A man convicted of killing a friend in a New Year’s Eve stabbing and who was heavily involved in organised crime has been found dead.
Karl Breen's remains were found in an apartment in Finglas, west Dublin, in the early hours of this morning.
While the investigation into his death is still in the early stages, Garda sources said it appears he died of a drugs overdose.
Gardaí believe his body may have been in the apartment at the Tolka Vale block on Finglas Road for between 24 and 48 hours.
In October 2007, then aged 27 years, Breen was jailed for nine years for stabbing his friend to death.
Breen with an address at Nangor Crescent, Clondalkin, had pleaded not guilty to murdering Martin McLaughlin on January 1st, 2006, but was found guilty of manslaughter by a jury.
Breen had stabbed Mr McLaughlin three times during a row in the Jury’s Croke Park Hotel.
Mr McLaughlin died the following day.
At the time, the court was told Breen and Mr McLaughlin were part of a group of five couples staying at the hotel to ring in the New Year.
They had ordered five bottles of Moet & Chandon champagne before the violence erupted.
Mr Justice Kevin O’Higgins said that although a lot of alcohol had been consumed and no one began the celebrations with an intention of committing a crime, Breen was “not of blameless character.”
He had 18 previous convictions at the time, mostly for public order and road traffic offences.
However, while his alleged links to organised crime were not taken into account because he had no convictions for those crimes, he had been a target of specialist Garda units, including the Garda National Drug Unit.
The court was told during his sentencing that after stabbing his friend he had gone on the run for two days before handing himself into the Garda.
He was regarded as the leader of a west Dublin organised crime group dubbed the D22 gang.
It was involved in drug dealing but also became embroiled in feuding with rival criminal factions which took the form of pipe bomb attacks and shootings.
A close association, Pierce Reid (25), was shot dead in one such attack outside a house in Clondalkin in August 2009.
Breen was also caught with mobile phones while in prison.
He was released last October and had been warned by gardaí that his life was under threat from other criminals.
He was also convicted for his role in dog fighting arising from an incident when pit bull terriers were forced to fight each other in a pit in 2003 while a group of men looked on.
He succeeded in having that conviction overturned.
