To have any chance of proving the charges against Catherine, the evidence of Gerry Heapes, John Jones, William McClean and, to a lesser extent, Pat Russell was crucial.
Initially, with the possible exception of William McClean, all had been reluctant witnesses. Knowing their background, which included criminal records and membership of Sinn Féin, this didn’t come as any great surprise. McClean maintained at all times that he was not a member of either the IRA or any loyalist paramilitary group.
It is no secret that the top brass in the republican movement regarded Heapes in the past tense. That may be so, but after making his statements and declining to sign them, he would always give as a reason: ‘I’ll have to get on to my people first.’ He never did in fact sign his statements, but agreed that they were correct.
That Gerry Heapes had been fingered not as a suspect but as a would-be witness by the Gardaí would have been known by the republican movement. Also known by them was the fact that Catherine Nevin had solicited Heapes to murder her husband, or to get his organisation to carry out her wishes. This was a domestic matter between husband and wife, which could have dire consequences for his organisation, should they become involved. The financial rewards, approximately £20,000, would be seen as chicken feed.
William McClean is over-talkative, flamboyant and of a friendly, charismatic disposition. To any barrister acting for an accused person, a witness such as McClean could be likened to manna from heaven. Prosecution counsel would occasionally have some concern or anxiety about a witness freezing under intense cross-examination. With McClean, it was feared that he just would not know when to shut up, thus giving the defence greater scope and latitude to probe every minute detail of his evidence.
I wondered whether he would appreciate the grilling he would face in cross-examination from Mr McEntee. No problem there, he was to counter: ‘Sure Paddy and my family go back a long way.’ As it transpired, his cross-examination was not by Mr McEntee, but by Mr Paul Burns, McEntee’s junior. ‘Was he worried about his past being revealed in open court, his previous convictions, his many affairs, including the eighteen-month one he had with Catherine?’ I asked him. ‘No, not at all, sure anyway that was all years ago.’ He strode confidently, even nonchalantly, to the witness box; one hoped that, on conclusion of his evidence, the same gait would be noticeable as he made his exit from it.
Yes, he had three criminal convictions recorded against him. He had first met Catherine Nevin about eleven years ago in the Red Cow pub on the Naas Road in Dublin. Describing her as ‘a good-looking bird’, he’d ‘shifted’ her. That was to be the start of an affair which lasted about eighteen months. He knew her as Tom Nevin’s wife. The affair was basically sexual. They used Catherine’s house in Clondalkin and also the Nevins’ flats in Rialto. He had been married in 1969 and separated four years later.
When Catherine and Tom Nevin bought Jack White’s Inn, he arranged for their furniture and goods to be moved to the pub. He was there for the official opening and practically every weekend for the next two or three months. He helped out behind the bar when the need arose. The affair continued.
Tom knew about the affair, and even caught Catherine and him in bed together on one occasion. Tom just asked Catherine for some keys and left the room. The matter was never mentioned after this. Eventually, he tired of the affair, and told her that he was putting an end to it, but she was having none of it. He tried this a few times, without success. Sometime later, he devised a plan to end the affair. He brought a girlfriend to the pub, as a way of telling Catherine that the affair was over. She went berserk, as she knew the girl.
In 1990, accompanied by a new girlfriend, he called into Jack White’s and met Catherine. He was driving an Opel Kadett, which had the registration number found on the premises in the garda search.
It was noted that the jury was fascinated by his evidence, as they eyed him throughout. Ever the playboy, McClean picked up the glass in front of him and, before filling it with water, enquired: ‘Is it clean?’
When Catherine was a patient at St Vincent’s Hospital, around 1990, she phoned him, and he called to the hospital the following day. She professed her still-burning love for him and expressed a desire to rekindle the affair. He wasn’t interested, and told her so.
Out of the blue – and very much to the point – Catherine asked him to do something for her. ‘There is £20,000 for you to get rid of Tom, and we can get back together again.’ He listened but had no intention of complying with her request. She also told him: ‘Get him when he is going to the bank or the flats. You have the contacts.’ He was shocked, and looked at her and said ‘No fucking way, Catherine’, and left.
Paul Burns BL, for the defence, queried the truthfulness of the affair as suggested by McClean: ‘There was no affair. Was he not just a friend of her husband’s and helped in the removal of their furniture from Clondalkin to Jack White’s?’
