The Rise and Fall of a Dublin Crime Lord
Eamon Dunne, infamously known as "The Don", was a notorious criminal who orchestrated a reign of terror across north Dublin. Leading a ruthless gang involved in drug dealing, armed robbery, extortion, and murder, Dunne's name became synonymous with some of the Irish capital's most shocking and high-profile assassinations.
A Trail of Betrayal and Murder
Dunne's murderous campaign was marked by extreme brutality and betrayal. In a defining act of treachery in December 2006, he helped arrange the assassination of his own former mentor, crime boss Martin "Marlo" Hyland. Two gunmen broke into Hyland's Finglas home; one executed Hyland as he slept, shooting him six times, while the other held down Anthony Campbell, a 20-year-old apprentice plumber with no criminal links, who was then shot in the head. The cold-blooded murder of an innocent man caused widespread public outrage.
Another infamous hit attributed to Dunne's gang occurred in October 2007. Notorious criminal John Daly, who had brazenly phoned into RTE's Liveline from prison to challenge journalist Paul Williams and distance himself from gang feuds, was executed less than a week after his release. The killing in Finglas was widely seen as a revenge attack for his public defiance.
Dunne was also suspected of orchestrating the murder of drug dealer John Paul Joyce, whose frozen body was discovered in a flooded ditch behind Dublin Airport in January 2010. Horrified passersby found blood marks in the snow near where his body was dumped.
The Don's Demise: A Violent End in a Pub
By 2010, a police source described Dunne to the Irish Independent as a psychopath who had "grown out of control," ruling gangland through fear and capitalising on his notorious reputation. His bloodthirsty streak, however, would soon lead to his downfall.
In April 2010, Dunne was attending a friend's birthday party at the Faussagh House pub in Dublin. Two gunmen marched in, shouted "down, down, everybody down," and fired a volley of shots at the 34-year-old mob boss, who was sitting beside his 17-year-old daughter, Amy. A third gunman waited outside to block any escape. Dunne was shot twice in the back of the head, with six bullets recovered from his body. His bloodied corpse was left on the floor as his own gang members fled, leaving his daughter standing over him, screaming "me da, me da".
Two men were arrested in May 2010 in connection with planning the attack, but no convictions were ever made. The murder of Eamon Dunne remains officially unsolved. Anthony Campbell's mother said he is now "drinking with the devil," while Irish reporters depicted Dunne in his final days as a "vicious and nasty paranoid coke-fuelled mess".
