The State witness bride, the rapist groom and their killer best man
STATE witness and former gangster girlfriend April Collins has married her partner, Cratloe Woods rapist Thomas O’Neill – and the best man was killer and rapist Ian Horgan.
Ms Collins, who was the State’s key witness in the murder trial of gang leader John Dundon, and O’Neill – who was only recently acquitted of threatening to kill the father of the man who contradicted her damning evidence – married in Limerick earlier this month.
Photographs posted to the couple’s Facebook pages show Ms Collins and O’Neill – who have both changed their names to Sheehy – posing for the camera. Best man Horgan is pictured with the newlyweds.
However, things took a frightening turn when the best man allegedly turned up at their door two days after the wedding to threaten the new bride, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal. Horgan – a killer and rapist from Cork – had taken offence over comments Ms Collins had made on Facebook about his girlfriend and her husband’s sister Teresa O’Neill.
Horgan had been released from jail in 2013 after serving a sentence for the manslaughter and rape of a young woman.
A source said: ‘Horgan can’t stay out of trouble. He is a particularly violent individual, who gardaí in Limerick keep a close watch on. He was released for killing Rachel Kiely, but was soon up to no good when he robbed a petrol station at knife point.’
During the robbery – just eight weeks after his release – Horgan was wrestled to the ground by a shop manager. The Mail on Sunday printed exclusive pictures of the criminal entering Seán’s Shop in Limerick, with his hood up, a scarf covering his face and wearing white gloves. Detectives conducted a forensic analysis of the scarf and found his DNA on the material.
Horgan was just 16 when he was arrested for raping and killing the 22-year-old beautician in a Cork park in 2000.
After successfully appealing his murder conviction and being released on bail, Horgan – described as a ‘violent and sadistic man’ by appeals judge Adrian Hardiman – was arrested and charged with robbery and the unlawful taking of a car at a post office in 2005.
A year later he pleaded guilty to Ms Kiely’s manslaughter and was convicted of her rape. He was sentenced to 12 years in jail. In 2010, he received a further four years for the 2005 robbery. During this terrifying incident, the owners of the post office were tied up in their own kitchen.
He was released in late 2013, and, the MoS revealed, moved in with Teresa O’Neill – whose brother Thomas was involved in the notorious gang rape in Cratloe Woods in Co. Clare in 2004.
The MoS photographed Horgan and Ms O’Neill when he travelled to the social welfare office beside Dublin’s Phoenix Park, to collect his first dole payment.
A few days later, he was stopped by gardaí as he travelled in a car with child sex attacker Joseph Finnerty. The two were stopped together on three separate occasions.
When the MoS confronted Finnerty and asked about their association, he stared at this reporter for a number of seconds, before replying: ‘Go away with yourself, little woman.’
Sources said they were ‘extremely concerned’ to see the two men together. They described Horgan as ‘dangerous and volatile’ and warned it was only a matter of time before he struck again.
While in Wheatfield Prison, Horgan ended up in a fight with Ger Dundon – April Collins’s ex-boyfriend and father of three of her four children – which ended with Dundon being badly beaten and hospitalised for a number of days.
Meanwhile, 29-year-old Thomas O’Neill, who at the age of 16, led the group who brutally attacked a couple before raping the woman in the Cratloe Woods, Co. Clare, walked free from court late last year after being acquitted of threatening to kill a man.
Liam Casey Sr, 53, father of Liam ‘Lika’ Casey, one of the Dundon gang’s enforcers, told the court O’Neill threatened to ‘f ****** shoot’ him dead.
The jury in the case ruled that there were too many inconsistencies in the injured party’s evidence.
John Dundon was sentenced to life for the murder of innocent rugby player Shane Geoghegan in a case of mistaken identity in 2008.
Contacted last night, Ms Collins denied a falling out, but confirmed her marriage.
‘Horgan was descibed as a violent and sadistic man’