McClean replied that not only was there an affair, but he also stayed overnight at the pub after the official opening and on numerous weekends thereafter. He helped out behind the bar occasionally. He would prove he was at the opening, and also that he served behind the bar. ‘Ask the customer who drank there with the deformed hand.’ This was a reference to Paddy Doyle, a local fisherman. McClean also remembers serving members of the Gardaí with drink on occasions.
Burns was warming to the task. ‘Are you wanted in the North to serve a three-month sentence imposed on you at Clogher Magistrates Court in 1973, for deception, a conviction subsequently appealed unsuccessfully?’
‘It’s a possibility,’ replied McClean.
There was some confusion and slight laughter when Burns questioned McClean about his second conviction.
‘That was apples,’ replied McClean, in his strong Monaghan accent.
‘Abbots?’ Mr Charlton interjected.
‘I bought a load of apples.’
‘Well you hardly bought abbots,’ mocked Mr Burns.
‘I bought a load of apples and exported them to the South, and didn’t pay any duty on them. The fella I bought them from came looking for me.’
‘Why?’ asked Mr Burns.
‘Because I didn’t pay for them.’
‘Is that not a crime?’ asked Mr Burns.
‘It’s only a crime when you’re caught,’ replied Willie.
When asked whether he had links with paramilitary organisations, McClean replied: ‘No, I never had any links with paramilitaries, either loyalist or republican.’ He agreed that he had told Catherine he was involved in ‘some under-the-counter stuff: wheeling and dealing, a bit of cattle smuggling, spirits as well, that kind of stuff.’ Apparently shocked, Mr Burns suggested: ‘But that’s a crime.’
‘It is if you’re caught,’ came Willie’s reply again.
There was much tension when Mr Burns asked McClean: ‘Are you not a con man and a deceiver, who would have required paramilitary protection to smuggle anything across the Monaghan border?’ Mr Charlton cautioned that the use of such comments made it exceptionally difficult for people like McClean to come forward as a witness. Mr Burns was later to retract his description of McClean and apologised to the court.
None the worse after his ordeal, Willie swaggered from the witness box, and the Central Criminal Court.
One couldn’t help but wonder at the jury’s reaction to his evidence. He certainly would have come across as a colourful character. He hadn’t tried to hide his past encounters with the law; in fact, he had given explicit details of them. He certainly had the jury’s undivided attention, as he had from everybody for the duration of his evidence.
John Jones, the second of the three main witnesses, was about to enter the witness box. He and the well-known republican figure Dessie Ellis had been the proprietors of a TV repair shop, known as Channel Vision Ltd. A Sinn Féin advice centre was also based there. He presented a clean-cut image: he was neatly attired, and sporting a grey beard and grey hair, as he made his way to the witness box.
Commencing his evidence, he recalled meeting Catherine Nevin for the first time in 1984 or 1985, he wasn’t sure which. She had walked into the Sinn Féin advice centre, introduced herself and got straight to the purpose of her visit. She wanted to buy a pub. This request from a first-time visitor to the centre seemed most unusual, and was quickly rebuffed by him.
He met her on numerous occasions after this, and learnt that she and her husband, Tom, had secured the lease on the Barry House pub, in Finglas. Her visits to the advice centre intensified. Catherine made the pub available to them to run functions and allowed the sale of An Phoblacht on the premises. He was dubious about her and didn’t really trust her.
Sometime in 1989, Catherine called to the advice centre and, after some small talk, informed him that she had a proposition for him and his organisation, which could benefit both of them financially. ‘She wanted us, Sinn Féin, to stage a robbery in the course of which Tom would be killed. It would be arranged for the Tuesday following the St Patrick’s Bank Holiday weekend. The hit would take place when Tom was en route to the bank. He would have the weekend takings, about £25,000, with him.’ He told her that his organisation was ‘not into that kind of thing’ and dismissed the proposition out of hand.
She put the same proposition to him on at least five or six occasions in 1989 and 1990 – until, eventually, he told her she was never again to raise the subject. That was the last occasion he saw her.
Continuing his evidence, he recalled her visiting the advice centre in 1989 or 1990 sporting a pair of black eyes as a result of a beating she alleged Tom had given her.
This ended the direct evidence of another very important witness for the Sate, but his time in the box was far from over. His grilling was undoubtedly the most intense of the three, though he didn’t show it, either in his facial expressions or in the quality of his answers. It was essential for the success of the defence’s case that Mr McEntee should have some success in casting serious doubts on the testimony of the three main state witnesses, Heapes, Jones and McClean. Should he succeed even with one, then doubt would certainly flow through the minds of the jury, and Mr McEntee would be well on the way to another notable success in his long and illustrious career.
