John Gilligan

GANGSTER John Gilligan remained a free man tonight — after turning up to court in his lucky grey suit.The pint-sized mobster scored a legal victory.

Spanish officers are working with the Irish police to determine if it’s the same gun used to end her life.” But the case was thrown out by the judge. The force added in its statement, before it was reported the weapon found buried in his garden was not the one used in the Veronica Guerin murder: “The revolver that has been found is the same mark and model as the one used in the assassination of an Irish journalist in Dublin in 1996. The gun used to shoot her by one of two men on a motorbike was not found. Detectives said when he was arrested in October 2020 the gun was a rare Colt Python .357 Magnum and described it as the “same make and model” as the one used to kill the crime reporter in an ambush at a red light on the outskirts of Dublin in June 1996. Police sources said at the time of Gilligan’s arrest in October 2020 that the raid on the drug baron’s villa took place as he was preparing a delivery to Ireland of marijuana and sleeping pills which heroin addicts use to numb pain. A Spanish National Police spokesman did not name Gilligan in a force statement at the time but said: “Investigators managed to intercept four postal deliveries in Spain in which four kilos of marijuana and 15,000 pills had been hidden.” Spanish prosecutors went on to describe it as a Colt Defender and called it an air pistol in a six-page indictment, although sources claimed police had got the right firearm and the indictment contained an “error”. There was speculation at the time that it was linked to the assassination of Veronice Guerin. State prosecutors are demanding an 18-month prison sentence for unlawful weapons possession for Gilligan after a gun was found in the garden of his expat home in Torrevieja. And it was also his go-to ensemble when he faced a Supreme Court hearing in 2016 as he battled to save Jessbrook equestrian centre from the Criminal Assets Bureau’s clutches. The unexpected twist in the case occurred after lawyers for nine defendants failed to thrash out a plea bargain deal with the state prosecutor in a behind-closed-doors hearing before a judge ahead of a brief public session.