Crooks: The Stories Behind the Headlines is a personal account of your career covering crime and living under armed Garda protection for several years. You have already written 12 books about crime. How different was it to write about yourself?
It was actually the most difficult book I have written. It had been suggested to me many times to write about the personal experiences of what went on behind the scenes while exposing the activities of organised crime over the years.
Since I first came to Dublin in 1987 and joined the Sunday World I had a front seat in witnessing the evolution of organised crime in Ireland. I chronicled the seminal events, including the rise and fall of our best-known mobsters, which shaped the gangland culture that has become the norm in modern society. But dredging up some of the more harrowing stories I covered was a lot tougher than I had expected.
I told the stories of so many victims of violent crime and evil, which have stayed with me. There were also the many death threats over the years which also seriously impacted my family. I have to admit that writing parts of it caused a lot of tears.
What made you want to be a crime journalist?
There was no single event as such. The first crime story I ever covered was 40 years ago, as an innocent cub reporter with my local newspaper, The Leitrim Observer. It concerned a new phenomenon of rural crime which emerged that year in the northwest. It involved the systematic targeting of elderly people living in isolated areas who were robbed of their life savings. In some cases they were beaten and terrorised in their homes. I went to interview an elderly farmer who had sent so-called travelling criminals running with the trusty old shotgun he had once used to shoot Black and Tans. At first he thought I was another robber and threatened to shoot me.
His was one of the only uplifting stories I covered that winter. It was deeply upsetting – and a steep learning curve – to witness the fear and desolation inflicted on the most vulnerable people in society. It left me with a lifelong detestation of how predatory criminals infest the lives of innocent, decent people.
You write in your book: “I discovered early on that the lynchpin of organised crime is the symbiotic relationship that exists between civil society and the underworld.” What do you mean by that?
Basically it means that organised crime could not prosper and thrive without the connivance of the so-called law-abiding society. Irish society’s insatiable love of cocaine created an alternative economy which led to an unprecedented increase in another new gangland phenomenon – gang feuds.
Your first book, The General (1995), about Martin Cahill, was made into a film. How important was it in terms of true-crime writing?
When The General was published, the true crime genre was non-existent in Ireland. The only book written about Irish crime had been published a decade earlier. Smack – The Criminal Drugs Racket in Ireland, by Irish Times journalists Sean Flynn and Padraig Yeates, was a ground-breaking and superbly written account of how the drug problem and organised crime took hold. As a young crime reporter, it was my bible. Unfortunately the publishers were sued by some of the characters, and it was taken off the shelves.
When the General was murdered in 1994 I had already decided to write a book about him. But given the aura of intimidation that swirled around the subject matter, coupled with the memory of what had happened to Smack, publishers were understandably wary. Huge credit is due to the late Michael O’Brien of the O’Brien Press who decided to publish the book. Michael can take the credit for breathing life into the genre – and my career as an author.
How did you end up getting full-time Garda protection for more than a decade?
In 2003 my family and I were placed in the equivalent of a witness protection programme. Everywhere I went for a number of years I was accompanied by armed bodyguards from the Garda Special Detective Unit. Our home was also under 24-hour armed guard, which lasted for over a decade. For several years beforehand we had been receiving protection when gardaí learned of various threats. But in 2003 things got really hairy. Senior gardaí had a path beaten to my door warning of different plots being hatched by a number of organised crime gangs including [that of] the Viper, the INLA and elements of what is now known as the Kinahan cartel.
At one stage, gardaí informed me that a hit man had been retained to shoot me when I turned up at a meeting with a known criminal. It culminated in an acid attack on my car and then the placing of an elaborate hoax bomb device at my home which resulted in 150 neighbours being evacuated from their homes in the middle of a cold November night.
You quote Giovanni Falcone, the Italian prosecutor blown up by the mafia, who once said that “only the stupid aren’t scared”. Was there ever a time when you came close to quitting crime journalism?
To be honest, no. I never believed in backing down. But were there times that I was scared? Yes, of course, many times. But when you do back off, fear is allowed to prosper, and that is the weapon every criminal depends on. It was also personal because two colleagues, Veronica Guerin and Marty O’Hagan, had been gunned down by the gangs. To coin the mafia phrase – it became more personal than business.
Which projects are you working on?
There are a few more books on my wish list to do and a movie company has expressed an interest in Crooks.
Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage?
Every time I go home to Ballinamore it doubles as a sort of literary pilgrimage, because the place where I grew up and the people in it are the stars of John McGahern’s books, one of Ireland’s greatest writers. He was of course a neighbour, and my favourite writer. I also once did my own Mario Puzo tour of Sicily (I have read all Puzo’s books), when I stayed in Palermo and visited the town of Corleone, which Puzo used as the backdrop to the Godfather. At the time I was reading The Sicilian, and the experience brought it to life.
‘Someone said recently that we live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that stupid people won’t be offended’
What is the best writing advice you have heard?
Get it down on paper … a draft is always easier to work with than a blank page.
Who do you admire the most?
I have met a lot of remarkable people whose dedication to duty and courage were inspiring and heroic. Barry Galvin, the former State solicitor for Cork, has to be number one. He is one of the most incredible people I have ever met. Barry was never afraid of putting his neck on the line for the good of the country and its citizens. In the early 1990s he was the first legal officer to reveal the full extent of organised crime in Ireland and how it was used by international criminals to smuggle drugs and launder money. He was also the first person to outline how the laws could be used for seizing ill-gotten wealth. But the government wasn’t listening.
[ After the murder of Veronica Guerin in 1996, everything changedOpens in new window ]
The then Fianna Fáil justice minister Padraig “Pee” Flynn sneeringly denounced Galvin as an alarmist who had a political agenda and was attention-seeking. But the murder of Veronica Guerin proved that Barry had been correct all along. The government then turned to him to seek his insights in drafting the legislation which created the Criminal Assets Bureau. As its pioneering bureau legal officer (BLO), he was targeted for assassination by organised crime. He is the only non-garda in the State to be allowed carry a police firearm for his own protection.
You are supreme ruler for a day. Which law do you pass or abolish?
I would outlaw cancel culture and the hysterical competitive outrage of the woke generation, who are hell-bent on silencing anyone who utters anything that they deem “offensive”. Someone said recently that we live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that stupid people won’t be offended. I am a centrist with no time for the far right or the left. But one of the unforeseen consequences of woke culture is that it has given a lease of life and a platform to dangerous, extremist merchants of hate in Ireland and around the world. The re-election of Donald J Trump is a case in point.
What is the most beautiful book that you own?
That They May Face the Rising Sun by John McGahern.
The best and worst things about where you live?
I love Rathfarnham, where I have lived for 20 years, and probably the only quibble I have is that the pleasure of living there necessitates an enormous mortgage. I live beside WB Yeats’s last home in Dublin. He wrote one of his most famous and final poems, An Acre of Grass, when he lived there.
What is your favourite quotation?
Carl Jung’s observations on the public’s ambivalence and fascination with criminals. “With what pleasure we read newspaper reports of crime. A true criminal becomes a popular figure because he unburdens in no small degree the consciences of his fellow men, for now they know once more where evil is to be found.”
Who is your favourite fictional character?
Charlie Parker as created by the superb John Connolly – I am a huge fan.
What books have you recently read that left an impression?
Fintan O’Toole’s We Don’t Know Ourselves is a masterpiece, which tells the story of modern Ireland and its people. It is required reading for anyone interested in taking an unvarnished look at who we are and how we are. Rough Beast by Máiría Cahill took me a lot longer to get through than any other. That was because I had to regularly put it down when I became so incensed and angry at Máiría’s appalling abusive ordeal, first at the hands of a rapist who happened to be a top Provo; and then at how Sinn Féin and the IRA victimised her in the most appalling way imaginable. Combined with the many other sexual abuse scandals which have been covered up at the highest levels of the Republican movement, it is easy to see why Sinn Féin are not fit to govern our country.
[ Gardaí investigating sulphuric acid sent to Sunday World officesOpens in new window ]
Having also read The Long Game: Inside Sinn Féin, by Aoife Moore – which I also thoroughly recommend – it was probably not a good idea then to pick up Prophet Song from Booker Prize winner Paul Lynch. The previous non-fiction stories brought Lynch’s dystopian fictional Ireland into the stark reality of what could happen – if we are not very careful.
Crooks: The Stories Behind the Headlines by Paul Williams is published by Allen & Unwin. His first book, in 1995, was The General, which was one of the biggest selling non-fiction books in Ireland and was made into the movie of the same name by John Boorman
