The written and filmed accounts based on the life of Martin Cahill have variously portrayed him as an organisational genius; a vicious criminal who "crucified" an associate by driving nails through his hands, but who had a warm, caring side; the godfather of Irish crime who was at times hard up for cash and had to rob small businesses; and a teetotal family man with a strong community spirit who was a polygamist and who financed drug deals and protected heroin dealers in the south inner city.
The confusion about Cahill is unlikely to be clarified by the latest fictionalised account of his life: Vicious Circle, made for BBC Northern Ireland and broadcast on Tuesday night. It was described in the publicity hand-out as a "raw-edged thriller", based on the "real life story" of the "audacious and notorious criminal". The producers say they sought not to portray Cahill as a "Robin Hood" figure - possibly a reference to the cinematic version of Cahill's life by John Boorman in which Cahill, played by Brendan Gleeson, is portrayed in what some might see as a rather sympathetic light.
Both films follow a similar story-line, with versions of the two major robberies attributed to Cahill's gang: the robbery of O'Connor's wholesale jewellers in 1983; and the theft of the Beit Collection paintings in 1986 (described in the book about Cahill, The General, Godfather of Crime, by Paul Williams, as the "second biggest art robbery in the World") - and, finally, Cahill's assassination.
All three accounts share the premise that Cahill was, as a "godfather of crime", the most successful Irish criminal of his generation. His nickname, the "General", is said in Williams's book to have come from a comparison with the American second World War Pacific commander, General Douglas MacArthur - although no satisfactory explanation is given for the origin of this juxtaposition.
However, some gardai who knew Cahill regard him rather differently. One officer, who described Cahill as an "ignorant, stupid bastard" said he had an indifferent early career as a robber until he was hired by members of another criminal family, the Dunnes, to carry out surveillance work on their targets. Cahill apparently excelled at this job as he was prepared to lie in hiding for days on these spying missions. Semi-literate, he committed details to memory very successfully. However, the detective maintains that Cahill was regarded as a "bungler" by the Dunnes and dropped from their team when they came to carry out robberies.
With regard to his reputed success, while he later organised his own team of armed robbers, it is pointed out that he had nothing to do with the largest cash robberies including raids on cash centres and security vans in which other gangs specialised. Some of these netted sums of cash of up to £3 million, yet the gangs responsible retained low profiles.
The robbery of O'Connor's jewellers may have netted Cahill and his gang bullion and jewellery worth £2 million, but its final value to them once it was sold through the hands of stolen-goods handlers was probably only a fraction of this. The Beit painting robbery, in which the total value of the paintings was put at between £20 million and £40 million, was the biggest robbery in the history of the State but in value terms to Cahill and his gang it was worth, at most, a few hundred thousand pounds, as the paintings were very difficult to sell.
In relation to the Beit robbery, the book and film accounts contend that Cahill met members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) to sell them the paintings. Vicious Circle portrayed Cahill and an associate meeting UVF members in a well-known public house in the loyalist heartland of Sandy Row, in Belfast.
But there is no evidence that Cahill ever met any loyalists. The UVF leadership also denies ever having contact with Cahill.
Senior gardai have told The Irish Times that a more likely scenario is that Cahill offered some of the Beit paintings for sale to a man who specialised in handling art and antiques, particularly Georgian silver stolen from large country houses. This man, who was based in Drogheda, is known to have conducted a large trade in stolen goods and to have had contact with both loyalists and republicans. He was associated with a former RUC officer who became involved in drugs and drug trafficking and who had close associations with loyalists from Portadown. These men, in turn, appear to have had contacts with figures in Belgium involved in the illegal trafficking of stolen artefacts and drugs.
It is believed the Beit paintings passed through the man in Drogheda and through him to the ex-RUC man and the loyalists to British and Belgian criminals. Some detail of this emerged when three loyalists from Portadown were arrested with one of the Beit paintings in Istanbul in February 1990. The book and both films share the view that the discovery of the painting in the hands of the loyalists caused the Provisional IRA to decide to kill Cahill. Again, some gardai dispute this version. Statements from a number of criminals during the investigation of the murder of the journalist, Veronica Guerin, in 1996 revealed another scenario.
These accounts suggest that Cahill had put up a large sum of money - put at between £500,000 and £800,000 - to finance a cannabis-trafficking operation by another Dublin criminal who had close associations with a leading member of Cahill's gang. It was said the deal Cahill negotiated would have given him a return of 300 per cent on his loan.
By the early 1990s, most members of Cahill's gang were imprisoned or facing lengthy jail sentences and his days as a significant figure in the Dublin crime world were, effectively, at an end. He was also suffering from ill-health from untreated diabetes. It is strongly suspected he sought a change of career away from robbery to acting as financier for drug trafficking.
According to the accounts which reached the Guerin murder investigators, the criminal to whom he had made the large advance decided that rather than repay Cahill such a high rate of interest, he would have him killed.
It was said this criminal employed the services of a republican paramilitary figure from the south of the city and paid this man around £25,000 for the assassination. There are well-established links between the drug dealer and this splinter republican group stemming from associations made during periods of imprisonment in Portlaoise Prison.
With Cahill dead, the drug dealer and his associates had a clear run at controlling the drug supply in the south side of Dublin. It is estimated that over the period 1993 to 1996 this gang earned revenue from cannabis dealing put at above £30 million - a sum many times larger than anything Cahill had earned in a life-time of crime.
The IRA did claim it killed Cahill, but only in a statement issued two days after the event and after the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) had claimed it had done so and then retracted its admission.
The information which reached the Guerin investigators was that a deal was done with an IRA figure in south Dublin, who in return for a substantial payment from the drug dealer would claim responsibility for the killing and inform the IRA leadership that he had sanctioned the killing. The IRA leadership in the Republic does issue misleading or false statements - as was seen in the case of the murder of Det Garda Jerry McCabe when the IRA emphatically denied any of its members was involved and was then subsequently forced to retract when forensic and ballistic evidence quickly established clear links to the organisation.
The Cahill story is still developing and gardai accept the full story of his death is not yet known. Meanwhile, a third cinema version of his life is being completed in Dublin and will be released later this year. One detective who knew Cahill observed that, even with his remarkable gift for attracting publicity, Cahill could not "in his wildest dream" have imagined such recognition in death.
