Tony "Chester" Beatty, the Dublin drug-dealer murdered on Sunday night, may have been killed in revenge for the murder of a young Dublin drug-dealer a year ago. Beatty was suspected of being behind the murder of Mark Dwyer (22), the north-inner city man who was abducted, tortured and shot dead last December.
Dwyer, from Ballybough, had stolen 40,000 ecstasy tablets from Beatty and his associates. Beatty and his gang kidnapped Dwyer from his girlfriend's flat and drove him to Scribblestown on the western outskirts of the city, where he was beaten and tortured before being shot in the back of the head with a shotgun.
Beatty was questioned about the murder by gardai but there was in sufficient evidence to bring charges. He was one of the main ecstasy suppliers in Dublin city centre. He was well known in the criminal underworld and had a lengthy Garda record. He was due before the courts on drugs-possession charges at the time of his death.
He was drinking upstairs in the Wild Heather pub in Mary Street at about 8.30 p.m. on Sunday when a masked gunman entered the lounge, pushed Beatty to the floor and fired two shots into him.
Beatty, who was 6 ft 5 in and weighed up to 20 stone, managed to struggle to his feet and make his way down the stairs before collapsing and dying on the street.
According to customers in the pub, the assassin was struck by a stool flung by one of the other customers and dropped the gun. A .22 pistol recovered at the scene was being examined by Garda ballistics officers. Gardai say the use of the .22 pistol indicates that the murder was probably carried out by some other minor drug dealer, probably bent on revenge or intent on muscling in on Beatty's trade. A professional hired assassin, they say, would almost certainly use a higher calibre weapon than the .22.
This murder might mark the beginning of another round of gangland killings in the city as small-time dealers begin expanding their operations to fill the space left by the removal of more senior criminal figures, either by Garda action or by assassination.
In the past year, several of the city's main drug-dealers have been arrested or forced to flee abroad as a result of Garda action. At the end of last year, one of the city's worst gangsters and multiple killer, P.J. Judge, was shot dead by a professional gunman, possibly a Provisional IRA member.
Beatty was a minor figure until relatively recently. He had been a henchman for the Dublin criminal figure Martin Cahill, (known as "the General"), who was shot dead by a republican paramilitary gunman hired by the gang of Dublin criminals who were also responsible for the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin.
Gardai are concerned that a number of people who witnessed the murder had not, by yesterday, contacted them and appealed to anyone in the Mary Street area of Dublin city centre between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Sunday to contact them at 01855 5235.