A violent criminal who “assassinated” a grandfather by emptying “the contents of a pistol” into him when he answered the front door at his mother’s home and later perjured himself at trial, has been sentenced to life in prison.
Cailean Crawford (28) had pleaded not guilty to the murder of Thomas McCarthy (55) on July 27th, 2020, at Croftwood Park, Ballyfermot, Dublin 10 but was unanimously convicted by a Central Criminal Court jury earlier this month.
Crawford had shouted “F**k you and your fair trial” and stormed out of the dock after the jury returned their verdict.
Detective Sergeant Roan McDermott told Friday's hearing that Crawford has one previous conviction for conspiring to murder gangland criminal Wayne Whelan, for which he received a five-year sentence in September 2021. Mr Whelan survived that murder attempt in September 2019 but was subsequently shot dead following another attack two months later.
That sentence expired in June, Det Sgt McDermott said, but Crawford remained in custody, having been arrested in relation to this offence in October 2020.
Mr McCarthy, a father of five, was gunned down when he answered the door at his mother’s home in what the prosecution described as an “execution”.
In a victim impact statement delivered to the court on Friday, Mr McCarthy’s partner Nia O’Reilly said never in her “wildest dreams” did she think she would have to say her children’s father was murdered.
“I still think to this day they had the wrong person, the wrong house,” she said. “Thomas was a gentleman.”
The jury of six men and six women deliberated for eight hours and 20 minutes before returning their unanimous verdict, agreeing with the State’s case that Crawford was the assassin who fired several times, fatally injuring Mr McCarthy, having come to the scene in a blue Ford Fiesta car which was seen driving in and out of the area on CCTV.
Passing sentence on Crawford on Friday, Mr Justice Tony Hunt said the idea that someone would walk up to house and “without further ado empty the contents of a pistol” into the body of the person at the door “simply beggars’ belief”.
The judge said there were two travesties in this case; the first was the “assassination” of Mr McCarthy, who he said, appearred to be “by all accounts a decent man”. The second, the judge noted, was the “perjury” committed by the accused man in an attempt to, as prosecuting counsel had put it, “weasel out” of his responsibility in this matter.
Mr Justice Hunt expressed his thanks to the jury for their hard work in the case and said that following “lengthy and detailed analysis”, they had come to “the only sane conclusion anyone could come to on that body of evidence”.
He said he was glad the panel had rejected certain matters that were put to them by Mr Crawford during the trial, in particular the suggestion that because he was seen back at work delivering parcels “in a normal manner” a couple of hours after the killing that they should draw the inference that he was a “normal person” who was unlikely to have been involved in “a grotesque outrage like this”.
“The truth of this matter is he appeared perfectly normal afterwards because he, as a person in cahoots with [Charles] McClean, is prepared to engage in activities to snuff out the lives of others on an organised basis. That is the truth of the matter,” said the judge.
The 12 jurors had rejected the defence case that Crawford, last of Clifden Terrace, Ballyfermot, was involved in drug dealing and had loaned a phone and a GoVan he had hired on the morning of the killing to associate Charles McClean.
McClean (35), last of St Mark’s Drive, Clondalkin, was described earlier this year by a Central Criminal Court judge as a "remorseless" criminal, after he sentenced him for calling Mark 'Guinea Pig' Desmond to a drugs meeting in a Dublin park, where the gangland figure was gunned down.
McClean, who was already serving consecutive sentences of 16.5-years for facilitating the murder of Thomas McCarthy and conspiring to murder Wayne Whelan, was jailed for an additional three-and-a-half years for impeding the apprehension of the person who murdered Mr Desmond.
Mr McCarthy, who had five children and two grandchildren, was living in the UK at the time but had returned home to visit his family and his mother, who lived at the address in Ballyfermot.
It was the prosecution case that a group of people were involved in planning and carrying out the murder of Mr McCarthy, with a number of cars used which were purchased using false names. Prosecuting counsel Bernard Condon SC said that movements of the accused’s van and other vehicles involved, including a black Mercedes, a Skoda, a Ford Fiesta, and a Toyota Avensis, showed “dry runs” being carried out in the days before the murder.
Following Mr McCarthy’s murder, some of the cars were subsequently found burnt out, with a 9mm semi-automatic weapon retrieved from the Fiesta.
