Courts

Cailean Crawford (28) given mandatory life sentence for assassination of ‘gentleman’ grandfather

‘I still think to this day they had the wrong person, the wrong house,’ partner of murdered Thomas McCarthy (55) tells court

Crawford was also accused by the judge of perjury. Photograph: Collins Courts
Crawford was also accused by the judge of perjury. Photograph: Collins Courts
Fiona Magennis
Fri Dec 20 2024 - 13:33

A violent criminal who “assassinated” a grandfather by emptying “the contents of a pistol” into him when he answered the front door has been sentenced to life in prison.

Cailean Crawford (28) had pleaded not guilty to the murder of Thomas McCarthy (55) on July 27th, 2020 at Croftwood Park, Ballyfermot, Dublin 10 but was unanimously convicted by a Central Criminal Court jury earlier this month.

Crawford had shouted “f**k you and your fair trial” and stormed out of the dock after the jury returned their verdict.

Det Sgt Roan McDermott told today’s hearing that Crawford has one previous conviction for conspiring to murder gangland criminal Wayne Whelan, for which he received a five-year sentence in September 2021. Mr Whelan survived that murder attempt in September 2019 but was subsequently shot dead following another attack two months later.

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That sentence expired in June, Det Sgt McDermott said, but Crawford remained in custody, having been arrested in relation to this offence in October 2020.

Mr McCarthy, a father of five, was gunned down when he answered the door at his mother’s home in what the prosecution described as an “execution”.

In a victim impact statement delivered to the court on Friday, Mr McCarthy’s partner, Nia O’Reilly, said never in her “wildest dreams” did she think she would have to say her children’s father was murdered.

“I still think to this day they had the wrong person, the wrong house,” she said. “Thomas was a gentleman.”

The jury of six men and six women deliberated for eight hours and 20 minutes before returning their unanimous verdict, agreeing with the State’s case that Crawford was the assassin who fired several times, fatally injuring Mr McCarthy, having come to the scene in a blue Ford Fiesta car which was seen driving in and out of the area on CCTV.

Passing sentence on Crawford on Friday, Mr Justice Tony Hunt said the idea that someone would walk up to a house and “without further ado empty the contents of a pistol” into the body of the person at the door “simply beggars’ belief”.

The judge said there were two travesties in this case; the first was the “assassination” of Mr McCarthy, who he said, appeared to be “by all accounts a decent man”. The second, the judge noted, was the “perjury” committed by the accused man in an attempt to, as prosecuting counsel had put it, “weasel out” of his responsibility in this matter.

Mr Justice Hunt expressed his thanks to the jury for their hard work in the case and said that following “lengthy and detailed analysis”, they had come to “the only sane conclusion anyone could come to on that body of evidence”.

He said he was glad the panel had rejected certain matters that were put to them by Mr Crawford during the trial, in particular the suggestion that because he was seen back at work delivering parcels “in a normal manner” a couple of hours after the killing that they should draw the inference that he was a “normal person” who was unlikely to have been involved in “a grotesque outrage like this”.

“The truth of this matter is he appeared perfectly normal afterwards because he, as a person in cahoots with [Charles] McClean, is prepared to engage in activities to snuff out the lives of others on an organised basis. That is the truth of the matter,” said the judge.

The 12 jurors had rejected the defence case that Crawford, last of Clifden Terrace, Ballyfermot, was involved in drug dealing and had loaned a phone and a GoVan he had hired on the morning of the killing to associate Charles McClean.

McClean (35), last of St Mark’s Drive, Clondalkin, was described earlier this year by a Central Criminal Court judge as a “remorseless” criminal, after he sentenced him for calling Mark Desmond to a drugs meeting in a Dublin park, where the gangland figure was gunned down. McClean, who was already serving consecutive sentences of 16.5-years for facilitating the murder of Thomas McCarthy and conspiring to murder Wayne Whelan, was jailed for an additional three-and-a-half years for impeding the apprehension of the person who murdered Mr Desmond.

Mr McCarthy, who had five children and two grandchildren, was living in the UK at the time but had returned home to visit his family and his mother, who lived at the address in Ballyfermot.

Crawford took the stand during his trial and told the jury that he was being “blamed” as the “centre point” of a murder he didn’t commit after he loaned the van to McClean. He said he had handed the van over to a man with “bones sticking out of his face” who was a “mate” of McClean’s.

Crawford said he assumed McClean “needed the van to collect drugs”. He said McClean had previously given him a Lyca SIM card to use after Crawford agreed to collect and transport drugs on “two or three” occasions in the Ballyfermot area.

The judge imposed the mandatory life sentence on Crawford, backdating it to June 1st this year when his previous sentence ended.