Gilligan launches mole hunt to unmask who told reporters where he was living

Veteran criminal John Gilligan has launched a desperate mole hunt to try to unmask who told the Irish Mirror where he was living.

“He is like a bull,” a source told us last night – a day after the aged crime boss was confronted at his new hideaway in Spain. We challenged Gilligan (72) outside his small house near the town of Torrevieja on the Costa Brava on Sunday – and sources say he has been apoplectic with rage ever since. “Gilligan is furious,” a source said. “He went all around people who know him in Torrevieja demanding to know if they told the paper where he was.

“He is desperate to find out who it was. Lots of people knew where he was, so it will be like looking for a needle in a haystack and he is hardly a top investigator, in fairness.” Gilligan – charged but acquitted of the infamous murder of crime reporter Veronica Guerin in south west Dublin in June 1996 but caged for 17 years for importing cannabis – was not at his home near Torrevieja yesterday. He lives on a busy residential street in a development outside the town that is popular with tourists and expats – including people from Ireland.

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The mobster – seen here in new Irish Mirror pictures taken yesterday – previously lived in a stunning €800,000 villa with its own pool and large veranda – but sources say the west Dublin criminal has now fallen on hard times. He is now living in a small detached house that has no pool and appears to have only two bedrooms. Sources have told us Gilligan – who earned millions of euro in the 1990s when he flooded Dublin with cannabis – is now down on his luck. “He had money for the last few years, but that has mostly gone,” one source told us. “He is not the flash man that he was in the past. I don’t know if he is poor, but he is not loaded.”

We wanted to speak to Gilligan after underworld sources in both Ireland and Spain said there were serious rumours the criminal was suffering from an aggressive form of prostate cancer. Gilligan refused to talk to us when we confronted him as he put out the rubbish at his home on Sunday – but a key associate later contacted us to insist he was healthy.

“John says hello,” the go between said. “He is healthy.” When pressed if Gilligan had cancer, the associate insisted: “No.” However, sources insisted the rumours about his health were still doing the rounds in Ireland and Spain. These photographs of Gilligan are the first since he avoided a jail sentence in Spain in September last year.

The veteran criminal was handed a 22-month suspended prison sentence by a Spanish court after admitting using courier services to smuggle cannabis and prescription-only drugs without licence to Ireland. He also pleaded guilty to illegally possessing a firearm as part of a plea bargain deal ahead of his trial at a court in Torrevieja.

Seven other accomplices in the gang he led including his son Darren also received suspended prison sentences. His girlfriend Sharon Oliver refused to sign the plea bargain deal and was acquitted of any wrongdoing following a one-day trial.

The Irish Mirror previously tracked Gilligan down to a large villa in Torrevieja in June 2021 – the 25th anniversary of his gang’s murder of Sunday Independent journalist Ms Guerin – when he also declined to talk. Even though he is now in his 70s, Gilligan is still regarded as one of Ireland’s most infamous criminals. His gang murdered Ms Guerin, a top writer for the Sunday Independent, as she sat in her car at traffic lights on the Naas Road in June 1996. He was later arrested in England on money laundering charges, before being extradited back to Ireland to face trial for Ms Guerin’s murder – an allegation he denied.

The case was held at the Special Criminal Court without a jury and the three judges rejected key evidence of state witness Charlie Bowden, who implicated Gilligan in the murder of Ms Guerin. But the three judges of the court rejected Bowden’s evidence – and acquitted Gilligan of the murder of Ms Guerin.

They did, however, convict him of drugs importation and he served 17 years in prison. He later told journalist Jason O’Toole that members of his gang shot Ms Guerin – including Bowden, Brian Meehan and John Traynor. He said in the author’s Gilligan Tapes book: “John Traynor ordered the murder of Veronica Guerin and it was carried out by Charlie Bowden,” he said

“And the man on the bike was Brian Meehan, 100,000,000 per cent. Without a shadow of a doubt.” Gilligan also claimed Bowden was offered £100,000 (€127,000) to carry out the murder. He said: “Charlie Bowden was to get £100,000.

“He got £50,000 up front and £50,000 after the job. I don’t know if he got the rest of the money after the job. But I’d imagine he did, because he did it.” There is no evidence to back up his claims.

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