Pearse McAuley was a notorious IRA terrorist, celebrated within Sinn Féin, who in 1996 shot dead Det Garda Jerry McCabe – and wounded his partner Det Garda Ben O’Sullivan – while on the run after a violent prison escape in Britain.
After being collected in 2009 from prison by Sinn Féin TD Martin Ferris, McAuley was later reimprisoned for the 2014 stabbing and beating of his then wife, Pauline Tully, who is now a serving Sinn Féin TD for Cavan-Monaghan.
However, though he was released only in 2021 for the attack on Ms Tully, who he stabbed 13 times, McAuley remained active in organised and terror-related crime while in jail.
Evidence heard at the Special Criminal Court during the trial of Gerard Hutch – for the 2016 Kinahan-Hutch feud murder of David Byrne – placed McAuley at the nexus between dissident republicans in the North and organised crime in Dublin.
His killing of Det McCabe – always regarded as murder despite the manslaughter conviction – was followed weeks later by the murder of crime journalist Veronica Guerin. Those two killings, and the revulsion they caused, ensured the summer of 1996 would shape Ireland’s approach to law enforcement in the decades that followed.
More recently, McAuley was close to Jonathan Dowdall, a former Sinn Féin councillor in party leader Mary Lou McDonald’s Dublin Central constituency. Dowdall – now in jail for the supporting role he played in the Regency Hotel attack that killed Byrne – approached McAuley for help in trying to defuse the Kinahan-Hutch feud. He was acting on behalf of Gerard Hutch, his close associate. Hutch was later acquitted of the murder of David Byrne.
Dowdall visited McAuley 14 times in Castlerea Prison between February 3rd, 2015, and January 2nd, 2016, though he lied under oath in the Special Criminal Court during Hutch’s trial for murder when he put the number of visits to McAuley at just two or three. McAuley was Hutch’s and Dowdall’s “in” with Northern republicans.
Dowdall sought McAuley’s help to defuse the Hutch-Kinahan feud, though McAuley advised him not to have anything to do with it and to leave them at it.
In the end, McAuley gave Dowdall a number for Paul Bosco McCreedy, also known as “Wee”.
Dowdall and Hutch spoke of trying to get the three “yokes” – the AK47s used in the Regency Hotel attack – into the hands of dissident republicans. Those efforts were designed to curry favour with the dissidents and to align with them as possible intermediaries in the feud.
[ IRA killer Pearse McAuley found dead at Co Tyrone homeOpens in new window ]
In a secret Garda recording of Hutch and Dowdall travelling to Northern Ireland in March, 2016, the two men discussed getting in touch with various dissidents. Hutch suggested making contact through “your man who’s locked up, what’s his name?” to which Dowdall replied: “Pearse McAuley.”
That reference to McAuley was to prove the last prominent role he played – at least that we know about – in criminal or terrorist life before his death at his home in Strabane.
However, the crime he will be remembered most for was that which claimed the life of Det McCabe and left his colleague critically injured.
The IRA gang McAuley was part of opened fire on their car as they were providing an armed escort for a van delivering money to a post office in Adare, Co Limerick, on June 7th, 1996. The killing, in which AK47s were used, occurred just four months after the breakdown of the first IRA ceasefire.
McAuley, originally from Strabane, was convicted before the Special Criminal Court in 1999 of Det McCabe’s manslaughter, along with Limerick men Jeremiah Sheehy, Michael O’Neill and Kevin Walsh. Other men involved remain on the run.
Sinn Féin made repeated, unsuccessful, efforts to secure the men’s early release under the Belfast Agreement. However, the conditions of their detention were contentious as they were held in an area on the Castlerea Prison campus called the Grove, where prisoners lived in houses rather than cells. They were also free on occasion to order food from takeaways in the locality, a privilege that drew repeated criticism.
In 2003, McAuley and the three other convicted men were pictured in the jail with four Sinn Féin TDs visiting them; Aengus Ó Snodaigh, Seán Crowe, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin and Martin Ferris. When the photograph was published, it drew criticism from across the political system.
Earlier in 2003, McAuley was granted temporary release to marry Pauline Tully, a schoolteacher from Cavan and then Sinn Féin member of Cavan County Council. They began their relationship while McAuley was in jail.
In 2003, she read out letters sent from prison by the killers at the Sinn Féin ardfheis, where delegates responded with a standing ovation.
After his full release the couple settled in a house in Kilnaleck, Co Cavan, where McAuley stabbed the mother of two 13 times on Christmas Eve in 2014. He was given a 12-year sentence for the attack, with the final four years suspended, and was released in 2021.
McAuley first sprang to real public prominence when in July 1991 he escaped from Brixton Prison in London along with cellmate Nessan Quinlivan. He was being held on charges of conspiring to cause explosions and in connection with a plan to murder a British brewery company chairman.
The two IRA men managed to escape after McAuley produced a firearm from his shoe as he and Quinlivan were being taken back to their secure unit having attended Mass. A number of shots were fired during the escape and one man was injured.
McAuley fled to the Republic, where he was later arrested on foot of an extradition attempt by the British authorities. However, he fought the extradition and was granted bail, which he skipped just four months before the attack in Adare, after which he was immediately arrested and held in prison until his trial three years later.
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