Control of drugs empire at centre of families' feud

Background: When the guilty verdicts were returned on Saturday night against the five Limerick men who abducted and murdered Kieran Keane (36) the energy in Dublin's crowded Central Criminal Court was palpable. You could almost touch it.

It was as if anything could happen. The men shifted aggressively in their seats, while gardaí and prison officers tried, unsuccessfully, to calm them.

One of the murderers, Anthony McCarthy (21), clenched his right fist, thumping it repeatedly into his left palm, all the while fixing a menacing stare on the Keane group in the public gallery.

"For every action there's a reaction," he told them. "You just remember that."

One of the others, James McCarthy (24), looked in the direction of Keane's nephew, Mr Owen Treacy (31), the man he and the others tried to kill on that night in January when Keane's life was ended violently.

It was Mr Treacy's evidence that helped secure the convictions. "You'll be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life boy," McCarthy told him.

The five men were convicted on all four charges of abducting Kieran Keane and Owen Treacy, murdering Keane, and attempting to murder Treacy.

In the moments after the verdicts were read, as the men digested the news that they would spend the best years of their lives locked up, Supt Gerard Mahon was asked by Judge Paul Carney to outline their characters.

His evidence was a reminder that the five men in the dock had been, in no small way, responsible for the media attention on Limerick city in the early months of this year.

These men were part of a ruthless and well-organised crime gang, he said. They had organised and executed the attack on Keane and Treacy. "No mercy was shown to either victim," he told the court.

That these five men have been significant forces driving the Limerick feud is not in doubt. The crimes for which they have been convicted can be traced back to the bitter row between Limerick's Ryan and Keane families.

In the 1980s and 1990s Eddie Ryan Snr (41), of Hogan Avenue, Killeely, worked with brothers Christy Keane and Kieran Keane, who were originally from St Mary's Park.

They built up a successful drugs empire. Christy was widely regarded as the brains of the operation and ran the gang with Kieran.

Ryan was an enforcer, a hired hand. He was a tough man who, at 17, had been convicted of manslaughter.

By the late 1990s he had become deeply unhappy with his minor role in the operation. He decided to break away from the Keanes to begin his own drugs gang. The parting was not bitter at first. However, two young girls in the extended families became involved in a row at school. It soured the relationship between the two families.

By 2000 the situation had spiralled out of control. There followed a number of stabbing and shooting incidents and two serious fights involving women in the families.

In November of that year Eddie Ryan tried to kill Christy Keane as he sat in his car at Hassett's Cross in Limerick city. The gun jammed and Keane escaped.

Retribution was swift. Within days Ryan was murdered in a gun attack in the Moose Bar in the city as he sat drinking. His killing reinforced the bitterness between the two families and their wide group of associates. Kieran Keane was suspected of Ryan's murder.

In August 2001 gardaí came across Christy Keane on St Munchin's Street. He was carrying a coal sack containing €240,000 of cannabis. He was jailed for 10 years.

There was a never-ending round of drive-by shootings, petrol bombings and other incidents between the two groups, even before Eddie Ryan's murder. Such was their frequency that they seldom made the national newspapers. However, in January 2003 all that changed.

On the 23rd of the month Eddie Ryan's son, Kieran (19), appeared in court over an alleged stabbing incident dating back to March 2002. The victim was Liam Keane (19), Christy Keane's son.

Mr Keane said he could not identify Kieran Ryan in court. Mr Ryan walked free. Judge Carroll Moran warned that society was facing chaos and anarchy. Just hours later Kieran Ryan and his brother, Eddie Ryan Jnr (20) were allegedly abducted at gunpoint as they walked in the Ballynanty area of Limerick.

Kieran Keane's involvement was suspected. The Army was drafted in to assist gardaí in searching the Limerick countryside for the missing Ryans.

The story became front-page headlines in newspapers and in radio and TV bulletins daily.

Then, as hope was fading of the Ryans being found alive, events in Limerick took a sensational twist.

On January 28th, Kieran Keane and his nephew, Owen Treacy, were abducted. It is believed they went by arrangement to meet at least some of the five men who were convicted on Saturday.

When they reached the meeting they were double-crossed.

They were tied up at gunpoint and then told to lure two brothers, Kieran and Philip Collopy "out the road". They refused.

Mr Treacy said in court it was clear the men intended to kill the Collopys as well as himself and Kieran Keane.

Keane and Treacy were then taken to Drombana a few miles from Limerick city. Keane was shot in the head and tortured. Mr Treacy was stabbed 17 times but survived. He was able to tell gardaí who had attacked him and his uncle.

The men were rounded up in March, charged with the double abduction, murder and attempted murder, and have been in jail since.

The convicted men do not fit neatly into one grouping.

Two of them, Christopher Costelloe and David Stanners, were closely linked to the Ryans. The other three, James and Anthony McCarthy and Dessie Dundon, were more closely linked to a third Limerick group.

It is believed that the third group staged the kidnapping of the Ryans as an elaborate plan to kill Kieran Keane and the Collopys. Keane may have believed he was being "offered" the abducted Ryans, and that is why he agreed to meet the men that night in January.

But Keane was double- crossed and murdered. The Ryans turned up safe and well within hours. Mr Treacy, not a career criminal, broke the underworld code of silence, securing 20 convictions against the five men. What will happen next is anybody's guess.