Joe Bruno on the Mob – 24-Hour Tail on Fat Freddie Thompson

 

Boy this “Fat Freddie” Thompson is sure attracting a lot of attention across the Pond.

It has recently came to light that Fat Freddie, the head of the so-called “King Ratt” gang, has put a bounty of 100,000 pounds on the head of former pal, and present rat Joey O’Brien. Now, it seems that underworld forces operating in direct opposition to Fat Freddie have initiated several attacks on Fat Freddie’s family members.

First, Fat Freddie’s bother Rickie (Fat Richie? I once knew a Richie Fat in Manhattan’s Little Italy) had his leg broken, when he and his wife Catherine (who was stabbed) were beaten badly in the Karma Stone Pub in Camden Street in Dublin,Ireland. Then someone threw a pipe bomb into Fat Freddie’s family home, forcing his mother to evacuate to safer digs.

So, I think it’s safe to say we haven’t seen the end of the animosity between Fat Freddie and whomever is trying to decimate his family.

To try and stop any more violent incidents, the Dublin Police, called the “Garda,” have put Fat Freddie under 24-hour surveillance. Since Fat Freddie has been constantly looking over his shoulder for either his enemies, or for the police, he hasn’t hooked up with long-time girlfriend Vicky Dempsey for quite some time.

Maybe that’s a good thing for Vicky, since she might escape being in the crossfire of any more violence directed at Fat Freddie.

My guess, considering Fat Freddie reportedly also pissed off the Turkish Mafia in a drug-connected matter, in addition to not making too many friends in Ireland, “Fat Freddie” Thompson might be involved in a little more action.

As a perpetrator, or maybe even as a victim.

Stay tuned.

The article below appeared in the Dublin Herald at:

http://www.herald.ie/news/24hour-tail-on-freddie-as-tensions-rise-2851678.html

24-hour tail on Freddie as tensions rise

Thursday August 18 2011

Gangland tensions have escalated enormously — with the return of crime boss ‘Fat’ Freddie Thompson, now under 24-hour surveillance. The garda’s Organised Crime Unit have been monitoring Thompson’s activities on a “round-the-clock basis” since his return.

‘Fat’ Freddie spent a day at the Rotunda Hospital on Monday where his sister Lisa Jane gave birth to her first child, Jamie.

The gang boss (inset below) is said to be still “furious” after his brother and mother were targeted in feud related attacks.

Sources say that “top-of-the list” is a 24-year-old criminal present during a violent incident in which Freddie’s brother suffered a broken leg in a south city pub in March. The savage attack on Freddie’s brother Ritchie (40) and his wife Catherine at the Karma Stone pub in Camden Street has still not been avenged.

Gardai fear the criminal responsible for the assault is a dead man walking.

To compound the situation for this member of the so-called ‘King Ratt’ faction, Thompson also blames the fellow criminal for throwing a pipe bomb into the garden of his family home earlier this summer.

This incident led to Thompson’s mother being evacuated from the south inner city property in the early hours of the morning.

Sources say that ‘Fat’ Freddie has not returned to his family home while in Ireland and has been staying in city centre hotels.

It is unclear if he has met up with his long term girlfriend Vicky Dempsey, who is from Crumlin, during his time in Ireland.

But sources say that he has been in contact with a number of his close associates — including his first cousin, Liam Brannigan. Brannigan was arrested by members of the Organised Crime Unit after a pipe bomb was seized in the west of the city last month but was later released without charge.

This is not Thompson’s first visit back to Dublin this year and it is understood that he has been back in Ireland on at least two occasions since January.

Sources say that the gangster who leads one of Ireland’s most notorious drugs gangs has been mainly based in Birmingham since 2011.

Despite earlier reports, a European Arrest Warrant is not in place for Thompson in relation to a massive police operation in Spain last year which led to his drug supplier, Christy Kinahan, and other senior gang members being arrested and charged.

At a murder trial earlier this summer, it emerged that ‘Fat’ Freddie wanted to kill gangland supergrass and Crumlin criminal Joey O’Brien.

The court heard evidence that by the summer of 2005, his life was under threat because he had fallen out with a well-known, notorious criminal — understood to be Thompson — who had become associated with him when he was a teenager.

O’Brien agreed that this drugs boss came down heavy on him and that he told a garda that this individual was threatening to shoot him over a debt and for informing on him to the gardai.

O’Brien agreed that his father — who had been in the Army all his life — had to put up a sum of money to get this criminal off his back.

