LYING on his bed with half an ear cocked to the radio, customs officer Michael O'Flynn heard a news report that a yacht in distress was being towed to the village of Courtmacsherry in west Cork.
O'Flynn would have remained in his bedroom in Cobh, Co Cork, had not the newsreader mentioned the yacht was named Karma. That triggered alarm bells and O'Flynn immediately set out for Courtmacsherry.
That was the morning of July 23rd, 1991. Now, in the coffee shops of Cork, the talk is of cannabis, antiques and how that news report resulted in the arrest of Christoper O'Connell, three others and the seizure of a 693 kg of cannabis worth £6 million.
On Monday, in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, O'Connell was sentenced to eight years in jail after being found guilty of charges arising out of the discovery of that cargo.
The coffee drinkers of Cork are swapping tales of O'Connell's business activities, theories about how he amassed his wealth and comments on the shame he brought on his decent Cork family, which for decades has operated a furniture making business on the city's Lavitt's Quay. But O'Connell - known as Golly because of the hairstyle of his youth - has long provided gossip.
The five day court case revealed details of an epic voyage on board the 45 foot Karma of the East which took the crew from Dartmouth to Brest in France, La Coruna in northern Spain, Bayona near Vigo, Oporto in Portugal, on to Villamoro, and down south to Morocco where the bales of cannabis - which O'Connell said he believed were gold coins - were thrown on board and back to Cork.
Before being caught with this huge haul of cannabis, O'Connell was not known to be involved with drugs. He describes himself as an antiques dealer. And indeed, last December he was one of the biggest bidders at an auction, buying a George III satinwood table for £37,000 and spending more than £56,000 in all.
Afterwards, he claimed all his customers were wealthy Irish people in the US. He said he sent, on average, one 49 foot container of antiques a fortnight out of London to the US. "If anything of any importance in period Irish furniture comes on the market, I purchase it. Nobody would outbid me because I have the best clients in the world", he said then.
He was the owner of an amusement arcade in the city and had two previous convictions for breaking gaming laws on a number of counts, in 1980 and 1994. At one stage, gardai confiscated a number of machines from his Academy Street premises.
A senior garda in Cork describes how O'Connell liked to live well and had a talent for spotting ways to make money. "He was an opportunist who moved with the times, making a lot of money along the way. Image was important to him and he always drove a big car", he said. "I suppose you could say he lived in that grey area between right and wrong and got a thrill out of that. He was a likable rogue really."
Others are less complimentary, including his Montenotte neighbours. "He was always cocky but even up to last week he was convinced he would not go to jail. There was no shortage of money, he was driving around in a black 96 registered Mercedes and used to turn up at the Bridewell to sign on for his bail. Of course, none of us was really all that surprised", one neighbour confided in a distinctive Cork city accent this week.
It was just that accent which led to suspicions that Christopher O'Connell had moved into drug smuggling. A British policeman who regularly holidayed in Cork, and was friendly with gardai in the city, heard some men in Dartmouth speaking with the familiar accent.
He became curious and after making inquiries discovered a yacht had been chartered for £6,000 by a Christopher O'Connell from Cork. He relayed this information back to his Garda friends.
"He hired the boat using his own name and then flew out from Cork airport, with several people knowing that he was going", a Cork garda said. "That sort of openness is not the normal way of operating for a drug dealer but Golly had his own, unsubtle way, of going about things.
"We had seen him in the company of some of the bigger Cork drug importers but didn't think that much of it at the time. You'd be as likely to see him in the company of people like that as chatting with a garda. But after getting the information from Dartmouth the pieces began to fit."
FROM the beginning, gardai and customs liaised on the case and monitored the movements of the yacht. Once they saw it had gone to Spain and was taking a route towards Morocco, their suspicions were confirmed. "At that stage, we started thinking about drugs", a garda involved in the case said.
The court was told the crew believed O'Connell had arranged a Portuguese cruise for a wealthy American and his daughter. O'Connell then claimed he was set up by an American, whom he had met greyhound racing, or that the American was in turn set up by someone else, possibly Frank Sullivan, an American diver for whom he was doing a favour by bringing back the gold coins.
One aspect of the case which has left gardai baffled is why Christopher O'Connell actually ended up on the yacht that limped into Courtmacsherry. "We couldn't understand why such a clever guy ended up on that boat" one remarked.
It appears, though, that O'Connell had never intended to be on board - but another blunder meant he had to make up the crew.
At one point a fifth Cork man was on board but he left the yacht due to ill health and flew home.
Whatever the real story, the crew of four ended up wrestling with bad weather and a yacht described in court as "falling apart but still floating". Eventually after losing their steering and fighting a fire, they had to send for help. The Courtmacsherry lifeboat came to their assistance and early in the morning they limped into the harbour.
Marine Rescue Co ordination reported the rescue to RTE, which broadcast the item on news bulletins which alerted customs officer O'Flynn.
O'Flynn, a member of the then newly formed Drugs Surveillance Unit, was joined by a colleague on the way to Courtmacsherry. When they arrived, the Karma was moored at the pier. As the customs officers went aboard they found two of the crew about to leave for home. Although tired, the crew was apparently in good spirits and O'Connell was calm.
They chatted about the trip and were told the crew had travelled from Galway. But the customs officials knew their voyage had brought them much further. At that point, one of the customs men left the yacht to use the call box on the village pier to phone for assistance.
It took time for help to arrive so the two decided to search the boat for themselves. Without too much looking they came across the bales. When asked, O'Connell said they had been used for ballast, but the wrapping was a type normally used for cannabis and the customs men knew they had found something big.
After a further call from the telephone box, gardaf from Bandon arrived and the four men were arrested. They were brought to Bandon Garda station for questioning. Only O'Connell and his skipper Mr John Ryan, who was acquitted last week, were charged.
Gardai believed the money for the consignment, which was meant for the Irish market, was put up by a consortium of Corks dealers. There are conflicting reports about an incident last year, in which O'Connell was shot in a Dublin restaurant. Some believe it may have been a warning from those associates not to involve them.
Despite their impeccable information about the chartering of the boat, its route and suspected cargo, the Garda and Customs both admit they would probably not have caught the Karma had Michael O'Flynn not been listening to his radio. It was simply his good fortune and Christopher O'Connell's bad luck.
TODAY the Customs National Drugs Team, with 76 members nationwide and 16 in Cork, is in place. But the people of Courtmacsherry well remember that customs officials queued to use the public telephone on the pier to talk to headquarters the day they found drugs on the Karma. And they point to a persisting lack of such facilities as mobile phones and boats which would allow officials to board and search suspect yachts off the coast.
Gardai and customs had feared that O'Connell might use the cover of the Tall Ships race, held in Cork in July 1991, to bring in the stash.
Hundreds of vessels made their way into Cork Harbour as part of the event.
"We had luck on our side in Courtmacsherry. Imagine the scenario if they had decided to use the Tall Ships as a cover. Now that would have been virtually impossible."
