A SAD AND FELLONI LIFE

Estranged ex of ‘King Scum’ passes away just one month after the death of drug-lord monster

THE estranged wife of heroin dealer Tony ‘King Scum’ Felloni passed away last weekend – outliving her drug baron former husband by less than a month.

Ann Flynn, who was 74 years old when she died on Saturday last, was this week remembered as a “Dublin legend” by her brother, Councillor Mannix Flynn.

He told how, in spite of the horrific abuse she and her children suffered at the hands of Tony Felloni, Ann had always tried to remain “upbeat” and “did her very best for her family”.

Ann did not attend her former husband Felloni’s funeral earlier this month and was understood to have been in ill health in the lead up to her own passing.

“My sister was a super person,” Cllr Flynn told the Sunday World this week.

“And she must have been a superhero to survive as much in her life as she did.

IMPACT

“She was extremely well loved in Dublin and despite her own problems, was extremely well liked by the gardai, solicitors and the judges who dealt with her cases.

“She was ill a lot as a result of a hard life that had a serious impact on her health.

“But despite that, she was a woman who was so full of life.

“She was a very social and intelligent person, very fashionable and really good performer.

“She suffered greatly but despite

that suffering, she always did the best she could.

“I’m very proud of my sister and I’m very sad to see her go.”

In June of 1996, in the last interview ever written by murdered journalist Veronica Guerin after Felloni was jailed for 20 years for drug dealing, Ann spoke of how her estranged husband had “f**ked up” the lives of her and her children.

Ann told the Sunday Independent journalist that when she she first met the drug dealer in 1966 she was unaware of his convictions for vice.

“I was only out of prison myself,” she said. “I had done a sentence in England for shoplifting.

“I remember meeting Tony in O’Connell Street; he was still dressed in a three-piece suit he

got leaving prison.”

By then, Felloni had already been convicted of procuring young girls for immoral purposes and sentenced to three years imprisonment in 1964.

He operated brothels from Dublin’s tenements on Gardiner Street in Dublin’s north inner city.

Girls who had travelled to Dublin looking for work were offered accommodation by Felloni and then forced to become prostitutes to pay for their keep.

It emerged at Felloni’s trial that the girls were approached by him or those working with him at the GPO on O’Connell Street.

Conned by his charm and beguiling smile, they happily took up his offer of hospitality.

Their lives quickly became living nightmares as he viciously beat those who tried to escape his vice dens.

His vice activities came to the attention of gardai, who began an investigation.

Ann’s recollections to Veronica of Felloni in their early years together were both happy and sad.

“He was vicious with drink and often knocked me about, but then he’d be full of remorse,” she said.

According to Veronica’s article, Felloni’s criminal activities were part and parcel of his and Ann’s life.

COURTING

It was the culture they grew up in and one to which they were accustomed.

Their friends were fellow criminals and they enjoyed the benefits crime brought.

Unlike other courting couples who went to the pictures, Ann and Felloni went shoplifting together.

Ann has served many prison sentences for shoplifting and also for assaults.

The heroin business for which Felloni became notorious began in the early Seventies.

This arose through his association with the drug-dealing members of the Dunne family.

According to his wife, “he saw the money they were making and decided to get into it himself”.

His heroin income was small in the Seventies but was supplemented, said Ann, by “burglaries, tie-ups [robberies where the victim is tied up], ware

house, post office and bank jobs”.

Despite the fact that Felloni made plenty of money from crime, he was never generous to Ann or any of their seven children.

During the interview, Ann showed Veronica the physical scars she bore from the beatings he gave her.

The assaults resulted in stitches to her skull after being hit by a hatchet, a scar on her eye where she was hit with a bottle, stitches on her ear from his attempt to bite it off and eight-inch scars on both legs as a result of being thrown through a glass window.

Veronica put it to Ann that she found it incomprehensible she could have stayed with such a man.

Ann responded that she endured a lot of the pain because she herself was a heroin addict for nearly five years.

PREGNANT

“In 1984 I was out of my head on heroin, I didn’t know if it was day or night, never mind what he was doing to me,” she said.

During this period, she became pregnant and gave birth to a son she christened Benito. The baby only survived three days as his liver collapsed because of his mother’s heroin habit.

“He’s f***ed up every one of his own kids so he doesn’t give a shite about anyone.” The remains of Ann Flynn were cremated following a short ceremony on Friday.