Martin Cahill - Aftermath

Aftermath

There are a number of theories about who murdered Martin Cahill and why.

Within hours of Cahill's murder, the Provisional IRA claimed responsibility in a press release. The reasons cited were Cahill's alleged involvement with a Portadown unit of the Ulster Volunteer Force. The unit in question had attempted a bomb attack on a south Dublin pub which was hosting a Sinn Féin fund-raiser on the 21 May 1994. The UVF operatives were halted by the doorman Martin Doherty. In the ensuing struggle, Doherty, who the IRA subsequently announced was a volunteer in their Dublin Brigade, was shot dead. The Provisionals further alleged that Cahill had been involved in selling the stolen Beit paintings to the UVF gang led by Billy Wright. The UVF then fenced the paintings for money, which they used to buy guns from South Africa. This act supposedly sealed Cahill's fate, and put him at the top of an IRA hit list. In a later statement, the IRA said that it was Cahill's involvement with and assistance to pro-British death squads which forced us to act.

Another theory surfaced after the publication of Paul Williams's The General, which claims to have insights from the Garda officers who investigated Cahill's murder. Reputedly, two of Cahill's underlings, John Gilligan and John Traynor, had put together a massive drug trafficking ring. When Cahill demanded a cut of the profits, Gardai believe that Traynor and Gilligan approached the IRA and suggested that Cahill was importing heroin, a drug that the IRA despised and were trying to curtail the distribution of within Dublin. Reputedly, this, and Cahill's past dealings with the Ulster loyalists, gave the IRA reason to order his assassination; the hit was paid for and funded by Gilligan. This theory is put forward in Paul Williams's book Evil Empire. However many of Williams's claims provide no evidence and his articles are regularly dismissed as rumours. Additionally, Martin Cahill, My Father, a 2007 book written by Cahill's daughter, Frances, alleges he detested and steered clear of the drug trade.