Three guilty of terrifying €2.3m tiger kidnapping
Family tied up in Wicklow mountains
THREE men have been convicted of kidnapping a family and holding them at gunpoint in the Dublin mountains in a terrifying €2.28million cash-in-transit robbery 13 years ago.
On the night of Sunday, March 13, 2005, armed men burst into the home of Securicor driver Paul Richardson and threatened him and his family.
The men, who were wearing boiler suits and balaclavas, were armed with guns, including a submachine gun, ordered Mr Richardson to go to work, collect the cash and drop it off in a car park. He was told that his family would be released if he did this, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court was told.
After nearly 16 hours of deliberations, the jury convicted Mark Farrelly, 47, Christopher Corcoran, 70, and David Byrne, 45, of being part of the armed gang that took Marie Richardson and her two young sons from their Dublin home on March 13, 2005.
The jury heard Ian Richardson, who was a teenager at the time, had a panic attack and this caused some trauma for his parents and panic among the kidnappers.
The gang took photographs of the family flanked by two armed men and they gave these to Mr Richardson to help him convince his work colleagues to co-operate with the gang’s plans.
Some members of the gang then loaded Marie Richardson and her sons into the back of a 4x4 vehicle and drove across the city and into the Wicklow mountains, the court heard. The gang held the family in the back of the van overnight. The next morning they used cable ties to tie them up and then left them in woods.
During this time, Mr Richardson drove to work and collected the cash. He then drove to the Angler’s Rest pub in Dublin’s Strawberry Beds and dropped the cash in the pub’s car park.
His instructions were then to drive west along the N4 until the kidnappers contacted him to say his family had been released.
This call never came and Mr Richardson became increasingly anxious and began to experience chest pains. His colleagues forced him to stop the van and they raised the alarm.
By this stage, Mrs Richardson and her sons had managed to free themselves from the cable ties using a penknife. They walked down the woods and met a forest ranger who raised the alarm.
The jury continue to deliberate in the case of Niall Byrne, 36, who worked for Securicor at the time of the robbery and who the State allege was the gang’s ‘inside man’. Judge Melanie Greally told the jury they can now return a ‘majority verdict’, meaning a verdict on which ten or more jurors agree.
Farrelly, of Moatview Court, Priorswood, Coolock; Corcoran of Rosedale, Raheny, Dublin; Niall Byrne, of Crumlin Road Flats, Dublin, and David Byrne, of Old Brazil Way, Knocksedan, Swords, pleaded not guilty to robbing Mr Richardson and Securicor of €2.28million on March 14, 2005 and to the false imprisonment of the Richardson family at their home at Ashcroft, Raheny, on March 13 and 14, 2005.
The trial began last January before a specially enlarged jury of 15. Three jurors were discharged due to personal commitments and 12 jurors are now deliberating on the evidence.
The Garda investigation began with the knowledge that during the night, kidnappers had allowed a call between Mrs Richardson in the mountains and Mr Richardson in Raheny. Gardaí examined mobile phone activity in the mountain area at that time and identified two mobile numbers.
Gardaí looked at all other mobile phone numbers these two mobile phones had contacted and built up a network of between eight or nine mobile numbers used at times and locations relevant to the offences, prosecution counsel Dominic McGinn SC said.
It was the State’s case that these numbers are inextricably linked to the robbery and that the four accused were using some of these phone numbers. He said other people were also involved but that they were not before the court.
The State alleged that Farrelly was the mastermind of the gang and his phone was used to coordinate the movements of the various gang members.
Kidnappers had machine gun