State forensic expert injured by booby trap bombs set by Martin Cahill relives horrific moment of deadly blast
Dr Jim Donovan, who headed the State’s first Garda forensics laboratory, said he relives the moment a car bomb planted by Cahill went off
A state forensic expert injured by booby trap bombs set by Martin Cahill has relived the horrific moment of the deadly blast.
Underworld kingpin Cahill, dubbed The General for his military-style planning, was gunned down yards from his home by the IRA in 1994.
The notorious Dublin gangster stole around €50 million in armed robberies and was linked to several murders, inspiring no less than three movies. But while some hailed him as a modern-day Robin Hood, a new RTÉ documentary leaves viewers in no doubt about his brutal reign of terror.
Dr Jim Donovan, who headed the State’s first Garda forensics laboratory, said he relives the moment a car bomb planted by Cahill went off.
READ MORE: Relative of Martin 'The General' Cahill arrested as gardai 'foil hit' and find loaded gun in Dublin
The gangster targeted Dr Donovan because he had evidence linking him to an armed robbery which could have resulted in a 14-year jail stretch.
Now retired Dr Donovan said of the 1982 attack: “The first thing I saw was flame coming. I heard this roar afterwards. It was a very different sound.
“I put my hand down and I felt pieces of trousers that was obviously torn and, uh, I found gooey matter which subsequently I realised must have been bloody tissue. Everything went blank.”
Passers-by administered first aid and the forensics expert was rushed to St James’s Hospital for emergency surgery.
Reliving the ordeal, he said: “There were bits of bone hanging on, I was getting multiple blood transfusions in the upper body and it was coming out the legs. It was coming at a great rate altogether out onto the floor.”
Dr Donovan underwent 14 surgeries but doctors couldn’t save his left foot. He also lost the sight in one eye. He added: “It’s very difficult to actually think that somebody really wanted to kill you. I was in hospital for two months, initially, I had 14 operations. On the 14th they said they could no longer give me full anaesthetic.
“I have fallen many times and it’s gone on year after year, decade after decade after decade. The memories don’t die and you don’t forgive.”
The General goes under the spotlight in the RTÉ series The Case I Can’t Forget where seasoned cops who pursued him for years give their take on him.
The consensus is that wily Cahill used every trick in the book to give Gardaí the slip – and they regret not nailing him for his daring crimes.
Cahill once tried to burn down the Central Criminal Court in a bid to destroy evidence linking him to an armed robbery. When his dole was eventually cut – after years of benefits
despite living in a leafy estate on Dublin’s south side – he shot the welfare officer responsible in the leg.
And in one particularly brutal attack he resorted to crucifixion, nailing to the floor the hands of a gang member he suspected of stealing gold.
Former assistant commissioner Pat Leahy said: “People kind of wrote him off as a bit of a Robin Hood, and he had the support of the community.
“He was no Robin Hood, that is for sure. The reality is he was a very dangerous and very violent criminal, and so were the people he worked with.
“[The car bomb attack] changed the nature of the game, who was going to be next? It was Cahill putting the two fingers up to the gardai and to society at large.” Brazen Cahill continued to taunt gardai and evade justice for years
to come. He and his gang carried out the biggest jewellery heist in Ireland or the UK at the time when they hit O’Connor’s jewellers in Harold’s Cross, South Dublin.
They hid overnight in a boiler room then, masked and armed to the teeth, forced terrified staff to open the safe and the vault.
Jeweller Willie O’Connor was abroad on holidays at the time and told how his brother Robbie was terrorised by the gang.
He said: “They had Robbie on his knees and they were flicking him on the back of the head with a revolver.
“They actually made them open their mouth and they put the gun into their mouth as if they were going to shoot them.”
Cahill’s gang made off with IR£2million worth of cash, gold and gems which was never recovered. The factory and shop, which employed around 100 staff, closed down.
Willie added: “It was the cause of the firm closing, I blame The General for what happened. Rotten to the core. All those people lost their jobs due to him.”
Cahill, who fathered five children with his wife Frances and four more with her sister Tina, was a workaholic thief who delighted in taunting gardai.
On one occasion he strolled out of court wearing a balaclava, sang a song and stripped down to his Mickey Mouse T-shirt and boxer shorts.
He once ordered his gang to dig up greens at a golf club frequented by Gardaí, later taunting: “Ye’d have no problem getting a hole-in-one at the Garda golf club because there’s that many holes in it.”
But he is perhaps best known for his raid on Russborough House in Co Wicklow where he plundered the art collection of the Beit family.
Cahill and his gang made off with paintings by Gainsborough, Goya and Vermeer worth an estimated €300 million in today’s market. Gardaí enlisted the help of Scotland Yard to set up a sting with an undercover officer posing as an art dealer.
But once again Cahill outsmarted the authorities by arranging a meet in the Dublin Mountains – in a blind spot with no phone coverage.
Despite the fact that he was observed producing the paintings he escaped custody because officers could not send the signal to move in and arrest him.
Retired Assistant Garda Commissioner Pat Leahy said: “He planned that, he knew what it was like to operate out there, he was familiar with it, he’d been using the mountains for years.
“He knew every road in and out of it. Had the communication system worked he’d have been caught red-handed with the paintings.”
Cahill was assassinated by the IRA on August 18, 1994, aged 45. A hitman disguised as a corporation worker blasted Cahill four times at point-blank range behind the wheel of his car at Charlestown Road in Ranelagh, South Dublin.
Senior gardai, who had pursued him for years, first learned of it via a radio message from dispatch which said: “Tango One is down.”
The Case I Can’t Forget airs on RTE One on Wednesday at 9.35pm.
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