EYE-OPENER ON SORDID UNDERWORLD OF PUSHERS

"WHERE do you come from, where do you go? Where do you come from Cotton-Eyed
Joe?" It's an innocent enough song, beloved of line dancers and the like.
But in the sordid drugs underworld of Dublin, even the most innocent things
can be twisted to mean something else.

'Cotton-Eyed' Joe Delaney was known as such by those who were more likely to
be into a line of cocaine, than a bit of cowboy boot-stomping on a Saturday
night.

Joe would come and go, the man himself told the court at his murder trial
yesterday. "Now you see him, now you don't" type of thing because his job
was only to see people "once in a while" to collect money. And so he got the
nickname.

From a lifetime of honest work, Joe Delaney had entered a shadowy world
where pseudonyms are part of the warped code, and he had the nickname to
prove it.

With hair sleeked down so tightly not even a hurricane could move it, the
man accused of beating and shooting drug dealer Mark Dwyer took the stand
yesterday afternoon.

Anyone who had seen the photographs shown in court previously of a very
overweight Joe Delaney would have been forgiven for doing a double-take. The
pinstriped jacket of the man in the witness box hung loosely on his thin
frame, now about three stones lighter.

He described his slip into a life where there were "easier ways to make
money" as his drug-dealing son Robert told him than could be made from a
lifetime working in Aer Lingus, Unidare, Cadbury's, and then as a taxi owner
and driver.

"Being an alcoholic I took the opportunity and I regret it ever since," he
stated. He claimed he was on medication for depression since he was 13, and
had later tried to commit suicide over his 'new life'.

A "good Catholic", he began living a life where he collected money for drugs
and got 20pc commission when they were sold. Words like 'the 'Dam'
(Amsterdam), 'a pull' (questioning at the airport), 'a pickup' (delivery or
collection of drugs), 'a piece' (gun) tripped easily from his tongue as the
accused man described the workings of his new life.

There was the complex tale of how 40,000 ecstasy tablets went missing, how
Joe was "under pressure" and in fear of his life, and descriptions of the
key players in the drama of the 53-year-old man's life.

His eldest son Robert had "brains to burn" but was a "rip-off merchant";
Mark Dwyer was "a gentleman", and second son Scott "not gifted with those
(beautiful) looks" of his other son and daughter, was special to him from
the moment he saw the dimple on the baby's chin.

Joe Delaney proud father, separated husband, hard worker, chronic drinker
turned cocaine user, and finally drug dealer, unfurled the story of his life
for two hours. Most of it was not pleasant listening.

The teenagers on a school visit to the Four Courts had earlier heard defence
claims of sordid sexual practices between Delaney and witness Adrienne
McGuinness, which she denied.

"What's K-Y gel?" one youngster whispered to her friend after a particularly
graphic question by defending counsel Blaise O'Carroll. Whatever her friend
said, the girl's eyebrows shot up in astonishment. It made one want to
squirm in embarrassment for the 'education' they were getting in Court
Number 3.

Checked-by: "Rolf Ernst"