Stay ConnectedHit podcast about criminals, drugs and the sins of the underworld – now with further in-depth investigations and exclusive insights at our new website crimeworld.com.
An Unlikely Statesman: How Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch Almost Got Elected is OUT NOW – https://www.crimeworld.com/podcast-series/an-unlikely-statesman/
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It was the greatest social housing disaster in Ireland’s history - one which promised new beginnings for countless tenement families but instead became ground zero for the heroin epidemic.
When the State ordered the demolition of Ballymun’s seven towers to make way for new housing it hoped to wipe away the mistakes of the past, but one of the country’s most promising film-makers was there to document the end of that era.
In the 16 years since photographer Ross McDonnell was first invited into the blocks on a Halloween night with a camera slung round his neck, the Dubliner has won an Emmy, been shortlisted for the world’s most prestigious photography award and made a highly-acclaimed series about Mexican drug cartels, Honduran people smugglers and even Afghan beekeepers.
But, Ballymun has always remained in his heart and now his new book, 'Joyrider', features the images he captured in those last days of the towers. He tells Nicola Tallant about the friends he made in the chaotic concrete jungle where he found warmth, hope and an unbreakable spirit. And he describes the invaluable life lessons he was thought on the landings of Ireland’s most notorious housing project.
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He was the gangland fixer known as 'The Coach' and for decades he tried to play the criminal underworld, police and the media.
Criminal John Traynor dreamed of wealth and women when he joined the ranks of Martin ‘The General’ Cahill's armed robbery gang, but he would later turn on his old boss in favour of the new order under John Gilligan.
Traynor believed himself to be a master manipulator, but in the end he wasn’t quite as clever as he believed and spent his last years living in a dingy flat in a washed-up English seaside town before dying in a hospice far from home.
Nicola Tallant chats with Sunday World Deputy Editor Niall Donald about the life and crimes of the one that got away and the sorry end of the once powerful Coach.
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It was a sensational blow to organised crime - and when Australia’s Federal Police joined forces with the FBI to create a phone network to infiltrate drug gangs, the fallout shocked both police and politicians.
An Aussie cartel with tentacles deep into the airline and freight industry, along with border agents on the books of the gang, have been an eye-opener to the power of the criminal networks and to the wealth.
Nicola Tallant chats with multi-award winning investigative journalist Nick McKenzie of the Sydney Morning Herald about the kingpin at the top of Australia’s underworld, about the high prices for cocaine fuelling a criminal goldrush and about the extent of organised crime networks previously unknown.
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He was the boy who never came home – the teenager whose innocent face has haunted generations of Irish parents.
Now, the disappearance of schoolboy Philip Cairns 35 years ago is the subject of a new book which firmly turns the attention on a paedophile DJ and his peculiar underground bunker buried in a field in west Dublin.
Nicola Tallant talks to journalist and author Emma McMemamy, who has forensically examined the missing person files and spoken to retired investigators who have spent decades looking for answers.
She details the strange appearance of Philip’s schoolbag days after he vanished, the false leads pursued in the case, the witness who placed child abuser Eamon Cooke at the centre of the probe and the forensic expert who believes gardai need to search his secret lair.
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It’s been described as the biggest blow against the Colombian drug cartels since the famous takedown of Pablo Escobar in the 1990s.
Seven years since he was declared an enemy of the state and the boss of the so-called Gulf Cartel, notorious kingpin Dario Antonio Usaga, aka 'Otoniel', was finally captured last week in his jungle hideout.
But who is the 50-year-old crime lord who has been flooding the US with drugs and what effect will his arrest have on the world’s biggest cocaine producer.
Nicola Tallant talks to journalist and author Toby Muse about the billionaire warlord with a penchant for young girls, his rise to the top of Colombia’s drug ladder, his use of black magic rituals to protect his shipments and his bleak future in a US jail.
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He was the notorious drug dealer who introduced heroin to his hometown of Ballymena, County Antrim.
And after a lifetime of staying one step ahead of the law 61-year-old Noel Johnston made a final and fatal mistake when he mistook PSNI officers for a hit squad he believed had come to kill him - plunging 50ft to his death from a block of flats.
Nicola Tallant is joined by journalist Hugh Jordan to discuss the life and extraordinary end of a notorious drug baron who made headlines right to the bitter end.
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A journalist shot dead on the street. A criminal lawyer assassinated on the doorstep of his Amsterdam home and the brother of a state witness gunned down as a reminder of the penalty for breaking the underworld's sacred code of 'Omerta'.
Now, Narco terrorism in the Netherlands has reached even greater heights with its PrIme Minister under 24-hour protection and the suspect behind these shocking murders found to have been planning a dramatic escape from the country’s highest security prison.
So what next for a nation under siege and is criminal Ridouan Taghi Europe’s very own Pablo Escobar? Nicola Tallant talks to journalist Saskia Belleman of De Telegraaf about the street dealer turned mob boss behind a remarkable series of events that have shook the very foundations of Dutch society.
She reveals the hitmen hired to kill famous journalist Peter R De Vries, the secret jailhouse meetings between Taghi and a lawyer now under investigation and about a country questioning it’s ability to fight the monster of organised crime.
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He is due to face kidnap charges later this year in the UK and has been a central and violent figure in the Drogheda feud - but it seems gang boss Cornelius Price is unlikely to ever face up to his crimes.
Price, whose gang are suspected of a number of murders including that of William Maughan and his pregnant girlfriend Anna Varslavane, is currently in critical condition in hospital after being struck down by a terminal illness.
Months short of his 40th birthday, Price has left a bloody mark on Ireland’s underworld and today I’m talking to Irish Independent journalist Ken Foy about the terrifying past of one of the most-notorious gangland figures in modern criminal history.
We discuss the Co Meath compound where Price lived surrounded by his underlings, his role in the escalating violence in Drogheda which culminated in the brutal murder of teenager Keane Mulready Woods and the day he celebrated the death of rival mobster Robbie Lawlor by toasting his demise.
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He is a gangland heavyweight serving time for drugs and weapon offences and was once named in court as the triggerman in the murder of mob boss Martin 'Marlo' Hyland.
But inmate Johnny Mangan is on the run after escaping from the low security Loughan House prison where he had been moved after a parole board deemed him low risk.
In a huge embarrassment for the Irish Prison Service, it has emerged that Mangan was using a mobile phone in his cell to make threats to a Dublin family in the run-up to his escape, claiming he was owed money for drugs.
Nicola Tallant chats with journalist Eamon Dillon about the extraordinary series of events that has turned a focus on gangland criminals being housed in open jails where they can come and go as they please and left the shocking question of where is Johnny Mangan?
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It’s been 20 years since Sunday World journalist Martin O’Hagan was murdered on a Lurgan pavement as he walked home from a pub with his wife Marie.
Known affectionately as Marty by his colleagues in the Belfast newsroom and an adored dad of three, he was just 51 when he became the only journalist to die as a result of The Troubles. His killing remains unsolved, but is believed to have been carried out by a team of LVF assassins acting on the dying wish of their twisted leader Billy Wright.
But what was it like to lose a colleague and friend and how hard was it to continue working in a newsroom with an empty desk.
Nicola Tallant talks to Sunday World reporter Richard Sullivan about the terrible night when a journalist became front page news, the reality of working in a warzone and the fading hopes of justice for Marty.
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