Protected witness Russell Warren told the Special Criminal Court today that Mr John Gilligan, the man accused of murdering Veronica Guerin, threatened to kill him after he had taken part in the murder.
Warren said he stole the motorbike used in the murder and followed Ms Guerin's car from Naas courthouse on the day of her murder. He told the court that he spoke to Mr Gilligan by mobile phone before and after the murder and he witnessed a gunman fire shots into her car when it was stopped at traffic lights.
Warren said Mr Gilligan threatened to kill him and his family before the murder and, three months after the killing, told him he was going to have to kill him because he had been interviewed by the gardaí.
Warren (37), who is serving five years in prison for stealing the motorbike used in the murder and for handling the proceeds of drug trafficking, said he rang John Gilligan after he had witnessed the shooting. "I told him they were after shooting somebody. He said: 'Are they gone, did they get away?'
"He said 'are they dead?' and I said they shot somebody five times. I said I was just behind the car. He said the same thing will happen to you and to your mate if you do anything about it."
Warren said he collected and counted money for Mr Gilligan from early 1996 and delivered money sometimes to England, and Belgium but usually to Amsterdam. He said he never travelled with less than £100,000 and usually changed the money at a bureau de change at Amsterdam's Central Station. He was paid £1,000 a time for these trips and had to pay his own expenses.
He told prosecuting counsel Mr Peter Charleton Sc that he used to drive Mr Gilligan from his equestrian centre at Enfield to a bookmakers in Lucan and he said he would have had "face to face" contact with him more than one hundred times since meeting him in early 1996.
He said he and a friend stole a motorbike from a lock up garage in Dun Laoghaire when they were drunk and stored it a garage in Terenure. He tried unsuccessfully to sell the bike and mentioned to Mr Gilligan that he had a motorbike and Mr Gilligan told him: "Hang on to the bike, I might need it."
Mr Gilligan and Brian Meehan later came to the Terenure garage to look at the bike and Mr Gilligan told him to get it ready, put indicators and number plates on it and make sure it was full of petrol.
Meehan later came and test drove the bike several days before the Guerin murder. Warren said that afterwards he was in the back seat of a car with Mr Gilligan and Brian Meehan in the front and Mr Gilligan said to him: "If you ever make a statement against me or ever talk to the guards about me, your mother, your father, your brothers and sisters, I'll kill youse. No matter where you are I'll kill you."
On the morning of the murder Brian Meehan came to collect the motorbike and told him that John Gilligan wanted him to go to Naas to follow a red Opel Calibra car. He was also given a description of a woman and told her name was Veronica Guerin.
"I was to ring Brian and ring John and tell them which direction the car was travelling in," he said. He received a call from Mr Gilligan who told him to do what Meehan wanted him to do and to keep in contact with Meehan and Mr Gilligan at all times.
Warren said that the motorbike, driven by Meehan and with a passenger, passed him and then he saw it stopped at traffic lights in front of him.
"I just saw the person on the back of the bike put his foot down to stabilise himself. He reached over to the roof of the Opel and he fired a shot. The bike was about four cars away. Then he fired another shot. He leaned over and then he fired three consecutive shots. He put the gun back around the waistband of his trousers , then they just drove off."
Warren said he was "stunned and shattered" by what he saw. He said that he met Mr Gilligan in October that year at a hotel room near Russell Square in London and asked him why Ms Guerin was murdered.
He told the court that Mr Gilligan told him he wasn't going to prison and he didn't want his business to be ruined. Warren said he had been arrested by the gardaí on September 30th,1996 and released after questioning.
It was the thirteenth day of the trial of John Gilligan (48), with addresses at Corduff Avenue, Blanchardstown, Dublin; Jessbrook Equestrian Centre, Mucklon, Enfield, Co Kildare; and HM Prison Belmarsh, London, who has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Sunday Independent crime reporter Veronica Guerin(37) at Naas Road, Clondalkin, Dublin on June 26th, 1996.
Mr Gilligan also denies fifteen other counts alleging the importation of cannabis and firearms and ammunition offences.