Sources say that ‘Fat’ Freddie is very close to his younger sister who has no involvement in crime.

http://www.josephbrunowriter.com/index.html

Joe Bruno on the Mob – Fat Freddie Thompson Offers €100k to Kill Witness

The Dublin Mafia, headed by “Fat Freddie” Thompson, has allegedly offer a reward of €100k (pounds) to anyone who can locate and kill informer Joey O’Brien.

It seems that the 28-year old O’Brien was the chief witness in a murder trial of Thompson associate Peter Kenny, which caused Kenny to be convicted and given a mandatory life sentence for the murder of murder of drug dealer John ‘Champagne’ Carroll, who shot dead while socializing in Grumpy Jack’s Pub in the Coombe in February, 2009.

O’Brien is hiding somewhere in the Witness Protection Program, so Thompson and his gang are trying to make life miserable for O’Brien’s sister Louise, who was forced to flee Dublin with her children. Apparently, even though Louise had nothing to do with her brother turning canary, she was threatened on the streets, spat on, and called a “rat” herself. A Dublin police source said, “What he (Joey O’Brien) did had absolutely nothing to do with Louise – it left her in a very vulnerable position. She has been advised to get out of Dublin and that is what she has done.”

This brings to mind an incident that took place in American in 1992. Fat Pete Chiodo, all 500 pounds of him, had turned rat against his Lucchese crime family associates. As a result, on May 8, 1991, Chiodo was shot 12 times in a Staten Island gas station. Chiodo’s blubber absorbed all the bullets, and amazingly, he lived to testify in court. But that didn’t stop his former friends from going after Pete’s sister Patrica Capozallo, who was ambushed on a Brooklyn street in March of 1992. Capozollo was shot in the arm, back and neck, but she survived too.

In the good old days of the Mafia, or any organized crime group, a person’s family was always considered off-limits, when it came to retribution against anyone who might have found a friend in the government. Not any more. Everyone, male or female, relative, or friend, of any canary, is now in danger, whether they had anything to do with the situation, or not. The feeling apparently is, with the informer now in the wind and unavailable for killing, hurt him where it hurts him most – his family.

I liked the good old days better.

The article below appeared in the Dublin Herald.

http://www.herald.ie/news/freddies-euro100k-to-kill-witness-2846987.html

By Ken Foy

Friday August 12 2011

‘FAT’ Freddie Thompson’s gang has agreed to pay €100k to anyone who kills a State witness.

The gangsters have clubbed together with other criminals and there is now a €100,000 price on the head of protected witness Joey O’Brien.

But because they can’t get at Mr O’Brien – Thompson (below) and fellow criminals have turned on his innocent sister. Louise O’ Brien has also been targeted by associates of murderer Peter Kenny, convicted on her brother’s evidence. Ms O’Brien fled her Dublin home in the wake of the conviction of Peter Kenny (28) – jailed after her brother, Joey, gave evidence against him.

Kenny (28), from Rialto, was given a mandatory life sentence last month after being convicted of the murder of drug dealer John ‘Champagne’ Carroll (33), shot dead while socialising in Grumpy Jack’s Pub in the Coombe in February, 2009.

O’Brien’s family and his girlfriend’s family in the Coombe have been targeted with pipe bombs and threats before and during the trial over his decision to turn supergrass. In one incident, a taxi owned by a member of O’Brien’s girlfriend’s family was blown up outside his south Dublin home. Joey O’Brien, from Crumlin, his partner and children and other family members have been given new lives as part of the Witness Security Programme, probably outside the jurisdiction.

However, his sister Louise was not included in the secret programme but has been forced to flee her south inner city home with her children because of the campaign of terror. Sources have revealed that Louise was verbally threatened, branded a “rat” and even spat at on the street because of her brother’s decision to give evidence. “What he did had absolutely nothing to do with Louise – it left her in a very vulnerable position. She has been advised to get out of Dublin and that is what she has done,” explained a source.

In one of the most serious incidents, a close male associate of Ms O’Brien was given a “severe hiding” close to their home by three criminals armed with baseball bats. CRIMINALS Sources say that one of the criminals involved in the baseball attack was a convicted heroin dealer from the south inner city who is a major target for gardai under antigangland legislation.

