VEIL OF SILENCE
J.P. O’Sullivan is a former Special Branch detective, who served in the Garda Síochána for thirty-two years. During the period of the Northern Ireland Troubles he was involved in intelligence operations against the IRA in the Munster region. A native of Kerry, he has lived in Cork for many years and is married with two daughters.
VEIL OF SILENCE
How the Irish State Covered Up an IRA Murder and Framed a Garda
Whistleblower
J.P. O’SULLIVAN
First published in 2026 by Merrion Press
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Newbridge Co. Kildare
Ireland
www.merrionpress.ie
© J.P. O’Sullivan, 2026
978 1 78537 588 0 (Paper) 978 1 78537 590 3 (eBook)
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
JOHN CORCORAN WAS MURDERED BY the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) in 1985, after officers of the highest rank in the Garda Síochána failed to take action to save his life. They had several opportunities to do so. In 1998 the journalist Vincent Browne wrote that ‘the cover up of [John Corcoran’s] murder and the obvious complicity of the Gardaí in that murder remain by far the greatest scandal of our public life’.1 I would add that this complicity has left a stain on the soul of the Garda Síochána.
Any reference to John Corcoran in this book is made with the greatest of respect for the man and his memory. He was a devoted husband and father, and I have tried to observe the utmost sensitivity so as not to cause further hurt to his family. This book has been written because I believe it is in the public interest, and also in the hope that, even at this late remove, justice will be done for the Corcoran family.
In addition, the book recounts some of my own general experiences during thirty-two years’ service in the Irish police force: the wrongs and the rights; the highs and the lows; the characters, the strokes and the sometimes colourful and bizarre situations I encountered; the power vested in authority and the abuse of that power; the
persecution and prosecution. When you challenge people in positions of power and authority, it carries a price. When you challenge the status quo, it carries a price. When you take on or question the people who maintain and preserve that status quo, it carries a price.
The chain of events described in this book is complex and, at times, almost defies belief. For that reason, I begin my account with a brief outline of the facts to give readers a sense of the bigger picture. In subsequent chapters I relate my knowledge of the events leading up to John Corcoran’s murder, the garda investigation and cover-up, and the long-term consequences for myself.
CHAPTER 1
A BRUTAL MURDER
From McCurtain Street, Cork for circulation as per Code 43.12 and attention of Inspector i/c Communications, Dublin Castle.
Subject: Missing person – Member of the PIRA. John Corcoran, Ballyvolane, Cork. Description: 45 yrs old, 5’1”, brown wavy hair, moustache, wearing brown shoes, white socks, brown slacks and green shirt. Subject is a member of the Provisional IRA and is missing since 5.30pm on Tuesday 19th March 1985. He suffers from epilepsy. Corcoran is in possession of motor car Reg no 5308-ZF. This is a silver-coloured Fiat Mirafiori.
Station of origin: Mayfield. Any information to Sergeant i/c Mayfield.
End of message from McCurtain Street. 2.50pm on 21st March 1985.
THE LAST TIME I SPOKE to John Corcoran was by phone on Tuesday, 19 March 1985. He told me he was going ‘on a job’ to Kerry, his code for IRA-related activity.* A forty-five-year-old father of eight from Ballyvolane on the north side of Cork city, he had been a republican sympathiser and activist since the early 1970s and was sworn into the IRA in 1975. That year, a Special Branch colleague and I had recruited him as a garda informant, and in November 1975 he became a registered agent of the Irish State. I was John’s Special Branch ‘handler’ and the last member of the Garda Síochána to speak to him before his disappearance.
When we spoke on 19 March, he didn’t express any unease or apprehension about the ‘job’, and I didn’t detect any; I had known him for almost a decade and was well attuned to the emotions in his voice. Because of the nature of the ‘job’ he was on, and the people I thought he might encounter, I expected him to contact me the following day. That was the usual procedure and, if necessary, we would then arrange a meeting.
When I hadn’t heard from John by Thursday 21 March, I phoned his workplace and was told he hadn’t been seen since leaving at 5.20 p.m. on Tuesday. I then phoned his home and spoke briefly with his wife. She told me John was missing and that she had met with gardaí earlier that morning to report her husband’s disappearance. She asked if I could suggest anyone she could talk to and I gave her the name of an IRA member from the north side of Cork city.
