Cocaine Wars by Mick McCaffrey Page A

of the Nissan Micra before the knife-man got out. ‘I saw this guy stab Declan Gavin with the knife. This stabbing happened on the steps leading down to Abrakebabra.’ He stated that he and John Malone discussed the stabbing on their way home, and the culprits mentioned were Joey Redmond and Rattigan. He would not put this in his statement, as he was afraid of retribution. In a further statement, three days after the murder, he went on to say that when the Micra arrived, ‘A tall fella who I think was Joey Redmond got out of this Nissan Micra. I know Joey Redmond to see and I know he is friendly with the Rattigans.’ In two unsigned memorandums of interview, Andrew Murray said that he recognised three of the people involved in the stabbing, but did not want to name them because he was ‘not a rat’. He then went on to name Brian Rattigan, Joey Redmond and Shane Maloney. He said that Brian Rattigan stabbed Gavin, but he would not sign anything with the names of the three men on it because he was afraid.
    Several witnesses described the girl who spoke to Gavin just seconds before the murder as having spoken to the occupants of the Micra just before the stabbing. In her original interview on the day after the murder, she recalled chatting to Declan Gavin at the restaurant. She described the Micra pulling up and a passenger shouting ‘rats’ out the window. ‘I said: “What are ye saying?” as I walked by’, she confirmed. She didn’t see the actual stabbing but did see Mark Skerritt chase the knife-man with a golf club. She later said that Skerritt had given her the handle of the broken golf club, which she threw away.
    Darren Geoghegan and Patrick Doyle were good friends and criminal associates of Declan Gavin. They both arrived at Abrakebabra just after the stabbing and did not witness anything at all. When they heard that their mate had been stabbed and was in a bad way, they rushed into the restaurant. They saw Gavin lying on the kitchen floor, surrounded by two women who were giving him first aid. Geoghegan initially refused to co-operate with Gardaí and give a statement. He was later interviewed in Cloverhill Prison after being sent there on remand for a road traffic offence, and then again at Sundrive Road Garda Station, after he was taken out of prison for questioning. He remembered arriving at the scene just before the Gardaí. He followed the ambulance in his car to St James’s Hospital, and rang Gavin’s mother, Pauline, to tell her what had happened. It was Pauline Gavin who later told Geoghegan that her son had passed away.
    Patrick Doyle was interviewed at Ronanstown Garda Station after being arrested under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act for possession of a firearm. During his interview, Doyle confirmed that it was his belief that Brian Rattigan was behind the stabbing. He also volunteered to Gardaí that Shane Maloney was around when it happened. Doyle did point out that he was not there, though, and everything he had heard was second-hand from different people.
    After interviewing the known witnesses at at Abrakebabra, Gardaí had built up a detailed picture of what had happened there, but they knew that some people had not told half of what they knew. So it was decided that those people would be arrested at later dates.
    After finding Brian Rattigan’s finger and palm print on the door of Abrakebabra, Gardaí had enough to arrest him and question him about the murder. On 28 August, Detective Sergeant Joe O’Hara and other Gardaí called to Rattigan’s home on Cooley Road looking for him. He had been staying at a safe house since the murder, and was not at home when Gardaí searched the house to see if they could find anything to link him to the murder. Gardaí received information that he would be attending Dublin District Court on 4 September 2001. So two officers waited there to arrest him. When Rattigan