 and Cahill's involvement.

Quotes

• "Reform school was my primary school, St. Patrick's Institution my secondary school, and Mountjoy my university—they taught me everything I know."

• "Whatever it is you say I am, I am not. Whatever it is you want from me, I will give. Whatever it is you take from me, you can take. What is it you can do to me? The worst thing you can do is kill me, after that I won't care, I am still free."

External links

• Martin Cahill at Find-A-Grave