The missing person case became a murder investigation on
* The terms Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Provisional IRA (PIRA) are used interchangeably in the book since the Official IRA (OIRA) was largely inert from the early 1970s.
Saturday 23 March. An anonymous telephone call was made to a priest at the Pro Cathedral in Dublin – this was standard procedure for the IRA when it wanted to disclose information to the Irish authorities. The caller stated that John Corcoran had been executed by the IRA and that his body could be found near Ballincollig, County Cork. The priest informed the gardaí, and the report was forwarded to C.3 – the Crime and Security Branch – at Garda Headquarters (HQ) in the Phoenix Park.
A garda search party was mobilised, and five hours later John’s body was found in a ditch at Kilnaglory, a country area south-west of Ballincollig, just off the main Cork to Killarney road. He was wrapped in a green sleeping bag and his head was covered by black plastic bags. The post-mortem report stated he had been killed by a single bullet to the side of the head from a high-velocity weapon. Earlier in the day, his silver Fiat Mirafiori had been found by gardaí at Pope’s Quay in Cork city.
When I eventually learned that John’s body had been found, my initial reaction was one of shock – he had travelled to his abduction, interrogation and brutal murder with my prior knowledge and unwitting approval. It greatly troubled me then and does so to this day. When the initial shock had subsided, professional instinct took over and I tried to analyse what might have happened.
Soon after the discovery of the body, a seven-strong unit from Garda HQ arrived in Cork to direct the murder investigation. The unit was known by many names, including ‘the Murder Squad’. It consisted
of one detective inspector, two detective sergeants and four detective gardaí. The detective gardaí specialised in ballistics, fingerprints, crime scene photographs and mapping.
Assisting the Murder Squad was the Cork-based investigation team. It numbered thirty-two and consisted of one detective superintendent, two uniformed superintendents, one detective inspector, four detective sergeants and twenty-three detective gardaí. The chief superintendent at Union Quay station, the highest-ranking garda in the Cork area, was in overall charge locally, but in name only.
Investigations such as this were run from Garda HQ in Dublin and followed well-established procedures. The Murder Squad would take complete command and control, while local officers, with due deference to rank, would assist and follow its orders. A member of the Murder Squad was always in charge of the ‘Job Book’, through which tasks and enquiries were delegated to detectives and gardaí on the ground. In the John Corcoran case, there would have been constant liaison between the Squad and Garda HQ, especially with C.3.
I was off duty between 20 and 25 March, but I was available at home. From the morning of 21 March, I had waited for the missing persons team to contact me. I assumed they would immediately want details on what I knew about John Corcoran’s last known movements. I waited in vain. Instead, I heard about the discovery of John’s body from a trusted colleague, one of the two detectives who had assisted me in my dealings with him. There was no official contact from the garda authorities in Cork that day, so I had to rely on media reports for further news and information.
My colleague had participated in the search at Ballincollig on 23
March, but that was his sole involvement in the investigation. From then on, he too was excluded from the investigation, even though, from the joint written reports we had submitted to Garda HQ, garda authorities in Cork and Dublin would have been aware of what we knew about John Corcoran’s movements in the previous weeks and months. Investigators would have known that I was John Corcoran’s handler, and the Murder Squad would have been briefed on John Corcoran’s role as an informant.
On the evening of 24 March, my detective superintendent in Cork phoned me. We discussed the case and I asked him why nobody on the investigation team had yet contacted me or sought my assistance. He replied that he had been away on leave, had been recalled at some inconvenience and simply did not know. Apart from this phone call, the only official contact I received was when armed protection was placed on my home a few days later. This happened on 29 March, after the IRA had named and threatened me in a second communication concerning John Corcoran’s murder. The statement, reported in the national newspapers, claimed that Corcoran
admitted under questioning that he was working for the Gardaí. Given that the Special Branch are now copying the tactics of the RUC, we are offering a 14-day amnesty to informers in the 26 Counties who have been recruited as a result of intimidation or blackmail. Finally we would remind [named detective] and his ilk that their ruthless misuse of power makes them responsible for the fate of John Corcoran.
Informers beware.1
There was no doubt that the IRA was responsible for the murder of John Corcoran, but when his body was found on Saturday 23 March he had been missing for nearly four days. The question for me was what had happened in the days between his reported disappearance and the discovery of his body? The disappearance of a state informant should have prompted alarm and immediate action. Had Garda HQ put a plan in motion to track him down and rescue him?
