Conor Lally unravels the complex web of crime gripping Limerick city. The brutal conflict is being played out against a backdrop of drug dealing where the main players are armed and dangerous.
When two young Limerick brothers reappeared in the early hours of Thursday morning having allegedly been held against their will for just over a week, their mother was understandably overjoyed. Everybody else was simply confused.
Eddie and Kieran Ryan appeared well, unharmed and in high sprits. They were even clean-shaven. But immediately questions were asked. Who would risk holding them for a week and then just let them go? How would anyone do that undetected? Why? Gardaí admitted they were keeping an open mind as to whether the men had been abducted, in the usual sense of the word, at all.
And did the murder of their rival, Kieran Keane, in the freezing darkness of a remote Limerick laneway, have anything to do with the Ryans' sensational release? The events were less than six hours apart. Keane was murdered at about 9.30 p.m. on Wednesday and the Ryans were free before 3 a.m. on Thursday. The Ryan brothers were questioned by gardaí yesterday.
This weekend, an army of detectives in Limerick are trying to figure out this complex puzzle.
Chief Supt Gerry Kelly said this week that the nature of the gang warfare now gripping the Shannon-side city makes it particularly difficult to police. It is a brutal conflict based on "deep hatred" and "madness", he said, and it is all taking place against a backdrop of organised drug dealing where the main players are armed and dangerous.
Chief Supt Kelly added that most of the guns in circulation in Limerick have been supplied by republican groups or have been bought from international drugs wholesalers from whom city gangs source their drugs. But while the Chief Supt and his colleagues in the force are intent on bringing the gangs to justice in the long-term, first they must deal with the events of the last week and a half.
Since the beginning of this 10-day drama, the facts have not seemed to add up. This feud has been presented as a clear battle between two warring factions in Limerick city. On the one side are the Ryans from Hogan Avenue in Kileely and their supporters from Moyross. On the other we have the Keanes and their associates from St Mary's Park on Kings Island. Both factions have supporters in Lee Estate on Kings Island. The locations are modest working-class housing estates on the north side of Limerick city, approximately a mile apart.
It seemed the Ryans had been abducted by their enemies. They were gone for so long that the gardaí had begun to look for bodies.
Then, on Wednesday night, when Kieran Keane and his nephew Owen Treacy were abducted from Garryowen in the city, and murdered and stabbed respectively, it was believed the widely predicted reprisal for the Ryans' abduction had happened. Less than six hours after Keane's murder, the Ryans emerged from captivity. From a telephone box in Portlaoise they phoned local gardaí and were driven to Limerick city for a triumphant homecoming. A beer and alcopop fuelled celebration got under way immediately.
Gardaí working on the case say it just does not add up. First of all, the circumstances surrounding the Ryans' abduction, while not beyond belief, are strange. The boys' friend, Christopher Costelloe, managed to escape the scene on foot and it was he who raised the alarm. He said just three men had come for his friends, one was driving and the other pair were armed. It is unusual that such a small gang of abductors would try to take more than one person.
Costelloe's escape, while not impossible, is unusual.
The second aspect puzzling observers are the circumstances of the abduction of Kieran Keane and Owen Treacy. The two men were allegedly taken from the Garryowen area of the city, where they were last seen in Keane's car on Wednesday night. Keane was tied up and shot in the head. His body was found in a roadway in Drombanna, three miles from Limerick city, where he had either been murdered, or dumped after being killed elsewhere. Treacy survived the attack and raised the alarm at a nearby house in Drombanna.
Gardaí are confused as to why Keane was shot in the head and Treacy stabbed. But one theory is that the weapon used to kill Keane jammed and a knife was all the attackers had at their disposal in their efforts to kill Treacy.
But Keane (36) was a different player to the 19- and 20-year-old Ryans. He was the most senior figure in the Keane gang, a crime figure of considerable standing and means. It remains a mystery as to how somebody would get him into a vehicle for the purposes of abduction. He is said to have been the kind of man who would have fought, who would had to have been killed on the spot. But he may have known his abductors and gone with them freely.
There is much local speculation as to what has been going on in Limerick for the last 10 days. But the possibility that these events involved a third party, as well as the two gangs, has not been discounted.
One possibility that has not been ruled out by gardaí is that a well-known third faction was responsible for the Ryans' abduction and they played the feuding gangs off each other. After they kidnapped the Ryans they may have then murdered Keane and tried to kill Treacy because they wanted Keane out of the way in order to encroach on his drug dealing business.
The Ryans may have been released so shortly after the Keane murder in order to make it look as though the two events were linked.
There is also speculation that Keane's killing may have arisen from a botched ransom demand for the Ryans, also involving a third party.
The one fact we know for certain is that Keane is dead. His brother Christy is serving a lengthy drug-related prison sentence and it is believed that with those two brothers out of the way, their associates will not have the wherewithal to keep their criminal empire going. Keane's murder was a very significant act in that it has cleared the way for a rival gang to step in.
