Free Cocaine Wars by Mick McCaffrey Page A

not care about his army oath ‘to protect the state and all that’. He claimed that Brian Rattigan did not threaten him, but refused to say if anyone else did.
    Gardaí believed that roughly ninety minutes remained unaccounted for before Shane Maloney, Brian Rattigan, John Roche and Joey Redmond drove back to Karl Kavanagh’s after the murder. Attempts to question those at the eighteenth birthday party and subsequent house party did not yield any extra information.
    The majority of witnesses were evasive and unco-operative, with some telling blatant lies placing Brian Rattigan at Cooley Road, when he could not possibly have been there. Statements by people in the house and those who later attended the gathering at Karl Kavanagh’s house differed spectacularly. A decision was taken that anybody suspected of not telling the full truth should be arrested – so thirteen people were detained. Gardaí believed that if they could take individuals into custody for one-on-one interviews that there might be a chance that some of them would crack. This turned out to be exactly the case.
    Detective Sergeant Joe O’Hara arrested Karl Kavanagh on 26 September. When he was initially interviewed, he stated that he was at the party in the Rattigans’ until about 2.30 a.m. on the night of the murder. When he was arrested, he said that he was sure about his timings, because ‘my sister told me the following morning it was that time’. He later said that he couldn’t tell the truth as ‘they’ll burn down my house’, and refused to elaborate. He said that prior to the murder he got a taxi to the Kestrel pub in Walkinstown at about 10.30 p.m., where he met up with Shane Maloney and John Roche. They went to Coco’s Nightclub in Tallaght, and at around 2.00 a.m. headed to Abrakebabra. The group ran into ‘Deco’ Gavin outside the ‘chipper’, and John Roche and Gavin had a verbal row, with each calling the other a ‘rat’. He said that Declan Gavin insisted: ‘I’m not a rat. I’m going down for ten years for the stuff that was found.’ Karl Kavanagh said that when Shane Maloney drove back to the Rattigan house, he did not go in but went home to bed. The first he heard about the murder, he claimed, was the following day. He said he had not discussed the murder with anyone and was released without charge.
    On 1 November, a warrant was obtained at Dublin District Court by Superintendent John Manley of Crumlin Garda Station for the re-arrest of Kavanagh, because Gardaí had received new information about his movements, after interviewing others who were present at the Kavanagh house following the party at the Rattigans’. During his time in custody, he said he would tell the truth after consulting with his solicitor. He said that Brian and Joey Rattigan, Joey Redmond, Greg Bourke, Mark O’Reilly, Shane Maloney and possibly John Roche went to his house after the Rattigan party. He denied that Maloney’s car was at his house or that he went out to assist in burning the car. He stuck to his original story about not hearing about the murder until the following day, saying he heard it on the radio. He then changed his mind and said that Greg Bourke and Joey Rattigan were the last to leave his house, at around 7.00 a.m. He said he heard Brian Rattigan, Roche and Joey Redmond talk about Gavin’s murder in his house, but said he could not talk to Gardaí about it. He again denied that he had helped to burn Shane Maloney’s car. He said the four suspects in the murder all went to his house because he had a ‘free gaff’. He said that while in the house they spoke about Declan Gavin being stabbed and said, ‘They were the ones who did it.’ He said someone told Shane Maloney to ‘look after the car’. Karl Kavanagh refused to sign any of the memorandums of interview and was released without charge.
    Mark