There are no definitive answers to these questions. The only testimony that exists about what happened to John Corcoran comes from Sean O’Callaghan, a pivotal but shadowy figure in this story.
O’Callaghan, a native of Tralee, was a high-ranking IRA officer in the 1980s, but in 1979 he had also turned garda informant. A garda source later described him as the force’s most important source of intelligence on the IRA in this period. During his later imprisonment in Northern Ireland and after his release, he offered two completely different accounts of his involvement in John Corcoran’s murder. In the first version, as related in three newspaper interviews, he claimed to have murdered John Corcoran himself; in the second, recounted in his memoir, The Informer, he claimed he had attempted to organise a garda rescue of the IRA captive.
O’Callaghan’s claim about a rescue attempt is impossible to verify, but what is certain is that John Corcoran’s life might have been saved if swift action had been taken locally in Cork when it became clear he had disappeared. I am not saying that my colleague and I had all the answers, but we did have a valuable insight into John’s activities. I was aware of the people he was likely to be meeting in Kerry. It is impossible to predict what might have happened, but a gathering of garda officers in Cork to analyse the situation could have revealed
leads as to his whereabouts, potentially allowing for his rescue. A series of quick searches in Kerry could have unnerved the local IRA, and news could have reached John’s abductors that the net was closing in on them.
Instead, the Murder Squad seemed to tear up the basic rules of a murder investigation. Nobody displayed any interest in John Corcoran’s movements and contacts in the crucial weeks and months before his disappearance. Why did they not send for me or my colleague, John’s handlers, at the earliest opportunity? We were the two detectives in Cork who knew more about John Corcoran than anyone else on the force.
The conduct of the investigation was puzzling and disturbing. The only logical conclusion I can come to is that the Murder Squad knew before it had even left Dublin that the murder would not be solved in Cork and that the killers were elsewhere. Clearly, it didn’t want any information we possessed to emerge during the investigation. It especially didn’t want Sean O’Callaghan’s name or his connection with John Corcoran to surface. I cannot conceive of any other explanation. The investigation was effectively a sham exercise and cover-up from the word go. There were some pleas to the public for information, and a few of the usual suspects were rounded up, but by the end of April the investigation was being quietly wound down and the Murder Squad returned to Dublin.
No one has ever been charged with John Corcoran’s murder. It remains a case of betrayal and justice denied. Despite his family’s
pleas for justice – and considerable media and political pressure for action on the case in the late 1990s, after the release of Sean O’Callaghan from prison – a pattern of secrecy and inaction by the gardaí and state authorities surrounds the investigation to this day.
I believe John’s life could and should have been saved by the gardaí. In February and September 1984, I had sent intelligence reports to Assistant Garda Commissioner Stephen Fanning, clearly identifying a potential risk to John Corcoran’s ‘cover’ and expressing my serious concern for his safety. I sought direction on how to handle the situation but received no response. It was in that vacuum of silence and inaction by garda officers of the highest rank that John’s fate was sealed. He became the victim of murky manoeuvres in high places that ran parallel to a legitimate garda intelligence-gathering operation against the IRA.
As the years passed, the State cover-up around the circumstances of John Corcoran’s murder also had dire consequences for my career and reputation. In October 1996 I was arrested at my home and charged with criminal damage; in March 1998 I was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison suspended. One of the conditions of my sentencing forbade me from communicating with any member of the Garda Síochána.
I contend in this book that the entire case against me was fabricated; it was a frame-up. But why was I being framed? It is true that I had made enemies in senior garda ranks over the years, having chosen to defend myself against a campaign of bullying and harassment that had started in the 1970s. With the support of the Garda Representative Association (GRA), I was forced to resort to legal action to secure and safeguard the normal entitlements and
allowances that I was due. As a result, I was labelled a troublemaker and far worse in secret reports to Garda HQ, which alleged, with no basis in fact, that I was involved in suspicious activities.
Yet, even allowing for that, why would the gardaí and other state authorities resort to such extreme measures to silence me? Was it because I possessed the evidence that would directly expose the complicity of the most senior ranks of the gardaí in the murder of an IRA informant? Was it because the evidence I possessed would clearly prove that the State had effectively ‘played God’ in allowing one informant to be murdered to protect the cover of another more valued informant?
Whatever the reason, it seems they decided that I had to be silenced at all costs.