‘Who,’ asked Mr McEntee, ‘did you discuss Mrs Nevin’s alleged proposition with – that is, within your organisation?’
‘One was Pat Russell, a very well-educated man and with a university education,’ Jones replied.
‘Who was the other? Did you say there were two? Name the other?’ urged Mr McEntee.
‘I do not remember,’ came the reply. He would not budge on this stance despite serious cross-examination by Mr McEntee.
‘Why did you not put a stop to Catherine’s solicitations on the very first occasion she put this proposition to you? Why didn’t you run her from your office and tell her never to come back, and why did you not warn her husband, either by a personal call or even a phone call, of his wife’s murderous intention?’
Jones replied: ‘I told her every time she brought up the subject I wanted nothing whatever to do with it, and eventually told her she was never to mention the subject again. I did tell Pat Russell that I had intended going to the Gardaí on hearing of Tom’s murder but was advised by him not to, as we both felt they would be visiting us in any event.’
‘Catherine Nevin never asked you to murder or get your organisation to murder Tom Nevin, isn’t that a fact?’
‘You can say what you like, but she did, not once, but on several occasions. Nothing can change that – she did ask me to murder her husband.’
The exchanges were relentless, riveting and exciting. Mr McEntee was at his brilliant best, but despite his best efforts, Jones couldn’t be shaken.
‘Dessie Ellis,’ enquired Mr McEntee. ‘Tell us about him.’
‘He was a TV repairman, and I believe he was involved with the IRA.’ Jones was reluctant to elaborate on what he had already stated about Ellis. Mr McEntee put it to him that he had been questioned about Dessie Ellis after he himself had been arrested in 1981, and also about the making of circuit boards at the TV repair shop. No, came the reply.
Interrupting Jones when he mentioned how he had met Tom Nevin for the first time, Mr McEntee suggested: ‘He [Tom Nevin] had republican sympathies.’
‘I don’t know anything about his sympathies, political or otherwise,’ replied Jones.
‘Was the Phoblacht newspaper not being sold at their pub with Tom’s consent?’
‘No, it was with Catherine’s consent.’
‘When were you solicited to do the murder?’
‘Sometime in 1989 or 1990.’
In his direct evidence, Jones had stated that he found Catherine’s stories and propositions bizarre and unbelievable. Especially so was her tale to him of entering one of her apartments at South Circular Road and being confronted by two SAS men.
Mr McEntee, pouncing on this evidence, suggested: ‘Didn’t you have use of this flat rent-free for a number of weeks, and isn’t it a fact that Catherine had found components in this flat and brought them to you.’ The inference here was obvious, concerning the word ‘components’, referring to bomb parts.
‘Not true,’ replied Jones.
‘As Catherine entered this apartment, two people met her, and one cut her hand with broken glass. She found what seemed like circuit boards there, and told you about this. Didn’t you tell her not to tell the Gardaí?’
‘That’s a lot of rubbish,’ replied Jones. ‘She told me she was confronted by two SAS men, struggled with them, and they jumped out a window.’ I heard a reporter whisper to the person sitting next to him: ‘Not making the SAS men like they used to.’
‘Did it ever occur to you that you should contact people you know in the IRA about her proposition to you?’
‘I do not know anyone in the IRA, and I would not know how to contact them.’ He did speak to Pat Russell and another man, whom he couldn’t remember. ‘Her proposition seemed so unbelievable that it didn’t seem worthy of consideration.’
A lighter moment was to follow, after what could be described as heated exchanges between the two: ‘Yes, I have a previous conviction. I bought a car but discovered something amiss with the papers. I did not use it; just put it in the garage. But the Special Branch found it and I ended up in court. I got the services of a very eminent barrister, one of the best. I can contest it, or put my trust in the court, my barrister advised me. I chose the second option. You were that barrister, Mr McEntee.’
‘That is so, Mr Jones.’
The jury had heard the evidence of two people whom Catherine had propositioned to murder her husband, but it was the evidence of Gerry Heapes which could really seal Catherine’s fate. Heapes could be a very influential witness if his evidence contained all he had outlined to the Gardaí during his many interviews with them, and also in his unsigned written statements. But would he testify?
Gerry Heapes looked an intimidating figure as he made his entry into the witness box. More than six feet tall and built like a tank, he certainly gave the impression of a person who was well capable of looking after himself – and anyone who might be foolish enough to interfere with him. His direct evidence commenced.
