We didn’t know if we were going to come outside and get our heads blown off...
Brave witness risks life to try to keep killers in jail ‘My dream is a future without fear of being shot dead’
SITTING in the canteen at work, Joseph O’callaghan got a jolt when he heard two diners talking about The Witness podcast.
When one woman remarked that she was on episode seven, her companion interjected to caution that she was only on the third episode.
“She told the other girl not to tell her what would happen,” said the country’s most famous state witness this week. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, get me out of here quickly’. I was afraid they would recognise my voice.”
Another day he remembers sitting on a bus and glancing across at the man next to him reading a newspaper. “He was reading about me. People literally haven’t a clue.”
It’s part of the double life he has been leading since his testimony put Brian Kenny and Thomas Hinchon behind bars for life for the murder of Jonathan O’reilly outside Cloverhill Prison in April 2004.
But he risked exposing his face in July, nearly two decades after assuming a new identity, to plead with the parole board to keep Kenny and Hinchon behind bars.
It was the fifth parole hearing for the drugdealing killers, but the first time Joseph O’callaghan and his mother, Mary, made their case in person.
Without any police protection, they felt dangerously exposed walking into the building at the back of the Four Courts.
“We didn’t know if we were going to come outside and get our heads blown off outside the parole building. There was the fear of being followed coming out. Was someone going to tell somebody?”
But despite being scared, he “felt heard” by the three-person panel.
“We were listened to. We cried, me Mam got upset. I got upset. I begged them not to sign my death warrant,” he said this week.
“I don’t think there is any crime worse than murder. Secondly, it’s things he did to me,” he said referring to Brian Kenny. “The abuse, the beatings, the shooting at me, the grooming, making me deliver drugs.
“Over the years I’ve been stabbed, they smashed my Ma’s windows and me Mam had ‘rat’ shouted at her walking down the street.
“I’m scared for my kids and my sisters and me Mam. He knows where they live, they haven’t moved.”
He will reflect on the hearing and finding peace in his life in a new 11th episode of the award-winning podcast series, Witness: In His Own Words, which is currently in development for documentary and film projects.
In his day-to-day life, his fellow workers and friends have no idea he was once called Joseph O’callaghan. Or that he was subjected to years of extreme coercive control, physical and sexual abuse until he made a terrifying escape from Kenny’s house after witnessing the aftermath of the murder of Jonathan O’reilly.
But they could well be among the four million listeners who have tuned into the podcast of his life, The Witness, based on the bestselling book by Nicola Tallant.
The vulnerability and honesty in his distinct Ballymun accent as he recalled being groomed and terrorised by the milkman from the age of 12 turned the podcast into an international hit.
It has won a slew of awards. But he says: “I can’t put them up in my house. Unfortunately, I don’t live under that name, and nobody knows where I live. Nobody knows who I am.” Even his own two children were oblivious to his role in putting two murderers behind bars until they were nearly adults. “I had to sit them down and tell them. They knew nothing whatsoever. They were upset for me. “I’m grateful to have them. They’re amazing, I’m so proud of them.” In the past, he has been issued with a number of threats to life warnings in the form of an official Garda Information Message. Days after the parole hearing, he got a visit from the gardai. “They said they were reviewing my GIM because I went in front of the parole board and they believed I had pissed Kenny off. So I’m just waiting now for them to come and see me and give me a new GIM basically which is ridiculous. “I will not back down. I will fight to keep them in there, until I stop breathing, until they do kill me.” risked exposing his face for a second time this summer when he met the Minister of State at the Department of Justice, James Browne, to advise him on upcoming grooming legislation. “There are other Joeys out there,” he said. “I just opened the door at the wrong time to the wrong person,” he said of asking Kenny for a job on his milk round shortly after he moved from Ballymun to Blanchardstown.
He believes the legislation will help but that a task force should be set up to help crime-ridden communities to save children from grooming.
Today he has no Garda protection. “I have a number for a Garda liaison officer,” he said. “If he’s not at work I have no other number to ring.
“You only got a year on the actual witness protection, after a year you have to sign off. That would have been 2006. You’re brought to wherever you’re meant to go and told never to come back, never contact your family again.
“At the end of the day how the guards and the State treated me was disgraceful. I’m living in
the shadows, and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.” Back in Ireland since 2010, he has been living in an unknown location.
“When I get up in the morning, I check the cameras front and back. I check if there is a tracking device under my car, I have to make sure I have my vest on.”
He would like patrols on his house, something he said is given to “plenty of gangland criminals”.
“The least I deserve is to be able to visit my mother or my sisters or my children without being afraid.”
He gets emotional when he tells how the makers of The Witness podcast – Nicola Tallant, Ian Maleney and Jane Gogan – donated their share of the proceeds to upgrade security on his house. “You don’t get big money, it’s a free podcast, but the whole team put their earnings in to pay for the security on my house because the State wouldn’t pay for it and I couldn’t afford it... All my doors were reinforced, the windows are bulletproof, they got cameras and everyhe
I begged them not to sign my death warrant JOSEPH O’CALLAGHAN ON PAROLE BOARD
thing.” Life has gotten “easier” since he told his story. “I never had a number to ring, now I have five or six numbers. I’ve built up a great relationship with the whole team from the podcast.”
His voice breaks when he talks about his wishes for the future.
“I’d love to be able to take my own name back. You know what I dream of ? I’d love to be able to just get in a car or a bus and knock on my Ma’s door without telling her, just surprise her and give her a hug and just have a cup of tea… and not think about a gunman running after us or something coming through the window.
“What I’d give for that moment. Just not to be scared. Keep all your awards, the views. If you were to say to me, I’ll have that, to spend time with me Mam and sisters and children, and just be all together.”
A prison source has revealed Brian Kenny is currently in Wheatfield Prison after being transferred back from the low-security open prison of Loughan House due to violating rules while Thomas Hinchon also remains in a secure closed prison.
The new episode of The Witness: In His Own Words – The Parole Board, is out tomorrow.