The third party suspected of being involved in some way is believed to have been linked to the murder of Limerick doorman Brian Fitzgerald late last year. Fitzgerald was murdered because he refused to co-operate with drug dealers who wanted to sell drugs in the nightclub where he worked. His death demonstrated that this third party was looking for opportunities to expand their drugs business and were willing and able to shed blood to further that cause.
If the theory regarding the third gang was true, it would mean the Ryans were innocent in all of this, that their abduction was genuine, but that they were merely used as a smokescreen and were never going to be harmed. They were being questioned by gardaí yesterday, but early indications after their release were that they were "threatened not to talk" by those who abducted them. It must also be noted that when the Ryans' father, Eddie Ryan Snr, was killed in November 2000 while having a drink in a Limerick pub after a funeral, one of the chief suspects was Kieran Keane, the man whose life was taken on Wednesday night.
But this story is as complex as it is fascinating and gardaí insist they are exploring a number of avenues because they need to keep an open mind in this investigation. It was hoped information arising from the questioning of four people yesterday in relation to the Keane murder might advance the case, or at least put some order to the facts. Anything Owen Treacy can tell about his and Keane's abduction would be crucial to getting to the bottom of recent events, gardaí said.
But putting the immediate investigation aside, gardaí are also under huge pressure arising from this nearly four-year gang feud. The specialist Emergency Response Unit may be patrolling the suburban streets of Limerick today, but the intense localised gang fighting in the city is not going to be stopped by extra manpower.
Last Monday, a fight erupted between feuding factions outside Limerick courthouse in the city. The melee took place on the steps of a courthouse, in front of a significant number of gardaí, all of whom seemed to know all of those involved by name. One of the men involved wore a bullet-proof vest and one faction had reinforcements waiting in two vehicles around the corner from the courthouse in case they were needed. The incident indicated the apparent disregard participants in this conflict have for law and order. It is difficult to see some of the main players being seriously hampered by having a few more, or even a lot more, gardaí on the streets.
The personalised nature of the feud between the gangs also makes a peaceful outcome seem impossible.
In the early 1990s, Eddie Ryan Snr worked closely with the Keane gang. He was a "runner" and "enforcer" in that gang. But Ryan's more junior role in the operation did not sit easy with him and was a constant source of conflict between him and his "employers".
Eventually he decided to work alone. Around the same time, schoolchildren in the Ryan and Keane families became involved in a row in a schoolyard. Both families learned of the row and it, combined with the simmering unease, led to the feud which has dominated the media this week.
Gardaí say there have been about 40 reported incidents at various homes around the city linked to the feud in recent years. But there are likely to have been many more unreported ones. The reported attacks involved the petrol-bombing of homes, and drive-by shootings, a tactic more associated with gang feuds on the other side of the Atlantic than here. It was during one such attack that Eddie Ryan Snr was killed. It is said in the days before his murder, Ryan made an attempt on the life of Kieran Keane, but that his gun jammed.
While there had been no more killing until this week, the conflict has been marked by a string of more low-key incidents. The Ryan brothers' mother, Mary Ryan, was reportedly head-butted outside a courthouse last year by Wednesday night's murder victim.
And there has been alleged intimidation of witnesses when gardaí have endeavoured to bring charges against perpetrators. It is hoped that bringing in the Criminal Assets Bureau will result in the confiscation of the means of the feuding gangs and so diffuse the situation. The CAB has civil powers to gather intelligence covertly, which means it is not as dependent on witness co-operation as gardaí involved in more straightforward criminal cases.
Chief Supt Gerry Kelly said the CAB's investigations are at an advanced stage and that one portion of its work is complete. But a lot of the criminal wealth in Limerick is squirrelled away in cash and many criminals have not acquired expensive cars and properties which CAB usually confiscates. The family homes of the men visited by The Irish Times this week were very modest ones and there was little sign of expensive cars.
In the last fortnight, a criminal case involving some players in the feud collapsed. The manner of its failure demonstrated exactly the type of difficulties facing the gardaí in this conflict.
Liam Keane was giving evidence in a case against Kieran Ryan, one of the men abducted and returned safely this week. Ryan was charged with assault and two counts of being in possession and producing a knife on March 5th, 2002 in Limerick city centre. The court heard that in a statement to gardaí, Keane had named Ryan as his attacker. But when the case appeared before Judge Carroll Moran, Keane said he was unable to identify his attacker.
"Kieran Ryan stabbed me in the back," Keane told the court. But when asked if he could identify Ryan who was in court, he said No.
Judge Carroll Moran then said he was left with "no alternative" but to direct the jury to find the accused not guilty.
"It is a very sorry state of affairs that this should happen and if this is going to persist we are going to live in a state of social chaos and anarchy," commented Judge Moran.
That case took place on the same day the Ryans were abducted. Just hours after the judge's warning of "chaos and anarchy" the men were abducted at gunpoint. There ensued a massive search for them in counties Clare and Limerick, the murder and stab attack in Drombanna, the subsequent release of the Ryans in Portlaoise and the drafting in of the specialist Emergency Response Unit.
The question on everybody's lips is, what will happen next?