He had first met Catherine in Finglas at the Sinn Féin advice centre. He attended the official opening of Jack White’s Inn with his wife as guests of Catherine, and stayed overnight.
Some years later, he met Catherine in Finglas, and she asked him to go for a drive with him in a big white car. Conversation flowed, and it soon became apparent to him that Catherine was not happy with her lot. Tom, her husband, was making her life a misery, she told him. ‘Would you be prepared to get rid of him?’ she asked. ‘I want him shot dead.’
He was taken completely by surprise and wasn’t sure how to react, so he told her that that kind of a job takes money, lots of it. Money would be no problem, she said. On a bank holiday weekend, Tom would be carrying between £20,000 and £25,000 in cash – the pubs takings for the weekend. He thought at first that this approach was not serious, but he was beginning to realise that she was, in fact, deadly serious. He told her to leave it with him and he would get back to her.
He informed the court that he discussed her propositions with ‘certain people’. He was told to get more information from her. A few weeks later, Catherine once more met him, and she drove him to the Phoenix Park. Her proposition was discussed in some detail. No one, he told her, would do what she had asked for the kind of money she was offering.
What are we talking about, she asked him? How much would it take? There would be money available, she said: there was a double insurance policy on Tom’s life, and she could pay when she received payment on them. Not good enough, he told her: the money would have to be upfront. Come back to me if you can come up with it. Again, he reported back to his people.
The next journey was about three weeks later. Catherine told him that she had resolved the money issue. ‘She would skim money from the takings at Jack White’s, and the manager of the Blanchardstown bank would open an account, in her maiden name.’ He told her to get back to him when there was money in the account.
About four or five weeks after the last meeting, they met again, and once more drove to the Phoenix Park. She took a bank book out of her bag. He didn’t know the name of the bank or the amount in the account. She pointed to a name on it which she said was her maiden name. He couldn’t recall the name. Whatever doubts he may have entertained about Catherine’s seriousness in having her husband killed were dispelled. She was serious: she wanted Tom out of the way permanently.
What, asked Heapes, was the best way to do the job? She then drove to a house off South Circular Road, and stopped outside it. This, she told him, was Tom’s first stop after leaving Jack White’s Inn, to collect rent on their apartments. He would normally have an employee, a barman, with him. The barman would go to collect the rents, leaving Tom outside alone in the car. This, she added, would be the perfect place to ‘do’ him. No way, he told her; the street was too narrow, with cars parked on both sides. He would be noticed if that was to be the location. Perhaps if he waited in the hall for him, then it could be done there, she suggested. Again he disagreed.
His people were now treating the matter very seriously, and advised him to keep them informed of developments.
Three days later, they met again, and this time she outlined the route Tom would take on his way to the bank. If he was late for the bank, he would drive to Clonee for lunch at the Grasshopper pub, and park outside it. He would sit beside a window in the pub, from where he would have a view of the car. The bank lodgement would be in the boot. After lunch, Tom would return to the city, stopping at Kepak meat factory to collect meat for the pub.
Catherine stopped outside the Grasshopper pub, looked at him, and said: ‘This would be the ideal place to do him.’ From there, she drove to a side road in Phoenix Park near the Wellington Monument and pointed to the view of Islandbridge, saying: ‘Tom’s movements could be watched from here as he was coming from the flats, and when crossing the bridge he could be followed.’ The issue of money had to be finalised, of course and after some discussion a sum of £35,000 was agreed: £10,000 up front, and £25,000 in takings from the pub. A pin could be heard falling as Heapes continued his direct evidence. This was scintillating stuff.
Events were becoming more sinister; the single-minded intent of Catherine was not only causing concern to him, but also to his people. Despite this, the meetings between them were to continue. Some days after their last meeting, she drove from the flats at South Circular Road to Islandbridge and into the Phoenix Park – the route Tom had taken on his way to the bank. From a strategic point in the Phoenix Park, she pointed to a view of Islandbridge as one approached from the flats. When Tom’s car came into view, it could be followed. They travelled that route and parked outside the pub. The duration of the journey was calculated, allowing for variables such as traffic.
Outside the pub, she stated: ‘I have no alibi.’ But if she accompanied Tom on the day of the shooting, she could make sure that he would be late to do the banking, and they would continue on as usual to the Grasshopper pub for lunch. She would be with him as he was shot coming out of the pub. This would provide the perfect alibi: she could play the part of the grieving widow.
‘This would be dangerous,’ he told her. ‘You could be injured during the shooting.’
