O’Driscoll lured men to be shot by ‘Taliban Brothers’
GANGLAND criminal Jason ‘Jay’ O’Driscoll was enlisted in a plot to kill two men after one was blamed for the murder of Michael Taylor Sr in a caravan park.
Gardaí last night hailed the conviction of O’Driscoll (35) for the murder of Anthony Burnett (31) and Joseph Redmond (25). The men’s bodies were discovered in a burnt-out car in Ravensdale Woods, Co Louth, on March 7, 2012.
“It is some result to get this man off the streets. He has been up to his neck in serious criminality since he was a teenager,” a senior source said.
The Irish Independent can reveal that O’Driscoll, who was not the gunman for the double murder, worked hand-in-hand with the shooters – the notorious ‘Taliban brothers’. These criminals were linked to a string of murders before fleeing the State. Gardaí have not yet been able to get enough evidence to charge the ‘Taliban Brothers’ with the double murder.
The plot began when a five-figure sum was offered by gun victim Michael Taylor’s son Michael Taylor Jnr (38), who is currently serving a life sentence for another shooting.
He was helped by a Hutch gang-linked criminal, who was serving a sentence for a foiled robbery in Mountjoy prison when the double killing occurred in 2012.
As part of the bitter feud Taylor Jnr was involved in, his north inner city enemies decided to target his father, who was not involved in criminality.
Father-of-four Michael Taylor Snr (53) was shot in Donabate over the June bank holiday weekend in 2011 to “get at his son”. Shortly after the killing, underworld criminals identified Anthony Burnett as being involved, according to senior sources.
Gardaí believe Taylor Jr and the volatile 43-year-old Hutch gang ‘gun-for-hire’ hatched a plot to have Burnett murdered, and his younger associate Joseph Redmond was “collateral damage”.
Officers are confident that they enlisted ‘Jay’ O’Driscoll to lure their targets to the Border where the ‘Taliban Brothers’ were waiting for Burnett and petty criminal Redmond.
Gardaí quickly identified O’Driscoll as a suspect but he fled to continental Europe. He was finally arrested at Alicante Airport in Spain in April, 2016.
Last December, O’Driscoll was ordered to face a retrial after a jury failed to reach a verdict in the double-murder case.
His luck finally ran out yesterday.