Brian Fitzgerald murder

Profiles by Conor Lally

Profiles by Conor Lally

The convicted men

Gary Campion

Campion is currently awaiting trial for another gangland murder linked to the Limerick feud. While aligned to the Dundon-McCarthy gang, he switched loyalties to the Keane gang for a period.

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He was convicted in May 2005 of threatening to have a prison officer killed. He told the officer he had already shot people in Limerick for €10,000 and would have "no problem" spending twice that to have the officer shot. "It wouldn't be my first time," he told the Limerick-based officer.

Campion's brother William is serving life for the murder of a pensioner in Clare in 1998. His other brother, Noel, was shot dead in Limerick in April by members of his own gang.

James Martin Cahill

Aged 32, and with addresses at Sycamore Drive, Kilrush, Co Clare, and Birmingham, England, Cahill was convicted in November 2005 of murdering Brian Fitzgerald. He was jailed for life after he confessed to being the gunman in the attack. In 1999 he was sentenced to 10 years for stealing jewellery worth £300,000 from Hartmann & Son Jewellers on William Street, Galway, during an armed raid. The conviction was later quashed because the identification evidence was found to be unsafe.

He has 10 previous convictions in Ireland and England for offences including possession of firearms, burglary, larceny, criminal damage, interfering with a motor vehicle and wounding. He has also claimed to have been involved in the planning of up to six murders in Britain.

The acquitted men

Anthony Kelly

The 50-year-old has been known to gardaí for more than two decades. He was one of the Criminal Assets Bureau's first targets, coming under investigation by it in 1997. He settled for a substantial six-figure sum relating to his earnings from drug trafficking. In February 1984, he was convicted of living off the earnings of prostitution. He supplied women to elderly farmers at their homes or in a van driven by him. He was sentenced to nine months in prison. He survived a murder attempt in August 2003, when a gunman shot him four times at his home in Kilrush, Co Clare. Supt John Kerin told the media at the time that armed gardaí were guarding Kelly in hospital "in case the shooting is linked to the ongoing feud in Limerick and we cannot take any risks at this time".

Kelly is listed as a director of an import business based in Kilrush. He was known to travel to the UK and China, from where he sourced furniture, lighting and household goods for sale here.

Dessie Dundon

Aged 23, he was already serving a life sentence for the 2003 murder of leading Limerick gangland figure Kieran Keane when acquitted of Brian Fitzgerald's murder yesterday.

Dundon played a key role in speaking to Keane and luring him to his place of death. He was also the man who tried to force Keane (after Keane had been abducted) to lure two other men so that he, Dundon, and his accomplices could also kill them.

Keane refused and was himself shot dead.

In 2002, Dundon was found guilty of assault causing harm and sentenced to 15 months.

He assaulted gardaí with blocks and slash hooks after they went to his house to retrieve ponies he had kidnapped from a circus. In February 2002, he was convicted of larceny and sentenced to nine months.

John Dundon

The 27-year-old brother of Dessie Dundon was acquitted last week of Brian Fitzgerald's murder on the order of the trial judge Peter Charleton for lack of evidence.

However, he remains in prison serving a four-year sentence. He was jailed after threatening to kill Owen Treacy, whose evidence led to five of Dundon's associates being jailed for life for the murder of Kieran Keane.

He was charged with threatening a prison officer in Limerick Prison in 2001. He admitted the threat, but when the trial judge heard the threat was not reported to gardaí for a year, until after the prison officer's car was burned out, Dundon went free.

When awaiting trial for the threats, he absconded from custody, in April 2002, while being driven from a court appearance back to prison in a Garda car in Limerick city.

He fled to England and had to be extradited.