Cocaine Wars by Mick McCaffrey Read Free Book Online Page A

eighteenth birthday party, and also knew about the gathering in Karl Kavanagh’s house after the party.
    As the Garda investigation kicked into full gear, various detectives were assigned the jobs of interviewing witnesses and potential witnesses who had seen Declan Gavin in and around the time of his murder. These witnesses included staff and customers at Abrakebabra and the nearby Texas Fried Chicken. A video recording of the front entrance to Abrakebabra was seized from a security camera, and although it did not cover the roadway where Shane Maloney’s car pulled up, or the location of the actual stabbing, it was very useful in identifying people at the scene at the time. The camera footage had a second-counter and did capture Declan Gavin staggering and being chased by another man, who is wearing a balaclava and appears to have a large object in his hand. Witnesses were shown stills of the footage, and several identified themselves and others from these stills. Some witnesses also confirmed that Declan Gavin was not injured or bleeding prior to his encounter with the knife-man.

4
What the Witnesses Did or Did Not See
    A LTHOUGH SOME PEOPLE were co-operating with Gardaí in giving statements about what they had seen, it soon became apparent that investigators were receiving less than full cooperation from some very important witnesses at the scene. Discrepancies in statements, off-the-record comments and recorded and unsigned memos indicated that several witnesses knew the identities of the culprits, but were not prepared to name them for fear of retribution. This lived up to the Crumlin and Drimnagh tradition of not co-operating with the law at any cost. Because of this reluctance to co-operate, twenty-two people were arrested during the course of the murder investigation, mainly for withholding information.
    Gardaí knew there were several reasons why they were not receiving full co-operation. One of the main reasons was that many people had a lot of animosity towards the police and the criminal justice system in general, and as a result were openly hostile and unco-operative. Some individuals just did not want to co-operate with a force that they had been taught to despise. Certain other people who witnessed the stabbing were involved in criminality. These ranged from petty criminals to members of the Gavin gang, who were involved in the wholesale supply of illegal drugs. Witnesses Darren Geoghegan and Paddy Doyle certainly fitted into this category. Other, more innocent, witnesses understandably feared helping to identify men who were involved in a dispute between two violent rival criminal gangs. But Gardaí found that over the course of the investigation, the prevailing notion among many of the potential witnesses was that the naming of any individual to the Gardaí, regardless of the seriousness of the crime involved and the fact that a man had lost his life, would lead to the person being labelled a ‘rat’. Gardaí eventually divided the witnesses to events before, during and after the murder into two distinct groups – ‘independent’ and ‘other’.
    The ‘independent’ witnesses were classed as normal witnesses to events surrounding the death of Declan Gavin. They gave full and detailed statements with largely accurate descriptions, and were regarded by Gardaí as being without prejudice, malicious intent or fear of intimidation. Most of these people had no previous criminal convictions and were not involved in the feud. Unfortunately, this often meant that because of their nature of abiding by the law, they were often unable to identify the key players involved in the murder.
    The ‘other’ witnesses were mostly friends and associates of Declan Gavin or other people who were aware of the identities of those involved in the murder, but for one reason or another did not fully co-operate with Gardaí. Many of these ‘other’ witnesses were