Crawford took the stand during his trial and told the jury that he was being “blamed” as the “centre point” of a murder he didn’t commit after he loaned the van to McClean. He said he had handed the van over to a man with “bones sticking out of his face” who was a “mate” of McClean’s.
Crawford said he assumed McClean “needed the van to collect drugs”. He said McClean had previously given him a Lyca SIM card to use after Crawford agreed to collect and transport drugs on “two or three” occasions in the Ballyfermot area.
Before sentencing Crawford, Mr Justice Hunt said he was glad the jury had come to “the proper conclusion” in regard to the defendant’s association with McClean. He said what had been sold to them was that Crawford was “the innocent dupe” of McClean who was planning “a dreadful murder behind his back” and he was simply “the innocent abroad” but they had rejected this as the “nonsense that it is”.
The judge imposed the mandatory life sentence on Crawford, backdating this to June 1 this year when his previous sentence ended.
He extended his sympathy to Mr McCarthy’s family, saying that to lose a relative prematurely in “such violent circumstances” leaves wounds that can never adequately heal.
Victim impact statements on behalf of Mr McCarthy’s family were read to the court today by prosecuting counsel Fiona McGowan BL.
Mr McCarthy’s partner of 31 years, Nia O’Reilly said she used to be an optimistic person but now she just has “sleepless nights and panic attacks” when she is up walking the floorboards wondering why someone would do this.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would have to say my children’s father was murdered,” she said.
She said Mr McCarthy is constantly in her thoughts and the “pain, anger, loneliness, worry and heartache” have been overwhelming.
“I still think to this day they had the wrong person, the wrong house,” she said in her statement. “Thomas was a gentleman. He had good morals and would do anything for anyone.”
She added: “To think that someone would walk up to his mother’s door and do this. Why, why, why”.
The victim’s mother, Pauline McCarthy, said it was difficult to put into words the “complete devastation and heartache” that the loss of Thomas has caused to her family.
She said what happened to her son “haunts” her daily, adding, “he is the last thing I think of when I go to sleep and the first thing I think of when I wake up.”
Thomas had been killed “cruelly and so senselessly” in the place he called home, a place he “should have been able to feel safe”, she added.
Pauline said the family have been left with “so many questions” and “no answers”.
Danielle McCarthy, the deceased’s niece, said her uncle always “lived life to the full” and loved travelling and seeing other parts of the world whenever he got the chance.
She said Mr McCarthy “never had an easy life” and had “worked extra hard for everything he had”. Family was a big part of his life, she said, and he loved coming home to Dublin to see family and friends. Danielle said she and her siblings looked up to Thomas as a father figure.
She said she couldn’t understand why anyone would want to “ruthlessly murder someone who was so kind and caring”.
"We will never fully know why this was done to Thomas or how people can sleep at night knowing the heartache they have caused,” she said.
Speaking outside court following Crawford’s sentencing, the deceased’s mother Pauline said Mr McCarthy was: “A good son, a good father, a good uncle. All his friends and everything are broken hearted…I got a message from England how they were missing him.”
Ms McCarthy said her son had done “nothing wrong” and questioned why Crawford “took a lovely chap like that away from us.”
“He’s still in the hall. He’s still there,” she said. “I see him all the time and I talk to him all the time…I don’t know how I wasn’t killed because the bullets went through where I was standing. I just hope no other mother has to go through that because I’d never like them to feel the pain I’m feeling, and this will be with me until the day I die. Till the day I die. My Thomas.
Describing the moment her son was killed, she said: “I was there, I went to the door with Thomas, and I thought it was bangers thrown into my hall. The noise, the smell. I turned around and I said, ‘what’s all that Thomas’ and he fell down on top of me.”
Nia O’Reilly said: “Justice was done today”.
She said her partner was “a good man” and “an innocent man” who would “do anything for anybody”.
Ms O’Reilly said the family “don’t know” why Mr McCarthy was killed and said they would “probably never find out”.
Referring to Crawford, she said: “He’s just a lying, murdering rat”.
She added: “They’ve ripped the biggest part of our family away from us. He was our backbone, he was everything to us and they just took him away with no thought. And they don’t even know why. He did nothing wrong…he was just a giver. It’s just horrible I go home and he’s not there. We’ll never ever, ever be a mended family again. He’s changed our lives completely.”