It is understood that death threats were made against Ms O’ Brien during the course of this extremely serious assault which left the victim battered and bruised. The vicious assault was carried out with the approval of ‘Fat’ Freddie’s gang. During the murder trial, O’Brien denied being a garda informer for several years before the 2009 killing. He agreed that by the time of the killing he was a drug dealer at a significant level and used to sell drugs to “anybody, including new users, recreational users and addicts”.

However he didn’t begin taking drugs until he was 19 and was a recreational user, never becoming addicted to substances. O’Brien also admitted that he committed a large number of other criminal offences, including credit card fraud. He said that by the summer of 2005, his life was under threat as he had fallen out with a wellknown, notorious criminal, who had taken a shine to him as a teenager. O’Brien agreed that this drugs boss came down heavy on him and that he told a garda that this individual was threatening to shoot him over the debt and for informing on him to the gardai.

O’Brien agreed that his father, who had been in the army all his life, had to put up some money to get this criminal off his back. He agreed that at the time of John Carroll’s killing, he (Joey O’Brien) was socialising seven nights a week, taking cocaine, getting taxis everywhere, “could drop” €3,000 or €4,000 an hour in a bookies and owed €8,500. However, he denied driving the gunman to the scene that night in order to make €15,000. After being arrested, O’Brien told gardai that his role in the murder was to burn the motorbike used in the killing at a housing estate in Harold’s Cross – he told detectives that Peter Kenny was the gunman in the hit on Carroll.

O’Brien confirmed that Peter Kenny walked into the pub wearing a helmet and fired a number of shots at ‘Champagne’ Carroll with a semi-automatic weapon.

hnews@herald.ie

http://www.josephbrunowriter.com/index.html

Joe Bruno on the Mob – Irish Gangster Tries to Kill Girlfriend

 

And you think gangsters here in America are vicious?

The Irish mobster in the article below named Shane Lyons takes the cake in the category “Brutality to Women.”

Beating up and killing guys are one thing, but brutally attacking and choking your girlfriend is in a whole different category.

It’s doesn’t take a hard guy to beat up a woman.

This article originally appear in Ireland’s online newspaper Source: Herald.ie and re-printed in Mafia Today

http://mafiatoday.com/general-breaking-news/gangster-poses-happily-with-girlfriend-months-before-he-attacked-her/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MafiaToday+%28MAFIA+TODAY%29
July 27, 2011 by Capo
The Herald can reveal that Shane Lyons is a notorious gangster who has links with ‘Fat’ Freddie Thompson’s gang.

He was also involved in a major dispute with gangland boss Eamon ‘The Don’ Dunne over a stolen car, before ‘The Don’ was shot dead in a Cabra pub last year.

Lyons is also a convicted drugs trafficker who was jailed for four years in March 2001 after he admitting importing IR£160,000 worth of cannabis from South Africa.
choked

The violent crook has also links to veteran gangster Martin ‘The Viper’ Foley.
Yesterday, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard that Lyons (41) choked Ms Kelly before locking the door and telling her to “sleep on the floor like the animal she was”.

A friend who tried to protect her was then beaten so badly by Lyons that she had to be taken away in an ambulance.
Lyons, Ms Kelly and her pal Kerry Lee Ball, who had given birth to a baby six weeks earlier, had all been on a night out together before he attacked them at his Rathfarnham, Dublin, home.
Ms Kelly described Lyons during the attack as “the face of pure evil”.

Lyons had separated from his wife after she had a miscarriage and had been seeing Ms Kelly for six months at the time of the attack on August 31, 2009.

They had been out at a city-centre club and the two women had taken cocaine during the evening. Ms Kelly had told Lyons she wanted to go outside for a cigarette but instead went back to his home at Harold’s Grange Road, Rathfarnham.

Garda Joanne Grogan told the court the accused had come home screaming that Ms Kelly had left him. He told her to get out of his bed and she went downstairs to a spare bedroom, where she packed to leave. Lyons told her “she wasn’t driving her car” even though she told him she did not have the keys.

He pushed her against the bedroom wall, then followed her upstairs where he pushed her down on to his bed, got on top of her and ‘strangled’ her with both his hands.

Her body went limp, she could not breathe and her eyes felt like they were going to pop, as he told her she “was trying to make a fool out of him and wouldn’t treat him like a thickie”.
Her head going light, she stopped fighting and he let go.

He locked the bedroom door, threw a pillow at her and told her to sleep on the floor before taking the battery from her phone and putting it under his pillow when she tried to call her father.

He punched her to the side of the head at one point but eventually agreed to open the door, saying: “Fiona, I just didn’t want you to drive home.”

