Third protected witness takes stand in Gilligan trial
A third state supergrass, Charles Bowden, has taken the witness stand in the Special Criminal Court to give evidence against John Gilligan.
Earlier, the court heard details of letters written by Gilligan to another protected witness, Russell Warren, in the wake of Veronica Guerin’s murder.
Bowden told the court today that he entered the drugs trade and began dealing with cannabis and ecstasy for a reward of £500 per week.
In the period from 1994 to 1996, he kept buying an increasing quantity of drugs from a man at a hotel car park in Co Kildare, and then distributed them among a group of customers on the instructions of Brian Meehan.
At the height of the business, he said he was earning about £3,000 per week and recalled meeting John Gilligan for the first time at the Gresham Hotel in Dublin.
After being sent there by Meehan, Bowden said he handed Gilligan a bag of money and that the next time he met him was at Thomas Gilligan’s house, where they were counting money after the Guerin murder.
Earlier, the court was shown four letters sent by John Gilligan to Russell Warren.
In them, Gilligan pleaded with Warren to tell the truth in court and assured him that he and his family had nothing to fear on his release from jail.
