April Collins
Ciara Kileen
Anne Dundon
Ciara Lynch
For almost a decade she was an integral part of the Dundon machine, but when it came to their demise, April Collins became the unlikely secret weapon in the gardai’s fight against one of Ireland’s most-feared mobs.
She once observed the strict omerta of Murder Inc, but when she turned against her man she toppled a house of cards that would bring down an evil empire.
Her evidence first helped jail assassin Barry Doyle for the murder of innocent family man Shane Geoghegan in February 2012.
And weeks later, heavily pregnant and just 24-years-old, she took to the witness box again to tell how Limerick thugs John and Wayne Dundon threatened to kill her after she dumped their brother Ger and began dating a notorious rapist.
Later, as John was tried for the murder of the innocent rugby player shot dead in a case of mistaken identity, she risked her life again to testify against him.
And in recent weeks, she returned to the Special Criminal Court as a key witness in the trial of Wayne Dundon and Nathan Killeen for the brutal and senseless murder of Roy Collins.
In her evidence, she repeatedly said that she wished to tell the truth and admitted her own criminal record, along with her inactions that could have saved a life.
But April Collins is no hero. She was not driven to turning State Witness out of anything but self preservation. The fact remains, that for April it was a case of do or die.
The importance of women in the rise and fall of the Dundons cannot be underestimated. Over the past few years they too have turned from a sisterhood to sworn enemies as the bonds that held the gang together were cut.
Over the past two years Ciara Killeen, the perma-tanned wife of John Dundon, Wayne’s loyal partner, Anne Casey and Ciara Lynch, Dessie’s would-be lover – who has never spent a day with him outside of a jail visiting room – sit side by side in courtrooms as a show of support to their men.
On the other side of the divide are April, her sister Lisa Collins – a partner of convicted drug dealer Christopher McCarthy – and even at times their mother Alice, wife of one-time Dundon enforcer Jimmy Collins.
The Collins and the Dundons go way back and April moved into the brothers’ Hyde Road home when she was just 15 and pregnant with the first of Ger’s three children.
With the mob at their intimidating height in Limerick, the Dundon dolls – April, Ciara and Ann – regularly got together for family occasions and became firm friends as they helped one another raise their children.
All three would do anything for their men, who provided them with flash cars, expensive holidays and all the fake tan money could buy.
In May 2010, while pregnant with her youngest child and still engaged to Ger, April walked into Pennys shop in Limerick and intimidated a relative of witness Mark Heffernan, in a case involving her fiancee.
Heffernan’s evidence would later put seven senior members of the McCarthy Dundons behind bars (including Jimmy and Gareth Collins).
Ger received five years in jail for violent disorder following attempts by other gang members to collect the €20,000 they tried to extort from Heffernan.
But just a year after intimidating the woman, April would find herself the subject of serious death threats herself – this time from her jailed lover Ger’s own brothers.
While Ger was languishing in jail, April had caught the eye of another notorious criminal – and despite his conviction for one of Ireland’s most-horrific rapes, she fell for Thomas O’Neill.
O’Neill was the ‘leader’ of a four-man gang who raped a woman while her boyfriend was locked in the boot of the car at Limerick’s Cratloe Woods in 2004.
The couple tried to keep their relationship under wraps, but it wasn’t long before April dumped Ger and word filtered back to prison that there was another man.
The split couldn’t have happened at a worse time. An internal feud had been simmering in jail between the McCarthy, Dundon and Collins factions for some time as the mob had slowly started to disintigrate in the confines of prison.
When Nathan Killeen, a key Dundon gang member and brother of John’s wife Ciara, was set upon and savagely attacked in September 2010, Ciara decided to take matters into her own hands on the outside. She was incensed that her brother had been beaten up by the Collins men and, along with three of her friends, smashed up April’s mum Alice’s jeep outside the family home.
Alice Collins had called the gardai but later got a visit from Wayne Dundon, who told her his brother John was not happy and would ‘hunt people down’ if his wife went to jail.
He also told her that he would ‘give some fool ten grand’ to kill her son Jimmy jnr.
In the months that followed, relations between the factions got even worse and April stopped visiting her partner in prison with their children.
In March 2011, Wayne Dundon returned to the Collins home. This time it was April who was at home – Wayne threatened to kill her, her brother Gareth and her mother Alice.
A week later John was released from jail and set about sorting out the problems himself – the Dundon way. He stormed up to the Collins house, where April was sitting watching telly, and started banging down the door.
April would later tell a court she heard him shouting: “I know you’re in there you tramp, I want to see my nephews, when I get you, I am going to f**king kill you.”
He and Wayne were lifted by gardai and quizzed about the death threats that they had issued to April. They were charged and remanded in custody.
Almost a year later, in February 2012, and after months spent under garda protection, April finally stepped into the witness box at the Special Criminal Court and helped put assassin Barry Doyle away for life.
April told the court how she was with John Dundon when he instructed contract killer Doyle to shoot John McNamara on the night before Shane Geoghegan was murdered in November 2008.
She said she heard him say he had the gun and the getaway car ready. She also told the court that she had met with Doyle and Dundon hours after the killing when an argument broke out over whether or not the right man was shot.
Weeks after Doyle was convicted, April was centre stage again. As she gave evidence at John and Wayne’s trial, she was watched by her former compatriots.
In the dock, the brothers sat side by side while their women turned out in force.
For the first time, Ciara Lynch sat in Dundon territory. She was only 12-years-old when Dessie Dundon was jailed for life for the murder of rival mobster Kieran Keane, yet she has vowed to wait for him until he is released from the prison – which is likely to take, at the very least, another decade.
It was April again who gave key state evidence when John Dundon was jailed for life for the murder of Geoghegan and later again when she formed part of the prosecution case that Nathan Killeen had driven the car used in the Roy Collins hit, while Wayne Dundon directed operations from behind bars.
For Anne Casey and Ciara Killeen, seeing their men in the dock is nothing too unusual. Both know their places loyally at their husband’s sides.
Anne married Wayne after he returned to Ireland in 2000 when he was thrown out of Britain for a violent attack on a crippled man.
When he was jailed for attacking a barman in 2004, Casey retreated to her home with her children and waited for her husband’s release.