Ms Ball arrived and Ms Kelly told her what happened before trying to strike Lyons with a bottle opener. The accused grabbed Ms Kelly by the throat again, lifting her up on her “tippy toes”, saying: “Who do you think you are, I’ll f***ing kill you”.

Ms Ball tried to pull him off Ms Kelly but he shoved her away twice and flung Ms Kelly on to the bed by her hair.

Again Ms Ball tried to stop him and he punched her full force to the side of the head.
Ms Kelly screamed at her friend to run, but Ms Ball tripped and fell and the accused got her by the arms and flung her out into his front garden, on to her back.

He then grabbed Ms Kelly by the throat again and pinned her to a car. Gardai and an ambulance arrived and Ms Ball was taken away on a spinal board.

In her victim impact statement, which she read out to the court, Ms Ball said she would never forget Lyons face on the night, his extreme rage, or her friend’s face turning purple in colour.

Lyons hands were gripped “around her neck so tightly I thought she was almost dead”, Ms Ball said.

She began blocking out what happened with prescription medication, she was in constant fear and her mother had to care for her newborn baby. Her relationship ended and she became withdrawn and paranoid, she said.

In her statement, Ms Kelly said she suffered flashbacks, nightmare and a lack of sleep as well as “vivid images” over and over in her head of the accused strangling her.

“It was the face of pure evil, a face that will haunt me for the rest of my life,” her statement said. “I can honestly say I thought I was going to die and I would never see my children again.”

Both women said the accused had shown no remorse since the incident. Lyons apologized through his barrister.

“Can he say it?” Ms Kelly asked.

“I can, yeah, I’m sorry for what happened,” Lyons said from the dock.

The defendant’s car dealership business had collapsed in the recession and a repossession order had been put on his home. Judge Hunt adjourned the case for sentencing to a date in December.

http://www.josephbrunowriter.com/index.html

Joe Bruno on the Mob — John Morrissey (Old Smoke)

Johnny Morrissey started out as a feared bare-knuckles boxer, but later became a gang member and leg breaker for the politicians of Tammany Hall.

Morrissey was born in Templemore, County Tipperary, Ireland in 1831. The famed potato famine was in its infancy, but his parents saw the writing on the wall. They immigrated to America in 1833 and settled in Troy, New York. Not being educated, but good with his fists, Morrissey was relegated to working as a collection agent for the local Irish crime bosses. While working as a bouncer in a Troy brothel, Morrissey taught himself how to read and write. Realizing his future was limited in Troy, Morrissey made the short trek to New York City. There he made his name as a rough hooligan fighting often in various bars and piers, just for sport.

One day he engaged in a impromptu fight with Tom McCann, at the indoor pistol gallery under the St. Charles Hotel. McCann was getting the best of Morrissey, when a powerful punch drove Morrissey over the coals from a hot stove, which had been overturned. Morrissey’s clothes and flesh were badly burning, and with smoke comes from his backside, he leaped forward and battered McCann senseless. Hence, the nickname “Old Smoke.”

After winning a few more battles inside and outside the ring, Morrissey challenged world champion Yankee Sullivan for the world title. The fight took place on October 12, 1853, at Boston Corners, on the border of Massachusetts and New York. Morrissey was battered throughout the fight, but won by disqualification in the 37^th round, when Sullivan hit him while he was down.

Buoyed by his newfound fistic fame and now a member of the Dead Rabbits, a feared street gang, Morrissey was hired by Tammany Hall to protect the polling places from the Bowery Boy’s gang, led by Butcher Bill Poole. Poole and his pals terrorized the polling places on election days in favor of the Native American, or Know-Nothing political party. On Election Day, 1854, Poole announced that he and thirty of his Bowery Boys were headed to a certain local election place to destroy the ballot boxes. Tammany Hall called on Morrissey to protect their interests, and with John A. Kennedy, who later became New York City’s Superintendent of Police, they assembled a gang of over fifty Dead Rabbits. They and stood in wait at the polling place for Poole’s arrival.

A man of his word, Poole arrived the polling place and he and his gang entered, looking to do as much damage as possible. Immediately Poole realized his group was vastly outnumbered by Morrissey and the Dead Rabbits. Poole met Morrissey in the center of the room, and after staring menacingly at each other for a few moments, without saying a word, Poole abruptly turned and left, taking his gang with him. Tammany Hall was so overjoyed by Morrissey’s heroics, they gave him a free gambling house, under the protection of the police, of course.

