Veronica Guerin: Difference between revisions

Veronica Guerin
Monument to Veronica Guerin, located in Dublin Castle gardens
Born	(1958-07-05)5 July 1958 Dublin, Ireland
Died	26 June 1996(1996-06-26) (aged 37) Naas Dual Carriageway, Newlands Cross, County Dublin
Nationality	Irish
Education	Trinity College, Dublin
Occupation(s)	Accountant Journalist
Years active	1990 - 1996
Notable credit(s)	The Sunday Business Post Sunday Tribune Sunday Independent
Spouse	Graham Turley
Children	Cathal

Veronica Guerin (5 July 1958 – 26 June 1996) was an Irish crime reporter who was murdered on 26 June 1996 by drug lords, an event which, alongside the murder of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe three weeks earlier, helped establish the Criminal Assets Bureau.

Early and Personal life

The daughter of an accountant, Veronica who was nicknamed "Ronnie." She and her four siblings were born and raised in Artane, Dublin, and attended Catholic school where she excelled in athletics. Besides basketball and football, she was a camogie player. Guerin studied accountancy at Trinity College, Dublin.

Guerin married Graham Turley, and the couple had a son Cathal.^[1] A big fan of Manchester United football team, her prized possession was a photo of her and Eric Cantona taken on a visit to Old Trafford.^[2]

PR Career

After graduation, her father hired her at his company. But after his death three years later, she changed professions and started a public relations firm, which she ran for seven years.

In 1983–84, she served as secretary to the Fianna Fáil group at the New Ireland Forum.^[3] She served as Charles Haughey's personal assistant, and became a family friend, taking holidays with the younger Haugheys. In 1987 she served as election agent and party treasurer in Dublin North for Sean Haughey.^[2]

Journalism career

In 1990, she changed careers again, switching to journalism as a reporter with the Sunday Business Post and Sunday Tribune, working under editor Damien Kiberd.^[2] With a knowledge of business approached with a detailled accounting mind, and hence craving first-hand information, she would follow a story directly to source with little regard for her personal safety, to allow her to engage those she deemed central to a story. This allowed her to build up close relationships with both the legimate authorities, such as the Garda Síochána (Irish police), and the criminals, with both sides respecting her diligence by providing highly detailed information. She also reported on IRA activities in the Republic.^[2]

From 1994 onwards, she began to write about criminals for Irish newspaper the Sunday Independent. She used street names or pseudonyms for underworld figures to avoid Irish libel laws.^[2][4]

When she began to cover drug dealers, and gaining information from covicted drugs criminal John Traynor, she received numerous death threats. The first violence against her occurred in October 1994, when two shots were fired into her home after her story on murdered drug kingpin Martin Cahill was published. Guerin dismissed the "warning". The day after writing an article on Gerry "The Monk" Hutch,^[5] on 30 January 1995, she answered her doorbell to a man pointing a revolver at her head. Traynor had hired the gunman to shoot her in the leg at her home as a warning. Regardless, she vowed to continue her investigations. Independent Newspapers installed a security system to protect her, and the Garda Síochána (Irish police) gave her a 24-hour escort; however, she did not approve of this, saying that it hampered her work.

On 13 September 1995, convicted criminal John Gilligan, Traynor's boss, attacked her when she confronted him about his lavish lifestyle with no source of income.^[5] He later called her at home and threatened to kidnap and rape her son, and kill her if she wrote anything about him.^[4][6]

Guerin received the International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists in December, 1995.^[4]

Death

On the evening of the 25 June 1996, Gilligan drug gang members Charles Bowden, Brian Meehan, Peter Mitchell and Seamus Ward had met at their distribution premises on the Greenmount Industrial Estate. Bowden, the gangs distributor and amunitions quartermaster, had supplied the three with a Colt Python revolver loaded with .357 Magnum Semiwadcutter bullets.^[7]

On 26 June 1996, while Guerin was driving her red Opel Calibra she stopped at a traffic light on the Naas Dual Carriageway near Newlands Cross, on the outskirts of Dublin. Not knowing she was being followed, one of two men sitting on a motorcycle shot her six times, killing her.^[8] The gun has never been recovered.^{[citation needed]}

About an hour after Guerin was murdered, a meeting took place in Moore Street, Dublin between Bowden, Meehan and Mitchell. Bowden later denied under oath in court that the purpose of the meeting was the disposal of the weapon, but an excuse in a public place to place them away from the incident.^[7]

At the time of her murder, Traynor was seeking a high court order against Guerin, to prevent her from publishing a book about his involvement in organised crime.^[9] Guerin was killed two days before she was due to speak at a Freedom Forum conference in London. The topic of her segment was "Dying to Tell the Story: Journalists at Risk."^[10]

Aftermath

Guerin's murder caused outrage, and Taoiseach John Bruton called it "an attack on democracy".^[8] The Oireachtas, the Irish parliament, realised the potential of using tax enforcement laws as a means of deterring and punishing criminals. It then enacted the Proceeds of Crime Act 1996 and the Criminal Assets Bureau Act 1996, so that assets purchased with money obtained through crime could be seized by the government. This led to the formation of the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB).

