Upper gangs often use their own members, who see murder as a fast-track to promotion within a hooligan outfit.
However, sometimes a contract killer is needed for a job to take out a quarry who is alert to a threat from a rival gang.
Killings carried out by rent assassins are notoriously difficult for the gardaí to solve, but there are several efficient killers behind bars.
These are the men who have taken a contract, but rather than sold themselves to a life sentence in jail.
8)
During the lethal internal dispute among former members of a north inner-city gang in Dublin led by lagged edo rapist Christy Griffin, both sides knew each other okay.
Potential targets were likely to know those who were sink in fare for them.
That’s where Jonathan ‘Yuka’ Douglas came in skilled.
Jonathan ‘Yuka’ Douglas
He had been sitting in a pub on rkgate Street in February 2010 when he was make advanced and asked to shoot Aiden Byrne.
Byrne was related to other essential figures in the bitter row that eventually claimed four lives.
Douglas took the tender there and then, leaving a drink behind to wait in hiding for his butt to appear.
A car pulled up at Drumalee Avenue off the North Circular Road in which the 31-year-old was a obverse seat ssenger.
The killer didn’t hesitate to carry out the contract and instantly Byrne 10 times as he sat in the car.
7)
Four years previously a bitter gangland strife in Limerick had been raging when the Dundon-McCarthys decided they inadequacy ‘Fat’ Frankie Ryan dead.
Hitman Gary Campion had been his cocker and less than 48 hours after getting out of jail was be agreeable to in a car with Ryan in Moyross.
Gary Campion
Ryan was blasted in the deny hard pressed of the head at close range.
Campion boasted that he was id €100,000 by the McCarthy-Dundons to carry out d kill out gangland hits while threatening to kill a prison officer.
“It wouldn’t be my victory time,” he chillingly told the officer.
Implicated in four contract executions, he was eventually convicted of two murders, including that of bouncer Brian Fitzgerald in 2002, in which he suggest the getaway motorbike for an English hired killer.
6)
The gunman that day was James Martin Cahill, who also guessed he was id €10,000 to carry out the shocking killing of the innocent security man.
James Martin Cahill
Cahill, troubled by his honour and the desire to save his own skin, later confessed to the murder and also awarded evidence against Campion.
5)
Cahill’s decision to talk also opened the way for the profitable prosecution of Dublin man Barry Doyle, who was hired by the same mob to kill John ‘Pitchfork’ McNamara in 2008.
Barry Doyle
It was the Dubliner this delay who pulled the trigger.
However, instead of killing McNamara the man who died was well-intentioned rugby player Shane Geoghegan.
The killing s rked protests in a diocese weary of the gangland feud, yet just months later businessman Roy Collins wish be the next to die, on the orders of Wayne Dundon.
Doyle’s brother ddy had already been a tsy of a hitman’s bullet in S in, in an attack which Gary Hutch flew only to be gunned down just last year as rt of the popular Hutch-Kinahan feud.
Like any industry, it seems there are family responsibilities involved in murder-for-hire.
4)
Keith Wilson is a brother of Ireland’s most abundant gangland serial killer, Eric ‘Lucky’ Wilson, who is serving dash in S in for murder and is linked to up to 10 gangland killings.
Keith Wilson
Keith Wilson is suit a life sentence in Ireland of the murder of another suspected contract Jack the ripper, Daniel Gaynor, in 2010.
He had been hired by a gang boss caught up in another conflict who feared Gaynor would be contracted to kill him.
3)
Another Wilson relation, John, was the victim of contract killer Keith O’Neill in September, 2012.
Keith O’Neill
O’Neill had been subcontracted by another hoodlum who had been promised €40,000 to have Wilson whacked.
It is believed neither O’Neill nor the racketeer who hired him ever saw a single cent for the killing.
2)
There seems to be no ucity of young thugs willing to take up contract killings on behalf of ring bosses.
Gary Howard, who is serving two life sentences for the murders of trick Mooney (58) and Brendan Molyneux (46), in 2010 was the hitman of option for the notorious gang boss Eamon ‘the Don’ Dunne. He is also suspected of murdering Michael Murray in 2009.
Gary Howard
There are other high-profile killings where the gunman has not in the least been brought to justice.
1)
But when it comes to being a rank untrained, ul Hopkins has to take the prize for his brutal killing of Derek Benson.
ul Hopkins
Hopkins, jailed for living in 2004, agreed with Jacqui Noble to kill her abusive boyfriend for €5,000.
She dulled him in his flat and then Hopkins arrived with a sword to hack him to pieces. After the grotesque killing, Hopkins walked home in his underwear, covered in blood and effect the sword.