A SON of a murdered Limerick gangland criminal has been jailed for a year after pleading guilty to possessing more than €21,000 in cash, knowing it to be the proceeds of crime.
39 year-old Eddie Ryan Jnr of College Avenue, Moyross, was sentenced at Limerick Circuit Court yesterday after he had earlier admitted possessing €21,320 contrary to Section 7 of the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering & Terrorist Financing) Act 2010.
Gardaí seized the cash at his home on July 1, 2020. Despite pleading guilty, Mr Ryan claimed he accumulated the money from betting and selling horses.
The father-of-two was jailed for six years in 2010 after he was found traveling in a car at Ballyneety village with a loaded semi-automatic pistol. His brother Kieran ‘Rashers’ Ryan, who was also in the car at the time, was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Their father, Eddie Ryan senior, was shot dead at the Moose Bar, Catherine Place, Limerick City, in November 2000. The killing sparked a decade-long drug turf war, with tit-for-tat killings, petrol bombings, stabbings, shootings.
The feud, involving the Ryan McCarthy crime gang, the Keane Collopy gang and the Dundon McCarthy gang, resulted in 20 killings.
Gardaí believe Eddie Ryan senior was murdered after he attempted to shoot former associate Christy Keane.
Keane was later jailed in 2002 for ten years for possessing 19.5kg of cannabis, a charge he denied at his trial at Limerick Circuit Court.
Kieran Ryan was in the Moose bar when his father was killed in a hail of automatic gunfire by two masked gunmen.
Gardai have always suspected the two men who fired 15 rounds inside the crowded pub that night were Kieran Keane and Philip Collopy.
Keane was murdered in 2003 by five members of the Dundon McCarthy gang and Collopy died when he accidentally shot himself in the head in 2009.
Days before Kieran Keane’s murder, the Ryan brothers were reported missing by their mother Mary who made an impassioned plea in the media to those she believed had kidnapped her sons, to “give me back my boys”.
Gardaí had begun looking for their bodies and enlisted the Defence Forces to help in the search for the Limerick siblings.
Reliable sources believe the Dundon gang arranged to have the Ryan brothers ‘kidnapped’ for Kieran Keane but double-crossed him when he was invited to a house in the city to see the Ryans.
Kieran Keane, along with his travel companion and nephew, Owen Treacy, were kidnapped. Keane was tortured and shot in the head, and Mr Treacy was stabbed 17 times and left for dead.
Mr Treacy later gave testimony in a trial which was vital in the conviction of five Dundon gang members for his uncle’s murder and his own attempted murder.
Less than six hours after Kieran Keane’s murder in Drombana, Kieran and Eddie Ryan jnr both walked into a Garda station in the Midlands but could not say where they had allegedly been held against their will.
An uncle of the brothers, John Ryan, was shot dead outside a house in Thomondgate in the summer of 2003. The killing was seen as a direct retaliation for Kieran Keane’s murder, although Mr Ryan was not thought to have been directly involved in the feud.