After the murder of Guerin, Bowden like the other members of Gilligan's gang that were still in Ireland was arrested. In an agreement with the Attorney General of Ireland, he agreed to turn state's witness, and become the first person to enter the Republic of Ireland's witness protection programme. Granted complete immunity from prosecution for the murder of Guerin, he was the only witness to give evidence against all four drug gang members at their trials in the Special Criminal Court: Patrick Holland; Paul Ward; Brian Meehan; and John Gilligan.^[11] The investigation in Guerin's death resulted in over 150 other arrests and convictions, as well as seizures of drugs and arms. Drug crime in Ireland dropped 50% in the following 12 months.^[12]

In 1997 while acting as a Garda witness, Bowden named Patrick "Dutchy" Holland in court as the man he supplied the gun to, and hence suspected of shooting Guerin. Holland was never convicted of the murder, and he denied the accusation up until his death in June 2009 while in prison in the UK.^[13][12]

In November 1998, after evidence from Bowden and others, Paul "Hippo" Ward was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life in prison as an accomplice, because he had disposed of the murder weapon and the motorbike.^[5][8] This conviction was later overturned on appeal,^[7] though Ward continues to serve a long prison sentence for his participation in a later prison riot.^{[citation needed]}

Brian Meehan fled to Amsterdam with Traynor, but was extradited back to Ireland in late 1997. After the court dismissed additional evidence from Bowden, Meehan was convicted on the testimony of gang member turned state's witness Russell Warren, who had followed Guerin's movements in the hours before the murder, and then called Meehan on a mobile phone with the details.^[14] Meehan was convicted of murdering Guerin, and sentenced to life imprisonment.^[15]

After a three year legal battle, John Gilligan, who left Ireland the day before Guerin was murdered on a flight to Amsterdam, was extradited from the United Kingdom on 3 February 2000. Tried and acquitted of her murder,^[5] he was later convicted of importing 20 tonnes of cannabis and sentenced to 28 years in prison, reduced to 20 years on appeal.

In January 2008, Gilligan made a court appearance in an attempt to stop the Irish State CAB from selling off his assets. He accused Traynor of having ordered Guerin's murder without his permission. Despite the presiding judge's attempt to silence Gilligan, he continued to blame a botched Gardaí investigation and planted evidence as the reason for his current imprisonment. Traynor had fled to Portugal after Guerin's murder, and having been on the run from British authorities since 1992, resided mainly in Spain and the Netherlands from 1996 onwards. After a failed extradition from the Netherlands in 1997, which brough Meehan back to Ireland, in 2010 Traynor was arrested after a joint UK SOCA/Regiokorpsen operation in Amsterdam, and is set to be extradited back to the UK.^[9]

A memorial statue to Guerin is located in Dubh Linn Gardens, in the grounds of Dublin Castle.

In popular culture

• Two films have been based on her story: When the Sky Falls, (2000), starring Joan Allen as Sinead Hamilton and Veronica Guerin (2003), starring Cate Blanchett.^[6]
• Eleanor McEvoy features the song, "Easy To Lose Hope", which she wrote shortly after Guerin's murder, on her 1999 album Snapshots.
• Heavy metal band Savatage has a song about Guerin on their 1998 album The Wake of Magellan.
• Christy Moore has written and recorded a song called "Veronica" which appears on his Live in Dublin (2006) CD. (This does not appear on the DVD of the same concert.)
• A road in Collingwood Park, Western Australia is named after her.
• Paul Bowen, Irish singer songwriter, composed and recorded a tribute song, "Veronica 1337".
• A biography titled Veronica Guerin: The Life and Death of a Crime Reporter by Emily O'Reilly, published in 1998, questioned the ethics of Guerin's methods of gathering information, and those of the underlying media establishment.

References

• O'Reilly, Emily (1998). Veronica Guerin: The Life and Death of a Crime Reporter. London: Vintage. ISBN 978-0-09-976151-8.

Notes

External links

• International Press Institute's Freedom Heroes – A profile of Veronica Guerin
• Recent IFEX articles mentioning Veronica Guerin - International Freedom of Expression Exchange
• The Penguin, the Gardai and the Government
• Text, Audio, Video of Veronica Guerin's International Press Freedom Award Acceptance Speech

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