GARDAÍ are directing traffic around a cordoned off area that has frozen in time, a jeep, an unmarked Garda patrol car, and a cash delivery van.
The jeep’s windshield wipers are still thudding back and forth. The patrol car is punctured all over with bullet holes. A Garda blesses himself as he moves into position to preserve the scene.
It is this reporter’s first national news reporting assignment since moving out of Dublin, following the demise of the Press newspaper group. She has attended scenes both tragic and violent in 15 years working in the capital, but this is unbelievable.
Detective Garda Jerry McCabe has been shot dead, hit by three bullets of 15 fired from a single Kalashnikov assault rifle. His partner, Detective Garda Ben O’Sullivan, has been seriously injured, suffering 11 gunshot wounds.
A Provisional IRA gang of raiders rammed the unmarked Garda car escorting a post office van delivering £80,000 to post offices in the Limerick area. They opened fire before the two armed detectives had any chance to use their own weapons in defence.
Jerry was 52 years old, a father of five children, and was due to retire from the force later that year. Pension lump sums for senior Gardaí were generous at that time. With retirement possible at an early age, many bought a pub or a farm or opened a guest house. Jerry must have been looking forward to some of those options and to spending more time with family.
The actions of a gang of ruthless men put an end to all that on June 7, 1996, and stole a happy future from his wife and children.
The trial
Move forward to 1999 and a day in February in the Special Criminal Court in Dublin.
Sitting in the dock, accused of the capital murder of Jerry McCabe and the attempted murder of Detective Garda Ben O’Sullivan are Kevin Walsh, Michael O’Neill, both from Patrickswell, and Jeremiah Sheehy, from Rathkeale, and Pearse McAuley, of Strabane.
A fifth man, John Quinn, from Faha, Patrickswell, stands accused of conspiracy to commit robbery of the post van the two Special Branch detectives had been protecting when they were ambushed, but he was not present in Adare on the day.
In the public gallery sat Ann McCabe, Jerry’s widow, surrounded by family and supporters. It’s 14 sitting days into the trial before the three specially appointed judges.
The Special Criminal Court (SCC) in Ireland is a juryless court established under the Offences Against the State Act 1939, designed to try terrorism and serious organised crime cases. It sits with three judges and no jury, and its primary purpose is to prevent the intimidation of jurors and witnesses.
Attendance at the court by members of the public is carefully monitored. The three judges are handpicked by the Minister for Justice from the High, Circuit, and District Courts benches.
They are considered untouchable. There is no jury. The case is not only being heard here because it involves terrorist activity. It’s here because there are reports of witness intimidation.
The book of evidence in the case runs to over 1,400 pages and there are over three 360 witnesses.
For 14 days, the court heard evidence of the stolen cars involved in the raid and the getaway, the bullets recovered, the timeline, the attack at close range, the impossibility of the two men in the Garda escort putting up any kind of fight or even defence, such was the speed of the ramming and subsequent gun attack.
Detective Garda Ben O’Sullivan broke down as he recalled the horror of the day, how his hand was blown off the steering wheel of the patrol car by bullets, and turning to see that his partner and dear friend lay dead in the passenger seat.
He said: “They had the guns pointed at us. In an instant, without any warning, they opened fire.”
There’s been harrowing medical evidence of how a bullet collapsed Jerry McCabe’s lungs and severed his spinal column, resulting in his immediate death.
There’s an even darker undercurrent. There have been complaints of witness intimidation. Witnesses who gave statements in Garda interviews have withdrawn those statements. One State witness who refuses to give evidence in the witness box is jailed.
The investigation into the killing of one and the maiming of another of their own drove investigators to amass a huge body of evidence. But the Director of Public Prosecutions has concerns that too many of the people originally willing to give evidence or statements are being terrified into silence.
It’s the way of democratic justice – the dogs on the street might know who did it, but if the evidence can’t be presented and examined in court then there is no conviction.
Direction changes
On the 14th day of the trial, the court hears that there have been “certain developments”. After an adjournment, it’s announced that the charges to which the accused men pleaded not guilty are being withdrawn by the State and replaced with charges of manslaughter, to which they will plead guilty.
It’s an option which the DPP can avail of. The courts can allow accused people to change their plea and the State to change the charges in what is known as a plea deal.
The accused men are facing 40 years in prison if the charge of capital murder sticks. It’s a charge which, until relatively recently, was the only one which carried the death sentence.
The DPP is facing outrage from the force and the general public if the people who gunned down two detectives doing their job walk free to disappear back into their own lives. And the justice system faces an unthinkable scenario when all criminals have to do is threaten witnesses or witnesses’ families and they will – literally – get away with murder.
The four men who pleaded guilty to manslaughter also pleaded guilty to new charges of maliciously wounding Det Garda Ben O’Sullivan and having firearms with intent to commit a robbery.
As the new charges are read out and the men in the dock declare their guilty pleas, Ann McCabe never flinches. She continues – as she has done throughout this trial – to stare them down.
In the face of the men who killed her husband not getting what is believed to be their comeuppance, she maintains the dignity for which she has been singled out throughout the trial and since the day this horror was first visited on her, her children, and the wife and children of Ben O’Sullivan.
Pearse McAuley and Kevin Walsh are sentenced to 14 years in jail. Jeremiah Sheehy is incarcerated for 12 years, and Michael O’Neill for 11 years.
They’re the sentences you might expect for people convicted of the crimes pleaded to. Not the sentences you might expect for people involved in the murder of one Garda and the brutal wounding of another. But then they are no longer charged with those crimes.
The two jailed for manslaughter had three and a half years taken off their sentence as remission. Jeremiah Sheehy was released in 2008, while Michael O’Neill left prison in 2007.
Outrage
Amid public, political, and rank and file Garda outrage, the State appealed the sentences, arguing they were too lenient, but the Court of Criminal Appeal ultimately upheld the original terms.
When an application was made for the release of the men under the Good Friday agreement, Limerick held its breath. The question in everyone’s mind was ‘what would that do to the McCabe and O’Sullivan families?’ They had walked away from a murder charge. Were the McCabe’s and O’Sullivan’s to be subjected to the final insult?
Ann McCabe and her supporters mounted a fierce battle and won it.
The High Court rejected applications to release the men under the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement, determining that their actions were not acts on behalf of a recognised paramilitary organisation as required by the agreement.
Last Sunday was the 30th anniversary of the Jerry McCabe’s death. Ann spoke to journalists after the Mass at which her husband and all those who gave their lives in the service of the State were remembered.
Grief, she said, is not temporary – it’s for life. But the men responsible for the atrocities of that day in Adare “are no longer part of my life”, she said.
Two suspected members of the gang involved in the PIRA attack, Paul Damery from Cobh, County Cork, and Gerry Roche, from Shannon, fled the country after the killing of Det Garda McCabe and are still on the run.
They are still, very much, part of Chief Superintendent Derek Smart’s life and the lives of every member of An Garda Síochána.
“This is a live investigation,” Chief Superintendent Smart warned them. “The world is getting smaller. It has been well publicised that people have been brought back (from abroad) to face the consequences of their actions.”
Let’s translate that in case there’s any doubt. What he is saying is, we don’t care what dive in South America you’re having a drink in. We don’t care what aliases you’ve adopted in your flight from justice across countries or continents or what powerful influences have shielded you so far.
There’s no place that a chance tourist or traveller can’t see you. There’s no place to hide from the internet and social media any more. There’s no place that the international forces of law and order will not hunt you down for what you’ve done.
The only way you’re coming home to Ireland is in handcuffs.
There is no place to hide.
– Court Reporting Scheme