General Isish Mob Boss

One BIRTH OF A GENERAL Martin Cahill was never destined to die in his sleep. It would not have been a fitting end to a man who was the indisputable godfather of the Irish criminal underworld. He lived by the gun and died by itdespatched in the cold-blooded fashion of the gangland he once dominated. Cahill lived on a knife-edge for most of his criminal career. On that fateful afternoon in August he finally succumbed to what he knew was the inevitable. Martin Cahill, Tango One, the General, Public Enemy Number One, did not conform to the psychological profile of a criminal mind. That was the way the underworld's hooded bogeyman wanted it. He was a man of many contradictionsfrom devoted father, loyal friend, prolific lover, absurd joker, to hated outlaw, feared gangster, sadistic fiend, meticulous planner. He was obsessive, conniving and extremely clever; sometimes cruel, sometimes compassionate; secretive with a malicious streak. The General was a complex character. In appearance Martin Cahill looked anything but a crime boss. Short, rotund and balding, in well-worn jeans and stained tee-shirt, he could be mistaken for a down-at-heel handbag snatcher. He was no Ronnie Kray. He lived a frugal life between crimes and he did not drink, smoke or take drugs. His passions were pigeons, motorbikes, cakes and curries. The only less orthodox passions in his life were his love affairs with his wife and her sister. Outwardly Cahill seemed gentle, soft-spoken with a flat Dublin brogue. But behind the ordinary appearance lurked a colourful crook. It was his crimes that had panache and style. From the slums of Dublin the General worked his way up from a small-time burglar to a major-league criminal, earning himself a reputation equivalent in stature to that of a high-profile politician or TV star. He came to epitomise the ultimate anti-hero, the one who satisfied the public's ambivalent, morbid fascination with the underworld. More than any other criminal icon, Cahill had a profound effect on the national psyche. His willingness to show off his Mickey Mouse underwear while hiding his face behind sinister balaclavas made him the subject of intense curiosity. The day before his funeral, theSunday Worldran the first, full-colour picture of the grinning General. There he was, beaming out from the front page in an ill-fitting old leather jacket and tee-shirt. With strands of hair scattered across his bald pate, he stood proudly beside a little girl in a First Communion dress, outside the church where his Requiem Mass would be held. The newspaper sold out within hours. Everyone wanted to see what the man in the mask looked like. The story of the life and crimes of Martin Cahill is an extraordinary one. In 1969, the year he turned twenty, Ireland was still a country where indictable crime was extremely rare and a much smaller police force boasted an almost hundred percent detection rate. But Martin Cahill and his contemporaries were about to change all that. He was one of the prime movers in the new generation of hoodlums that emerged from the confusion and panic accompanying the outbreak of violence in Northern Ireland. The General was the brains behind one of the country's most ruthless and successful armed crime gangs. Over two decades Cahill organised the theft of art, jewels and cash worth well in excess of 40 million in the biggest and most audacious robberies in Irish history. And he preserved his position of untouchable gang boss with a string of brutal crimes against his enemies, bombing, torturing or shooting those who irritated or challenged him. He was egalitarian in his choice of victim; they were from both sides of the fine crime-line. The name of the General was synonymous with violence, fear and intimidation. Unlike most criminals who tend to avoid, as much as possible, conflWilliams, Paul is the author of 'General Isish Mob Boss' with ISBN 9780765308788 and ISBN 0765308789.