Three heartless thieves jailed over a callous €2million kidnap heist will today launch bids to be freed by Christmas.
The trio including the “inside man” and “mastermind” in an infamous cash-in-transit robbery plot already caused 13 years of legal hell for their traumatised victims.
But they are still insisting on their innocence.
In March 2005 a gang of five terrorised the innocent family of Securicor worker Paul Richardson to get their hands on the millions.
It took 13 years and five costly trials to finally bring them all to justice over the crime that shocked the nation.
Now, “inside man” Niall Byrne – along with two accomplices including the gang’s “mastermind” Mark Farrelly – are trying to get their convictions quashed.
They’ll all be escorted from prison today to the Criminal Courts of Justice where they will launch appeals against their convictions simultaneously, the Irish Mirror has learned.
Mr Richardson’s family watched for over a decade as their tormentors kept getting off on legal technicalities.
And the possibility of three convictions being overturned by Christmas will further torment them.
Rogue former Securicor worker Niall Byrne was convicted last year of helping to rob the millions from the company depot where he worked.
However, he was acquitted of the more serious “tiger kidnap” charges as jurors were unable to decide if he played a part in that.
It followed an extraordinary series of trials that cost tens of millions in legal fees.
Dubbed the “inside man”, Byrne is now serving a 10-year stretch – but claims he was wrongly accused.
The 37-year-old says he’s no “hard-nosed” criminal and played no part in the crime.
Despite crucial mobile phone evidence linking him to “dangerous” heist accomplice Jason Kavanagh, Byrne insists he’s just an innocent family man.
Evidence of calls to his mobile from a phone linked to Kavanagh, 44, of Corduff Avenue, Blanchardstown, on the morning of the robbery helped convict him.
Byrne, of Crumlin Road flats, Dublin, insists he has nothing to hide about his links to Kavanagh.
He admitted to knowing Kavanagh’s wife and that he’d babysat for her.
But Byrne’s defence lawyer Feargal Kavanagh told last year’s trial: “It’s not what you think.”
But a jury disagreed and found the dad of four – who was known for arriving late to work at Securicor – guilty of conspiracy to rob. It took three trials to convict Byrne – his
two previous trials having ended in hung juries.
His 2018 conviction followed 13 years of legal and personal hell for Mr Richardson, wife Marie and their two young sons.
The appeal hearings will last all week at the Court of Appeal.
Byrne wants his conspiracy to rob conviction reversed.
Two others will ask appeal judges to quash their convictions for both robbery and false imprisonment in each case.
Farrelly, 48, of Moatview Court, Priorswood, Coolock – who’s serving 17-and-a-half years – and David Byrne, 46, of Old Brazil Way, Knocksedan, Swords, who’s serving 13-and-a-half years.
In 2009 Judge Tony Hunt called the first three to be convicted for the kidnap “inhuman monsters” .
That trio was “mastermind” Farrelly along with Jason Kavanagh and Christopher Corcoran, 72, of Rosedale, Raheny.
Those three were freed from prison on a legal technicality in 2012 – and it took another three trials spanning six years to get them back behind bars.
Sentencing that trio in 2009, Judge Hunt slammed the “violent degradation by the inhuman monsters who forced their way in there that night”.
Last year, Mrs Richardson told a court their home was destroyed on March 13, 2005, when an armed gang burst in.
She was taken to the Dublin Mountains with her two sons and held at gunpoint overnight.
Mr Richardson was held at gunpoint overnight at the family home in Raheny.
The next morning, he was ordered to go to work as normal, get the cash and deliver it to a drop-off point. The dad of two collapsed on the side of the road after hearing that his wife and children had been released by the raiders.
The ordeal has haunted the family ever since.
The couple’s youngest son Kevin told last year’s trial that memories of that night had followed him “like the plague” for 13 years.
And his brother Ian told the trial in a powerful victim impact statement: “The image of a gun being put to me will never leave me.”
