IRA Garda killer and domestic abuser found dead at his home
HE WAS once glorified and defended by Sinn Féin, but Garda killer Pearse McAuley will be remembered by most as a violent criminal who could not be reformed despite spending most of his life in prison.
McAuley, 59, who was involved in the cold-blooded shooting of Detective Jerry McCabe in 1996, was found dead at his home in Strabane, Co. Tyrone, after a suspected heart attack.
Sources said the killer had been dead for several days before he was found.
As news of his demise began to circulate, some friends and family members posted tributes on social media, including Strabane councillor Raymond Barr.
‘Saddened to hear of the passing of a good friend today. Rest in peace, Pearse,’ the Independent representative wrote.
But even those who turned a blind eye to McAuley’s IRA exploits were sickened by the terror he inflicted on his former wife, Pauline Tully.
On Christmas Eve in 2014, the convicted killer told his two sons – aged seven and four – to say goodbye to their mother as he stabbed her 13 times.
Ms Tully, now a Sinn Féin TD for Cavan-Monaghan, endured a two-and-a-half hour attack during which she was punched, kicked and stabbed by her then estranged husband after she opened the door to him.
She recalled during the trial at Cavan Circuit Criminal Court that McAuley produced a knife and dragged her into the kitchen, saying if he couldn’t have her, ‘no one else could’.
He then plunged the blade into her upper chest, puncturing her lung. ‘There was a lot of blood. I silently spoke to my parents and asked them to meet me in the afterlife if I did die,’ she said at the time. ‘I was so worried about the children who he had sent upstairs, and prayed that they would be okay.
‘I kept telling him there was no one. Every time he came at me with the knife I screamed and tried to protect myself. I received stab wounds to my hands from trying to protect myself. The floor was covered in blood.
‘He called the boys down to say goodbye to me. He wouldn’t allow them to hold me. I was sure I was going to die and not see my children grow up.
‘I’m adamant it was a clear, calculated attempt, to kill me.’
It was only when McAuley fell asleep that Ms Tully managed to escape to a neighbour who did not recognise her due to the extent of her injuries.
McAuley was sentenced to 12 years behind bars with four suspended in 2015 for the attack and he walked free in June 2022.
In 2003, he was granted temporary release from Castlerea Prison to marry Ms Tully with whom he had struck up a relationship six months earlier. The special arrangement was met with widespread anger throughout the country, particularly from Jerry McCabe’s wife Anne and family.
Later that year, Ms Tully, a county councillor at the time, was invited to read out letters by the four convicted men at the Sinn Féin ard fheis.
The convicted killers were also pictured in prison with party TDs, Aengus Ó Snodaigh, Seán Crowe, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin and Martin Ferris.
At the time, McAuley was serving his ten-and-a-half year sentence for the 1996 killing of the Garda detective during an armed robbery in Adare, Co. Limerick.
The officer was providing an armed escort to a mail delivery when he and his partner, Detective Garda Ben O’Sullivan, came under a barrage of gunfire.
Det. McCabe died instantly after being shot in the spine by an AK47 while he was in his patrol car. Det. O’Sullivan, was also shot 11 times, but miraculously survived.
He died aged 78 in 2022 following a short illness at Milford Hospice in Limerick.
McAuley, Kevin Walsh, Jeremiah Sheehy, Michael O’Neill and John Quinn were all jailed for the killing in 1999.
But McAuley had already made the headlines in 1991 after he escaped from Brixton prison where he was being held on suspicion of conspiring to cause explosions.
While in prison, the Provisional IRA member produced a firearm concealed in his shoe as he was being taken back to his cell, along with fellow cellmate Nessan Quinlivan.
McAuley managed to escape back to Ireland, but was subsequently arrested after the British government sought his extradition.
However, he jumped bail and remained undetected up until the murder of Jerry McCabe.
The four men involved in the attack were charged with murder, but the charge was reduced to manslaughter after key witnesses refused to co-operate with authorities due to IRA intimidation.
Sinn Féin also made attempts to secure their release as part of the Good Friday Agreement, and even though the party failed, the gang were allowed to serve their time in houses within the grounds of Castlerea Prison.
In 2000, Gerry Adam’s wrote to former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern: ‘As you know these prisoners come under the Good Friday Agreement and while I am mindful of the sensitivity involved in this case it too is an issue which must be resolved.’
Nine years later in 2009, the four men were released from Castlerea Prison.
In recent years, the senior republican’s links to organised crime was laid bare at the Special Criminal Court during the 2022 trial of Gerry Hutch for the Regency Hotel murder of Kinahan gang member David Byrne.
Jonathan Dowdall, a former Sinn Féin councillor, told the court he had visited McAuley in
‘I asked them to meet me in the afterlife’ ‘He called the boys to say goodbye’
prison two or three times.
However, prison records later clarified that Dowdall in fact visited him 14 times between February 2015 and January 2016.
In secret recordings, the nonjury court heard Hutch telling Dowdall that he and McAuley ‘go back a bit’.
On October 17, 2022, Dowdall was sentenced to four years imprisonment for facilitating the Hutch gang in the murder of Byrne. Several months later, Hutch walked free after being found not guilty of his murder.
After McAuley’s release from prison in 2022, he returned to Strabane where he kept a low profile in the republican townland of Ballycolman until his death.
His funeral Mass will take place on Thursday morning at the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Strabane. With burial in Strabane Cemetery.
A notice on RIP.ie states his death is ‘deeply regretted’ by his sons, brother, sisters, partner, nieces, nephews and family circle.