HOW TWO LITTLE BOYS MET GANGLAND DEATHS

The bodies fished from the canal last week were unlikely victims of gang
warfare. Liz Allen, crime correspondent, finds out how they got involved.

WHACKER Murray nearly got sick on his First Holy Communion clothes. The
minute he got into the car with his mother and father on the way to the
Church of the Assumption in Ballyfermot, he announced that he was going to
throw up. Paul and Kathleen Murray had to stop the car to allow the
curly-headed seven-year-old to collect himself.

He was always the same when travelling; any time Patrick `Whacker' Murray
went on a special journey, he became ill. He hated travelling so much he
wouldn't even go on the annual family holiday to Spain. And on the one
occasion they persuaded him to tag along on a holiday to Wexford, he spent
the entire journey vomiting.

So his parents were very surprised that he was willing to travel to
Amsterdam. Why would the son who hated airports and long journeys volunteer
to get on a plane? To Kathleen and Paul, the trip just didn't add up.

Last Sunday, the body of 19-year-old Patrick Murray was pulled from the
canal at Kearneystown, Co Kildare. Although only a 20-minute motorway drive
from Ballyfermot, the area is a quiet, rural spot. For the family out for a
Sunday walk who discovered his naked body, it was a horrific discovery and
one which led to a similar discovery less than 24 hours later.

Garda divers searching for the weapon used to execute Whacker with a single
shot to the back of the head made a second gruesome discovery on Monday
when they found the body of his pal, 20-year-old Darren Carey, from
Islandbridge Court, Kilmainham. He had been shot in the head and the chest.

The two shared their last journey, but it was not the only journey they
shared. And their previous journey, last November, was the one that set in
train the events which led to their deaths.

When Whacker Murray told his mother in November that he was going to
Amsterdam for the weekend, she was suspicious. ``I just thought of all
those times we asked him to come to Spain and him getting sick any time he
travelled and then he says he's going to Amsterdam. It just didn't add
up,'' she said in an interview at her home at Cole Park Drive. It certainly
didn't add up when Kathleen and Paul later compared notes: ``He told me he
was going to the country for a wedding,'' said Paul, pulling on a John
Player Blue cigarette, a habit he resumed in the past week after a 15-year
break.

NEITHER Kathleen and Paul, nor Darren's parent's Stephen and Noleen, knows
what happened during the Amsterdam trip. Indeed, although both sets of
parents knew their sons were friends, they did not know that they were in
Amsterdam at the same time and it is not clear if Darren travelled there
before or after Whacker.

Up until their respective journeys home, on December 2 and December 3, both
young men's experiences in life had been pretty similar. Darren, older than
Whacker by just a few months, had attended Chapelizod National School and
then Palmerstown Secondary School, before quitting in Junior Cert year to
work in a bed factory in Chapelizod. Just up the road in Ballyfermot,
Whacker followed pretty much the same path; he attended the Dominican
Convent in Ballyfermot until sixth class and then moved on to nearby St
John's College until his Junior Cert year, when he quit to work in the same
bed factory.

The pair renewed their childhood friendship.

Anybody, from gardai to priests, who knows their families describes both
sets of parents as ``good, decent, hard-working people''. And it seemed to
onlookers that the boys were just two average lads. Entertainment consisted
of karaoke sessions in pubs, particularly for Whacker, whose musical skills
and guitar-playing earned him plenty of attention. Recently, Darren was
spending more of his time with his girlfriend, with whom he had a young
daughter just four months ago.

Fr Charlie Hoey, the former curate of Ballyfermot who celebrated Whacker's
funeral mass on Thursday, singled Whacker out as the ``least likely
candidate'' among the children of the parish to die through gangland
warfare: ``He was the type of kid who would do anything for anybody. If you
went to the house, he wouldn't do what most other teenage lads would do and
leave the room. He would always have a bit of chat for you and a bit of a
laugh, and he'd always make sure that I had a cup of tea. Because he was so
extrovert, people were always aware of his presence.''

Whacker was fiercely protective of his younger sister Katherine, and knew
he could rely on her when he telephoned from Amsterdam to ask her to buy a
present for his mother's birthday on November 29.

But while he was phoning, he was knee-deep in Amsterdam's underworld drugs
scene. Although both young men were highly regarded by those close to them,
they were criminals. Both had previous convictions and both were involved
in drugs.

While just a few years before, they seemed to be ordinary, decent kids,
both were an integral part of the West Dublin ``ram raider'' gang which
terrorised the city with its antics in stolen cars in the early Nineties.
By 1996, Carey had a conviction for assault and robbery and by 1997, Murray
had a conviction for possessing an offensive weapon. Both were dealt with
under the Juvenile Liaison Scheme.