‘All the better,’ she replied.
He asked her: ‘Just how am I to get the money out of the car, as Tom would have the keys?’
No problem, she told him: ‘I will get you a spare key, or you can take the keys from him when he is shot.’ This coming St Patrick’s weekend would be ideal for the job, she insisted. The notice is too short for such a mission, he told her. Heapes queried about the pub takings for a bank holiday weekend. The money is kept overnight at Wicklow Garda Station, and it will be in the boot of Tom’s car as he sets out to bank it in Dublin, she assured him.
Heapes had become seriously troubled by the situation Catherine was trying to involve him in, and decided to opt out of the scheme. After this, they went their separate ways, and didn’t meet again for almost two years.
During 1994, he and a man called Pierce Moran called to Jack White’s Inn with a pre-arranged plan to try to con Catherine out of the £10,000 she had offered him up front some years previously. He would introduce Moran as a reliable and efficient contract killer, prepared to carry out her wishes to murder Tom. She approached them and, before the plan could even be put to her, informed Heapes that Tom and she had been reconciled, everything was fine, and she no longer wanted him killed.
Mr McEntee stared for a few brief seconds at Heapes, before going for the jugular. ‘When Mrs Nevin approached you, why didn’t you tell her: “Sorry, but killing him is out of the question?” Why didn’t you tell her the IRA was not into that sort of thing, and I’m no longer in that organisation and I don’t kill people?’
Heapes informed Mr McEntee that Catherine Nevin had never mentioned the IRA in any of her approaches to him. He was a member of Sinn Féin. The robbery at the cash and carry at Fairview in 1977 was mentioned. Yes, admitted Heapes, they had been caught red-handed by the Gardaí, and the siege went on for hours before he and the gang surrendered. For his part in it, he got a ten-year sentence.
‘Why did your involvement with Sinn Féin and attendance at their meetings cool?’
‘Because I had given the most of twenty years to the republican movement and felt that time should now be given to my family.’
When he was asked about his reaction to being solicited to murder Tom Nevin, he replied: ‘No, I didn’t go to the Gardaí when she solicited me to murder her husband, simply because I have no time for them, because of the treatment meted out to me by the Special Branch over the years. In any event, I didn’t think she was serious or would go ahead with it.’
‘Were you not by your attitude towards Catherine leaving the door open, or offering an invitation for continuance by her?’ asked Mr McEntee. ‘No,’ came the reply, ‘I looked on it as an escape route.’
Mr McEntee moved on to the two people Heapes kept informed of Catherine’s continued efforts to have him murder her husband. Heapes said that ‘Redser and Macker’, whom he met in the pool hall, thought that her plan to have Tom killed was a wind-up.
‘What are their names?’
‘I only know them as Redser and Macker,’ he stated. ‘They were not well known or of any importance.’ However, he believed that they had a word with Catherine, advising her to stop there and then.
The continuing barrage of questions from Mr McEntee would have broken a lesser man than Heapes, but he remained cool, calm and composed. He did not over-elaborate with his answers, keeping to the point and answering in as few words as possible.
The three main witnesses for the State had completed their evidence. If it was taken on board by the jury, this evidence would go a long way towards having guilty verdicts returned. They could have been sceptical of the evidence given by the main prosecution witnesses, but corroboration of their evidence was strong and unambiguous.
Gerry Heapes was perhaps the main target of the three men approached by Catherine to murder her husband. She was no doubt influenced by his less-than-honourable past. She knew that he had a previous conviction for armed robbery, and would perhaps be a good bet to carry out the murder. She had many meetings with him, and the information he had was so accurate that it must have come from her. As a result, corroboration of his evidence was so strong as to be practically irrefutable.
Paddy McEntee, for Catherine Nevin, had done his damnedest to show Heapes, Jones and McClean as not being credible witnesses and as lacking in moral character.
The past history of these men was not an issue, and they were not facing any charges. They had held up their hands and put their less-than-rosy past on public display – to the detriment of themselves and their families. They may have been branded as thieves and rogues, but any involvement in murder was a different matter entirely. Their contact with Catherine had led the Gardaí to them. They came on board later (though not immediately) and gave every possible assistance to the investigation.
The State had now closed its case; in the investigation team, there was intense debate as to the likely outcome of the trial. There was unanimous agreement about the impression Heapes, Jones and McClean had made on the jury. Quite simply, we all felt that they had come across well, though we wondered if their previous brushes with the law would militate against the acceptance of their evidence.