An armed robber who wore a red dress when he held two female bank staff captive has been remanded in custody pending sentence for his role in a €700,000 bank heist.
Danny Hamill (49) of Clanmaurice Road, Donnycarney and an accomplice were caught by gardai in the carpark minutes after they left the AIB branch in Crumlin on June 3rd, 2006.
Hamill, orginally from County Armagh, pointed a loaded pistol at a garda after ignoring his shout: “Armed gardai, halt and put your arms up in the air, armed gardai."
A set of keys for the front door of the bank, two 9mm loaded semiautomatic pistols, 34 rounds of live ammunition, including those in the firearms, a radio scanner tuned to garda frequencies and a bag of cash from the raid, were recovered by gardai who arrested Hamill and his accomplice before they got away.
Hamill, who also wore a long black wig when he committed the crime, changed his plea to guilty earlier this week on day two of his trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
He admitted robbing €700,338, false imprisonment of a bank official and possession of a 9mm semiautomatic pistol.
The second man, who was due to be tried with Hamill did not appear on the hearing date last Monday and a warrant has been issued for his arrest. He had been on High Court bail at the time.
Detective Inspector Brian Sutton who led the investigation, told Judge Tony Hunt that gardai were never able to ascertain how the two men came to get the keys for the bank.
He agreed that it could have possibly been either a system failure with the bank’s security system or “through voluntary or involuntary assistance from the staff” but reiterated that gardai were never able to confirm how this happened.
Defence counsel Patrick MacEntee SC said that his client had given him a clear and unambiguous instruction to apologise for the wrong he had done, specifically to the two bank officials, the gardai and the wider communit, which he said was "plighted by violence”.
Mr MacEntee asked Judge Hunt to accept that his client “showed some humanity” by not firing his weapon, “when other people in his situation would have done”.
He said the motivation behind his “belated plea”, which came after one of the bank official’s direct evidence, was to save her distress she would have suffered under cross-examination and to prevent the other woman having to testify at all, rather than a “test-the-waters approach” as suggested by Judge Hunt.
Hamill's six previous convictions included robbery and assault causing actual bodily harm to a garda.
Both were dealt with in the Special Criminal Court and resulted in prison terms of five and two years respectively.
Judge Hunt noted a positive governor’s report that was before the court and adjourned sentencing to next week, saying he needed time to consider the case.