It was Carey's return from Amsterdam on December 3 that appears to have led
to both deaths. Coming through customs with two other West Dublin men, he
was stopped by customs officers, but allowed to proceed through the
arrivals' gate. The following day, Whacker and his best friend, Gary Kelly,
were not so lucky. While the official story is that they were stopped by
customs and found in possession of half a kilo of heroin with a street
value of pounds 35,000 - pounds 40,000, the truth is that customs stopped
the pair on behalf of gardai, who were acting on information. They were
taken to Santry Garda Station and charged with possession of controlled
drugs with intent to supply.

BUT there may have been a different motive for Kelly and Murray's trip.
Last September, Murray received a kilo of cannabis from a vicious
26-year-old known in underworld circles as the Guinea Pig, who distributed
drugs for one of the most ruthless crime gangs in Dublin. Instead of
handing over the pounds 6,000 profit to the Ballyfermot-based Guinea Pig,
Murray kept the money, and so a debt was owed. Word on the streets and from
sources involved in the double murder investigation is that Murray promised
to do the run to Amsterdam for heroin to repay his debt. When the drugs
were intercepted, the Guinea Pig was not a happy man.

Kathleen Murray and her husband said they were ``absolutely delighted''
when their son was arrested at Dublin Airport. ``We said, `Well, at least
he won't get in any deeper now,' and we've seen enough of what drugs can do
around here to be glad the heroin didn't get onto the streets.'' Whacker,
they insisted, was more than willing to serve his sentence and talked about
using his time productively ``to get an education and cop on''.

On December 27, Kathleen saw her son for the last time. The captured drug
trafficker was in his bedroom playing with the family's Playstation. On
December 28, Paul bumped into his son in the house at 7.45pm: ``He had a
pen in his hand and he told me he was going to the station to sign on [he
was on remand following his arrest at the airport]. I never saw him after
that.''

AT 7pm on December 28, Darren Carey left his family's flat at Islandbridge
in his girlfriend's black Mazda car. Both young men were officially
reported missing on December 30. It now appears that Darren Carey was
travelling to meet the Guinea Pig.

The Guinea Pig is described by gardai as ``a thug and a scumbag of the
highest order'', but with only two previous convictions a traffic offence
in 1993 and a robbery in 1995 his criminal record does not match up to his
reputation. In March 1999, he demonstrated his psychotic tendencies when he
smeared his excrement on his face while waiting in a Garda cell for
transfer to the Bridewell to face charges.

Detectives now believe that Carey thought that he was merely accompanying
the Guinea Pig to interrogate Murray, and that Carey became hysterical when
he saw his friend being executed. They suspect Carey suffered the same fate
because the psychotic distributor believed he ``didn't have the bottle'' to
keep his mouth shut.

Detectives also believe that the 46-year-old godfather of the gang returned
from his Portuguese hide-out for the assassination. They believe that a
well-known 47-year-old Ballyfermot criminal held in similarly high esteem
in the drugs gang was fully aware of the plot to kill Murray, if not Carey
also. And contrary to speculation that the Guinea Pig has fled the country,
sources say he is still in the jurisdiction.

At lunchtime last Monday, Justice Minister John O'Donoghue received a
telephone call from his private secretary, Pat Murray, informing him that a
second body had been found and that gangland warfare was rearing its ugly
head once again. It was news he hadn't anticipated, given the stringent
anti-gangland measures he introduced in the wake of the Veronica Guerin
murder in 1996.

He telephoned Garda Commissioner Pat Byrne to tell him to use whatever
resources necessary to bring the culprits to justice. Politically speaking,
the murders are a nightmare, demonstrating that just three years after the
toughest crackdown on crime in the history of the state, the underworld is
once again displaying the arrogant disregard for the law which led to the
Guerin murder. The entire National Bureau of Criminal Investigation and
two-thirds of the detectives from West Dublin have been assigned to the
case.

On the Adrienne Kennedy radio show on FM 104 on Tuesday night, there was
little of the shock and horror expressed when the middle-class teenager,
Raonaid Murray, was savagely murdered last September. A female caller
echoed the feelings of many: ``Why should we show compassion for them when
they are the ones who are bringing heroin to our country and giving it to
our kids?'' she asked.

In the tiny village of Ardlough, half a mile from where the bodies were
dumped, a woman in a shop wants her voice heard also: ``I'm sorry to say
this, dear, but I'm glad. I feel no remorse for what happened to them. Drug
dealers came here and threatened me with a big syringe. Tell their parents
how people like me are supposed to live with that.''

But Whacker Murray's father has the answer for both women: ``They were kids
who got trapped in a situation.

``Who will they be killing next? Fourteen-year-olds? Because that's who
they are recruiting to sell their drugs . . .''