Crime World

Garfield Beattie is a triple murderer who was part of the infamous Glennane Gang, a brutal mob made up of Ulster Loyalists, RUC police officers and British Soldiers who went on a killing spree of Catholics in Co. Armagh and Co. Tyrone at the beginning of the Troubles.

According to reports and investigations, the group killed between 75 and 120 people, most of whom were ordinary civilians with no links to Irish Republican paramilitaries.

One of those murdered was Denis Mullen, an ambulance controller and father of two who was struck by 17 bullets after he stepped outside his home at Collegelands near the Moy in September 1975.

Beattie served 17 years for the murder of Mullen, but five decades on he is back behind bars for intimidating the victim's daughter Denise, who was just three-years-old when she witnessed an unimaginable horror. This is her story.

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He was the Irish king of the Costa until the Kinahan mob turned on him and forced the one-time drug lord into hiding for more than 10 years.

But Peter ‘Fatso’ Mitchell is back behind bars after he showed up in the UK, working as a driver for a cocaine gang.

A murky gangland story involving double crosses, greed and paranoia lie at the heart of Mitchell’s journey to a prison cell in Wales, where he was locked up for 10 years for his role in the ‘Avengers’ coke gang.

Nicola Tallant chats with Sunday World journalist Eamon Dillon about the last member of the notorious John Gilligan gang - the criminal dubbed ‘the one that got away.’

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He was the first godfather of Irish crime, the man who unleashed heroin on Dublin’s impoverished housing estates and flat complexes.

Larry Dunne found fame as the drug lord responsible for the destruction of entire communities, whose greed took parents from their children and turned countless young people into thieves and prostitutes.

But when he lay down to die between two wheelie bins in the front garden of a relative's home, gone were all the trappings of wealth that had once afforded him a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce, a mansion on a hill and everything that money could buy.

Now, following a coroner's ruling that he died from self-inflicted stab wounds, Nicola Tallant talks with Sunday World Deputy Editor Niall Donald about the rise and fall of 'Flash' Larry Dunne.

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Across the world, cannabis is being de-criminalised and in some countries legalised but with a higher potency and soaring prices, consumption of weed has become the main drug of concern amongst teenagers.

Here, Nicola Tallant talks with consultant psychiatrist Dr Bobby Smyth, who works with young addicts and who fears a tsunami of problems as attitudes to the drug become increasingly lenient.

He reveals the changing trends of problem drug use in teenagers, about the public health drive which has stamped out heroin addiction in young people and how cannabis has taken over as the main reason that kids need addiction services.

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The murder of another witness in the Marengo Trial, the shocking revelations that suspect Ridouan Taghi was plotting a navy-seal-type jailbreak and a dramatic security breach around an under-threat journalist - what will happen next in The Netherlands?

In a country under siege from organised crime, the very foundations of law and order are being challenged as a street dealer turned cocaine billionaire takes on the pillars of a state.

Nicola Tallant talks to Dutch colleague Saskia Belleman of De Telegraaf, who is a courts correspondent working on the most extraordinary gangland story in living memory – one which echoes the brutal battle to take down Pablo Escobar.

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Nicola Tallant tells the story of 'Fat' Freddie Thompson, one of Ireland's most-feared mobsters.

From his rise as a street fighter in Dublin to becoming the head of a gangland murder machine, we retrace the violent steps he took on his rise to power and how gardai finally ended his bloody reign of terror.

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Nicola Tallant tells the story of 'Fat' Freddie Thompson, one of Ireland's most-feared mobsters.

From his rise as a street fighter in Dublin to becoming the head of a gangland murder machine, we retrace the violent steps he took on his rise to power and how gardai finally ended his bloody reign of terror.

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Former businessman Jimmy Mansfield Jnr went to jail this week, convicted of attempting to pervert the course of justice by directing that CCTV footage be destroyed.

The conviction centres around the kidnap of one of his late father’s employees, Martin Byrne. And while Mansfield Jnr was acquitted of involvement in the abduction, six men, led by terrorists Dessie O’Hare and Declan ‘Whacker' Duffy, have been convicted - and a judge has said Mansfield knowingly engaged them to help recover his assets lost in the 2008 economic crash.

At the heart of the Mansfield trial was the story that Byrne told in the witness box of the day he came face to face with O’Hare – and how it changed his life for good.

But who is Dessie O’Hare and what other lives has he crossed in a five decade criminal career? Nicola Tallant talks to Fr. Brian D’Arcy about his dealings with O’Hare during the kidnap of his friend the dentist John O’Grady. He recalls an incredible story that has stayed with him all his life and relives the day he too believed he was set to become a victim of the 'Border Fox'.

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He was the playboy prince of the Celtic Tiger era and lived it up in a luxury mansion frequented by top models and socialites.

But businessman Jim Mansfield Jnr is now doing porridge with common criminals after he was found guilty of perverting the course of justice.

Over the course of a year, a sensational trial heard evidence about a who's who of paramilitaries and organised crime groups brought in by Mansfield to help claw back the family wealth after the economic crash, and of the terrifying kidnap of a former employee now turned state witness.

While Mansfield has been found not guilty of false imprisonment, his reputation lies in ruins and from his prison cell, his once gilded life must seem a million miles away.

Nicola Tallant chats with Sunday World Deputy Editor Niall Donald about the incredible fall of Jim Mansfield Jnr.

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He’s the hitman for hire who claims to have turned his life around - and nowadays Alan Wilson says he is writing poetry and staying away from his former gang, the Kinahans, while behind bars.

Just weeks ago, the sinister criminal begged a judge to be lenient and claimed he would live an honest life when allowed to go free.

But at the Special Criminal Court, Justice Tara Burns said Wilson, who has twice pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder, was involved in a ‘highly sophisticated, meticulously planned attack in front of a large group of civilians which left two victims with lifelong injuries. She gave him 10 years and refused to backdate the sentence.

So who is Alan Wilson and has he really gone straight? Nicola Tallant talks to journalist and author Stephen Breen about the two faces of Wilson and how the callous mobster can switch from loving family man to black-hearted killer in the blink of an eye.

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