A jury trying a Dublin man who denies the murder of another man in 1996 was told yesterday that the accused man either pulled the trigger himself or ordered the man to be shot because he blamed him for a "drug deal gone awry".
On the opening day of the trial of Mr Joseph Delaney (53), of Palmerstown Park, Palmerstown, Dublin, the prosecution counsel, Mr Patrick Gageby SC, told the Central Criminal Court jury the case was "about the cost of drugs".
It would give "an unparalleled view" into the criminal underworld of Dublin, he said.
When he was arraigned on April 20th, Mr Delaney pleaded not guilty to the murder with his son, Scott Delaney, of Mark Dwyer (23), on or about December 14th, 1996. The court heard that Scott Delaney "has already been dealt with according to law".
Mr Delaney also pleaded not guilty to a second count that on December 14th, 1996, at Foster Terrace, Ballybough, Dublin, he falsely imprisoned Mark Dwyer. Opening the case for the prosecution, Mr Gageby told the jury that this case would show that behind what were to some people seemingly innocuous drugs, there lay "a sordid world based on criminality and violence".
The prosecution case was that in the early hours of December 14th, 1996, Mark Dwyer was "tied up like a chicken" and "bundled out of his flat". A couple of hours later, having been beaten soundly, a shotgun was put to his head, its trigger pulled and he died instantly.
"Joe Delaney either administered the shot that terminated Mark Dwyer's existence or ordered it to be done," Mr Gageby said. In any event, "he was present for it".
The prosecution claimed the background to the case was that Mr Delaney had decided to import 40,000 ecstasy tablets.
His son, Scott Delaney, and Mark Dwyer travelled to the Continent in October 1996 to purchase the drugs. Then, the prosecutor said, something appeared to have gone wrong with the delivery of those drugs to Mr Delaney or his "runners or couriers".
Mr Delaney realised that someone had "skipped with his drugs". An investigation was launched and in late November or early December "the finger of suspicion began to point at Mark Dwyer".
Mr Dwyer himself had a reputation for "being capable of considerable personal violence" and for "killing people in cold blood". So Mr Delaney organised that he be seized and interrogated by three men wearing balaclavas.
Following his abduction from a house in Foster Terrace, Bally bough, the prosecution claimed Mr Dwyer was taken to La Rochelle, a house occupied by Mr Delaney in Naas, Co Kildare, and there "very badly beaten" in an attempt to find out where the ecstasy tablets were.
When the beating "bore no fruit", the decision was taken to kill him, and he was taken outside and shot. His body was left at Scribblestown Lane, a cul-de-sac between Castleknock and Finglas, where it was found in a field, still bound and hooded.
Mr Gageby said Scott Delaney was left with the body. This was done, the prosecution contended, "to point the finger of suspicion elsewhere, perhaps to vigilantes".
Ms Jennifer Byrne (18) said she had been living with Mark Dwyer at Foster Terrace. She agreed with Mr Blaise O'Carroll SC, defending, that Mark Dwyer had wanted to keep his new address a secret. Under cross-examination, Ms Byrne said that before his abduction she had heard Mark Dwyer talk of a "rip-off". She had also heard him and others talking about P.J. Judge, whose photograph was in the paper because he had been found dead. On the night of the abduction, she and Mark Dwyer were in their flat with two of her women friends and two men, Mr Karl "Yorkie" Dunne and Scott Delaney. Scott Delaney was "very nervy, very edgy", which was out of character. He had taken cocaine out of his pocket and though Mark Dwyer didn't want to take it, Scott had pressurised him into doing so. At one stage, when Dwyer asked what was worrying him, Scott Delaney said "the vigilantes are after me" or something to that effect.
Later that night, the flat door was knocked in and three men with balaclavas and black jackets burst in. One, carrying a sawn-off shotgun, stood at the door, while the other two "threw Mark on the floor", saying: "You were a silly boy. You fucked up . . ."
The men took a wire out of the back of the television and video and tied Mr Dwyer around the ankles and wrists. When they first came in they had "Northern Ireland accents" but later these changed to Dublin accents. "One of them sounded very inner city," the witness said.
Ms Karen Hyland told the court she was in the flat that night also. She told Mr O'Carroll that as far as she could remember, Mark Dwyer had not been pressurised in taking the cocaine but had "asked for a line".
The trial continues today before Mr Justice Barr and the jury.