I didn’t whack The General... now his gang are trying to KILL ME
Thug denies shooting notorious crime boss
EVIL criminal John Gilligan denied he whacked Martin Cahill – but claims associates of The General are still trying to kill him.
He said: “There’s a couple of people thinking I’m responsible for killing Martin Cahill. “I had no involvement on the planet. People said I got Paddy [“Dutchy” Holland] to do it.” Holland in fact later shot dead journalist Veronica Guerin in June 1996 – Gilligan claims neither he nor Dutchy were involved in Cahill’s murder. He added: “But I was sitting with Paddy Holland in Portlaoise Prison when the news came through [of Cahill’s murder].” Cahill was shot dead in Ranelagh, South Dublin, on August 18, 1994 as he returned a video to a store. The IRA claimed it had killed the man who then ran Ireland’s gangland. Gilligan said: “There’s people not happy with me because they think I shot their friend. “I’d sort any differences with a straightener [ fist fight]. I’d fight, Jesus, King Kong. “Coming as a storyline from me, they would just think I’m covering up, distort the blame or whatever. “The true story has to come out without knocking other people. “The people that didn’t know him thought he had money. But I have the story right here with me. “It would help me a little bit if a story came out about Cahill that was true.”
EXCUSE
Gilligan believes a botched hit on him at the Halfway House near Phoenix Park in Dublin in December 2013 after he got out of jail was somehow linked to Cahill. He admitted: “Yeah, it think it is. They’re hiding under the umbrella. They’re trying to justify that [hit on me]. Saying, ‘He killed our good friend, we can’t let that go’. “It’s not actually down to Martin Cahill. It’s down to people using his murder as an excuse. “They’re not looking for me for anything. I’m not doing anything. I told me family I was going straight. “Because things happened on me when I was away. They automatically think I’ll put two and two together. “When I was sentenced a lot of people thought I’d never come out alive. “They needed an excuse and say, ‘Did he kill our friend Martin?’ And that was the story. That was the cover story.” Gilligan spoke about the spate of killings in the Hutch-kinahan feud that has claimed the lives of 11 men and left another man battling for life earlier this month. He said: “The problem with all them people doing whackings, they’re doing them because they owe two or three grand of a drug debt. That’s what’s happening. So if you owe three grand, ‘If you don’t whack him we’ll f***ing whack you’. “There’s fellas going around and they’re shaking. I came across about 40 of them in jail.” Gilligan added if anyone whacked him they would get a buzz. He said the killings were now at such a crisis level prisoners are terrified of certain jails. He said: “When they go to jail they say, ‘I can’t go Mountjoy, I can’t go to Wheatfield, I can’t go to Portlaoise, I can’t go to that landing.’ “These are all the f***ing hardmen who are f***ing whacking people. “Killing innocent people or mistaken identity. “They are terrified to go to a landing because they would be picked up on that landing. If I got whacked it would be obvious to people who did it – they’d know who it was. “Then they [my killers] would go into prison and I have loads of relations that’s been in trouble and loads of friends. And they’d kick them up and down the prison if they got a f***ing hold of them.” He said convicted hitmen end up in solitary confinement in jail for their own safety, adding: “The fellas doing the whacking are actually giving themselves a life sentence in hell.” Gilligan told how Cahill was keen to get his hands on deadly weaponry like AK47S which were becoming available in the early 1990s during the Balkan conflict in Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia. He said: “Martin was a decent enough guy and fellas would tell him anything he wanted to hear.” The
65-year-old revealed John Traynor, who was a member of Gilligan’s gang, had a great love for The General. He added: “As far as I know John Traynor paid for Martin Cahill’s funeral. Or helped to pay for it. Traynor did love Martin. “He had a weird way of thinking about him. “They had some sort of a funny friendship. Martin used to get him to do this, check this, check that, check the other. “Even if Traynor couldn’t do it, he used to tell him he got it done.” Back then Gilligan had a motto – You don’t rob what you can’t sell. He referred to the Beit paintings which the Cahill gang stole from Russborough House in Co Wicklow in May 1986 in what was then the biggest robbery in the history of the State. Gilligan said: “There was no point robbing paintings. One million, 10 million, 20 million. “If you don’t sell them, you might as well have a lorry tyre with a hole in it. “I believe it’s a myth in the criminal fraternity people have buyers that are billionaires, that have false undergrounds in their houses and they just want certain paintings because it’s the only one painting in the world – say like the Mona Lisa or Sunflowers or any Van Gogh things or Rembrandts. “I heard it a thousand times, ‘Oh I’ve got a buyer, this fella will buy this painting’. “And I used to say, ‘If you have a buyer for the painting, get the deposit first. Otherwise don’t rob it’. “You won’t sell it.”
There is people not happy with me, they think I shot their friend JOHN GILLIGAN ON MARTIN CAHILL MURDER