Crime World

Eleanor Donaldson “met with a blank wall” when asking her husband Jeffrey about an incident with an alleged abuse – a jury has heard.  Eleanor Donaldson also accused her husband of infidelity during police interviews.  And Jeffrey Donaldson told police a letter sent to one of his alleged victims had nothing “to do with any allegation or any action involving sexual abuse”.  His trial over alleged sexual offences is continuing in Newry Crown Court.  The 63-year-old has pleaded not guilty to 18 charges, including one count of rape and allegations of indecent assault and gross indecency.  His wife Eleanor Donaldson faces five related charges including aiding and abetting – she is facing a trial of the facts due to her mental health issues.  Allison Morris is covering the trial. 

Northern Ireland has seen serious race riots for the third year in a row. Masked men staged violent protests in number of areas, but the trouble was concentrated in the greater Belfast area, with homes set alight off the Crumlin Road and in east Belfast. A Glider bus was set alight on the Newtownards Road and a police car was burned in Portadown. The disorder followed an attempted murder involving a knife in north Belfast on Monday night – a 30-year-old Sudanese man has been charged.  The Belfast Telegraph’s Kevin Scott was on the ground in Belfast and Liam Tunney was in court. 

Daniel Kinahan is determined to dominate the boxing world – not even an attempt by a rival gang to assassinate him at The Regency Hotel in Dublin can slow him down. He continues to woo top level boxers onto his books. However, things get too hot on the Costa for the Kinahan brothers, they move to Dubai and eventually intense attention from policing authorities sees Daniel step down as the public face of MGM. But he’s still expanding the business with major signings like Carl Frampton. In the meantime, his cartel business is facing major disruption, by the end of 2018 more than 70 Irish Kinahan associates are convicted or awaiting trial. Daniel doubles down on his propaganda war to sportswash his reputation.

Notorious hitman and enforcer Lee McDonnell died in a Garda cell just a week after his last notorious crime. McDonnell is suspected of being the man who stabbed Thomas Griffen who tried to flee for his life by jumping in the Liffey but was later pronounced dead.Nicola talks to Niall Donald about McDonnell and his notorious criminal past.

On 5th December 2000 Ann O’Grady rings the Collins family to tell them Sandra has failed to return home after being out the night before. A major search is launched, covering miles of the surrounding countryside. Lifeboats comb the nearby waters, but there’s no sign of Sandra, apart from her dark pink coloured fleece jacket, which mysteriously turns up on the pier five days after she goes missing. There are two scraps of paper in the pockets, one has the phone number for an abortion clinic in the UK, the other has a mobile number for a local man. But the Collins family aren’t told who he is or what his connection to Sandra is about. 

It’s late January 2021 and Crime World reporter Ken Foy is waiting by his phone for a call from one of Ireland’s most notorious mob bosses. It takes several hours for the call to come through and when it does Foy can’t quite believe that he is talking directly to Daniel Kinahan - head of an international drugs cartel. But Kinahan is not calling to discuss his main business, instead he wants to talk boxing and an upcoming BBC documentary that’s promising to highlight his criminal links. He wants some positive publicity - it’s a propaganda push. 

“I can’t get my head around” the abuse allegations made by Witness B, Jeffrey Donaldson told police.The tape of the former MP’s interview with the PSNI was played at his trial in Newry Crown Count on Monday morning.The jury also heard Donaldson deny that he apologised to Witness in the case because he thought it would “make this go away”.“I wasn’t doing anything untoward,” Jeffrey Donaldson told police officers in relation to accusations made by Witness A.Donaldson (63) is accused of rape and several counts of gross indecency and of indecent assault. He denies all 18 alleged offences. There are two alleged victims, Complainant A and Complainant B.His wife Eleanor Donaldson, from Dublinhill Road in Dromore denies several charges of aiding and abetting her husband’s alleged offending.Allison Morris was in court.

Sean McGovern, right-hand man of Daniel Kinahan, was handed down a massive 24-year sentence yesterday for his role in a murder and a surveillance plot against a Hutch associate during the Kinahan and Hutch feud.Noel ‘Duck Egg’ Kirwan was an innocent man who stood beside the Monk as he attended his brother Eddie’s funeral after his murder in February 2016. That, gardaí have said, was enough to have him assassinated days before Christmas that year as Kinahan killers stalked their prey.Nicola and Niall speak to Eamon Dillon.