In 1855, Morrissey changed Poole to a bare-knuckles fight on a pier near Christopher Street. Poole accepted, but instead of fighting with his fist, Poole tried to crush Morrissey to death, which he almost did. A few months later, Poole was shot and killed by Morrissey’s close friend Lew Baker, at Stanwix Hall, a bar on Broadway near Prince Street. Both Baker and Morrissey were arrested for the murder of Poole, but after three mistrials (rumor had it that Tammany Hall influenced some jurors in Morrissey and Baker’s favor), the charges were finally dropped.

In 1857, after he retired from boxing, Morrissey opened 16 gambling house, including an exceptionally profitable one in Sarasota Springs. With the backing of Tammany Hall, he was elected United States Congressman from New York from 1867-71. In 1873, tired of Tammany Hall’s illegal tactics, which were only surpassed by the illegal tactics Morrissey employed himself in Congress, Morrissey testified against Tammany Hall chief Boss Tweed. Tweed was convicted and sent to prison, where he subsequently died. As a reward for his service to his country, Morrissey was elected to the New York State Senate in 1875. He was still a Senator when he died of pneumonia in 1878, at the age of 47.

In 1999, Morrissey, a.k.a. “Old Smoke,” was elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

Joe Bruno on the Mob — Big Tim Sullivan

“Big Tim” Sullivan was a Tammany Hall hack, who gave real meaning to the term “crooked politician.”

Sullivan was born in 1863 at 25 Baxter Street, one of the worse slums buildings in New York City. The squaller was so intense at 25 Baxter Street, in 1866 a New York Times article called it one of the “filthiest tenements in the city.”

Sullivan’s parents had just immigrated from County Kerry, Ireland, and with them being so poor, he was trust out in the streets at the age of eight to shine shoes and sell newspapers. Being the enterprising lad that he was, Sullivan soon saved up enough cash to start his own newspaper delivery business. He employed dozens of poor kids from the neighborhood to do his deliveries, and soon Sullivan was the owner of four local bars, the first of which he opened on Christie Street, just east of the Bowery. One of Sullivan’s bar customers was Thomas “Fatty” Walsh, a notorious ward leader in Tammany Hall. Sullivan fell under Walsh’s political wing, and in 1894, Sullivan was elected to the Third District’s State Assembly.

In a few short years, Sullivan became a big cog in Tammany Hall’s corrupt wheel and soon he was appointed District Leader of the entire Lower East Side. That was like giving the key to the candy store to an especially bad kid. Sullivan bridged the gap between public service and the common street thuggery, by recruiting infamous gang leaders like Paul Kelly and Monk Eastman to do his dirty work, which included “voter influence” at election sites, which basically meant their gangs beat up voters who didn’t exactly see things Sullivan’s way.

In return for using his influence to keep gangsters out of jail, Sullivan got a piece of all the illegal activities in the Lower East Side, including prostitution, gambling, loan sharking and extortion. To keep things looking on the up-and-up, Sullivan also entrenched himself in many legal endeavors, including becoming partners in the MGM and Loews cinema operations.

Sullivan did introduce a couple of key pieces of legislation, like one in 1896 that made boxing legal, only to see it made illegal again in 1900, because of several deaths in the ring. Sullivan also passed the dubious “Sullivan Act” in 1911, which made it illegal to carry guns, unless you could afford a hefty registration fee. Needless to say, Sullivan’s murderous cronies made so much illegal dough, they all were able to cough up the cash needed to carry guns legally, in order to enforce their illegal activities.

In 1911, Sullivan’s evil ways finally caught up with him. He contracted syphilis, probably in one of the many prostitution houses he had a piece of, and he suddenly became paranoid and delusional. He was judged mentally incompetent and removed from his senate seat. In 1912, his family placed him in a mental institution, which only made his condition worse.

In 1913, while the guards were playing cards, Sullivan escaped from the sanitarium. This was a fatal mistake. Less than a day later, his body was found near the railroad tracks in Pelham Parkway. For some reason, his body was not claimed, so the city declared him a vagrant, to be shamefully interred in Potter’s Field. A police officer at the morgue finally recognized his body and Big Tim was given a proper send-off, with 25,000 people attending his funeral ceremony at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral on north Mulberry Street near Houston Street.

http://www.amazon.com/Mobsters-Gangs-Crooks-Creeps-ebook/dp/B0058J44QO/ref=zg_bs_11010_1