Cousin claims Dundon told him he ordered Roy Collins' killing
A man serving a life sentence for murder has told the Special Criminal Court that his first cousin Wayne Dundon told him he ordered the killing of Limerick businessman Roy Collins.
Anthony “Noddy” McCarthy today gave evidence in the trial of Wayne Dundon (aged 36), of Lenihan Avenue, Prospect and Nathan Killeen (aged 24) of Hyde Road, Prospect who have pleaded not guilty to the murder of 35-year-old Roy Collins at Coin Castle Amusements, Roxboro Road Shopping Centre on April 9, 2009.
McCarthy (aged 32), who is a first cousin of Wayne Dundon, is serving a life sentence for the murder of Kieran Keane in Limerick in January 2003. His brother Christopher McCarthy (aged 31) gave evidence at the trial last week.
Anthony McCarthy told counsel for the prosecution, Mr Michael O’Higgins SC, that he knew the Dundons going back a long time and spent summer holidays with them when they were growing up in Hackney in London during the 1990s.
McCarthy agreed that he continues to challenge his conviction and told the court that he has appealed it all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, which he said was “kind of the last stop”.
He told Mr O’Higgins that he was in Wheatfield Prison from 2005 to 2010, where he was in the same “paint party” with Wayne Dundon and his brothers John Dundon and Dessie Dundon. The witness said that a paint party is tasked with painting and touching up paint in the prison and that he would see the Dundons “all the time”.
McCarthy said that sometime after 9:30am on the day Roy Collins was murdered, he heard Wayne Dundon “roaring” from a cell right across from his own, which belonged to a Lebanese man.
He told the court that he walked in to the cell and saw Wayne Dundon on a mobile phone shouting and screaming: “You’d better do this, you never do nothing for our family, you’d better do this or you’ll be sorry”.
McCarthy said he heard Wayne Dundon say: “If you don’t do it then you and your mother are going to be sorry”.
The witness described Wayne Dundon as being “hyper”.
He said after Wayne Dundon had hung up on the call he asked him “what’s up?”, to which the accused man told him he had “ordered James Dillon to go kill Roy Collins”.
McCarthy said he told Wayne Dundon that he should not talk to James Dillon like that as he was “only a young fella”, was his cousin and was not involved in violence. He told the court he was disgusted as at the time there were ongoing peace talks to end family feuding as part of the Limerick regeneration project.
He said he then heard Wayne Dundon say to his brother Dessie “that f**king muppet Gareth Collins wouldn’t drive the car neither”.
McCarthy said he then returned to his own cell, where he was “very stressed out” and “very angry” about what had occurred. “I didn’t want it to happen, I was trying to figure out ways to stop it”, McCarthy said.
He said he thought the best way to do this was to talk to Dessie Dundon and tell him there had been a big outcry over the murder of Shane Geoghegan and for “something like this” there was going to an even bigger outcry.
McCarthy also asked Mr O’Higgins to be allowed tell the court that he planned to contact a member of his family to in turn contact a member of Steve Collins’ family to tell them the Dundons “were up to something”. Steve Collins is the father of the deceased Roy Collins.
However, McCarthy agreed that he did neither of those things.
The witness said he later checked the “teletext” service and saw that a man had been shot in a pub in Limerick. McCarthy said he knew then this was Roy Collins, but he was initially happy as the thought the report stated the man had been shot in the leg, which he believed in the worst case would result in hospitalisation for a couple of weeks.
McCarthy said that sometime after 2pm on April 9 he met Wayne Dundon on the top of the prison landing and told him he had seen from teletext that a man had gotten shot in the leg. He told Mr O’Higgins that Wayne Dundon said “Steve Collins didn’t believe me when I did that in court”. The witness gestured by tapping the wristband of his watch hand while saying this to the court.
He told Mr O’Higgins that he asked Wayne Dundon if the man was shot in the leg, to which Wayne Dundon replied “as for him being shot in the leg, he’s dead” and “I warned James Dillon to kill him”.
Asked by Mr O’Higgins who “him” referred to, Mr McCarthy replied “Roy Collins”.
Mr McCarthy agreed that he had made a statement to gardaí on September 3, 2013 and wrote to gardaí on April 5, 2011 where he described everything he had made a statement about.
