THE murder of Peter Judge, one of Dublin's main drug dealers, may generate another spate of gangland violence. Judge, shot dead Saturday morning, controlled the trade, in Finglas and other areas of the north city. He was the first victim of a such a killing since last September.
Judge was shot twice in the head as he sat in his car at the Royal Oak pub on Finglas Road, and gardai have said there could be several suspects. The man had been involved in feuds with criminal families and is believed to have murdered or seriously injured several of his associates after arguments over their drug business.
Judge had arrived at the pub with a woman, believed to have been his girlfriend, at about 9.45 p.m. on Saturday. He parked his car in the pub's car park. The couple paid a £5 cover charge to hear the band Jacob's Ladder. They left at about 12.15 a.m. There was speculation that Judge had received a call on his mobile phone beforehand, but this could not be confirmed.
Shortly afterwards the woman ran back to the cabaret door. "She was hysterical," Mr Jim Stafford, the publican, said yesterday. "She was standing at the door shouting something like Get the police. I told the staff to stay inside, and, one of them rang 999."
He said the pub was busy and the noise inside meant few customers were aware of what had happened in the car park.
Judge had had time to get into the car and start the engine. He had turned on the windscreen wipers In the light drizzle. But his girlfriend appeared not to have been in the car when the first bullet shattered the driver's side window. The second was at close range to the back of the head. According to one account a lone gunman, armed with a handgun, ran from the scene.
Judge was regularly in the pub on Saturday nights. Mr Stafford said he had realised who his customer was only a week earlier, after a Sunday newspaper which nicknamed him "the psycho" published a photograph of his face.
"He had a real babyface on him, like he just made his first communion yesterday," Mr Stafford said.
Judge (41) was the major cannabis and heroin dealer in Finglas, Cabra and Ballymun and considered one of Dublin's most dangerous criminals. He was well known in Finglas.
As his body lay slumped in the car yesterday morning local people driving slowly past shouted that he was "a scumbag". Others who stood watching the Garda activity said they knew Judge but were reluctant to talk about him.
Gardai interviewed Judge's companion yesterday although she was said to be "too distraught" to remember details. Officers said they had yet to establish if he was married.
Garda technical experts examined the scene from early morning. Initial searches of the area uncovered no shell casings, suggesting a revolver may have been used.
Gardai also removed Judge's Fiesta car and the blue Nissan van and silver Volkswagen Golf parked on each side of it at the time of the shooting.
A later post mortem examination by an assistant State pathologist, Dr Declan Gilsenan, confirmed that Judge was shot in the head.
Until recently Judge lived with his mother at Ballygall Crescent in Finglas, and also at Attracta Road in Cabra.