Transcribe your podcast
[00:00:00]

This is the documentary on one from RTÉ in Ireland, and today's documentary is about an event that turned Irish gambling upside down. Narrated by Conor Keane, this is A Very Irish Coup.

[00:00:17]

The race, a contest on the 22nd of October 1978, the Irish gambling world awoke to news that made them think there were still dreams of a daring betting gang have taken the bookies to the cleaners.

[00:00:32]

Fifteen punters mounted the operation, resulting in huge amounts being paid out on the hot favourite. It made news across the English speaking world. The bookies had been beaten. The betting came in the third race at a Greyhound meeting in the tiny village of Mullingar County, West Me. It happened in what is known in the business as a coup. We we're still rejoicing because it was the most perfect job that was ever done.

[00:00:59]

The job was carried out by a group dubbed the South of Ireland Gang by the media, a bunch of ordinary punters who had pulled off an extraordinary feat.

[00:01:08]

There was a great buzz after the anyway when you would say something and you will succeed. Our decision was right and our judgement was right. So I next expect to get paid.

[00:01:19]

The bookies were faced with an eye watering payout of between two and three million euro in today's money. Every other rule for the bookmakers editor and this was the last loophole that was left.

[00:01:30]

They had fallen victim to one of the most audacious coups in the history of betting that from conception to execution took just six days.

[00:01:39]

And it all started with a couple of old friends and a dog called Bailey Donaldson. Karen Murphy had this president Greyhound with long distance Greyhound called Polytunnels and columnist Emilia-Romagna Dislike convers great character, Collinwood light up a room when he commented that's one of the Koo's footsoldiers.

[00:02:02]

Danny Brown, a master printer by trade, originally from ABC but now living in monoline outside Limerick City, has a great Irish word to describe. And it's McArtor. A contest seven meters. It means modest, gentle, honest, genuine, articulate. And when I say childlike, I don't mean innocent and act like a child. It means being human heart and not taking life too seriously. And that was called. The man trying to put in one of the other people involved, Derek Brown, and I would like Eric's personality to Khan's, Eric wouldn't take life too seriously.

[00:02:44]

The youngest bookie in Ireland and probably in the world. And he started off in the 60s when valuable Antarctic's opened it up. There was other characters involved and this all came together in Jackeroo to Plan B school with Spike Murphy Tricolore to outmuscle or Interpol when he was in it. My father, who worked in jackalopes about Hektor because his name was Patrick Romba, but he was never known as anything like that. But my father was like John and Eric, you know, and even though my father was far older and wiser, he was still like to me, he didn't take life too seriously.

[00:03:21]

Almost all of those who took part in the daring betting coup at Mullingar Greyhound Track on a wet October Saturday night in 1978, are from Listowel in County Kerry and Abbeyfeale and County Limerick, two towns just 10 miles apart, connected by Road and the river Feale. Many had been friends since childhood.

[00:03:41]

These were people that I went to school with and that where we knew from around the corner from the store, there's a great bond between the store and Haberfield. Always, I think I'd know the Kanwal end of our jumbe that said that Abbeyville and that there should be particularly at the table, you know, the culture is the same and that the link between Stone and Abby feel, you know. So there was great camaraderie between both groups of people. For more than 40 years, the men and women who pulled off the bellydance ankle have held their counsel, only disclosing bits and pieces of what happened in a haphazard way.

[00:04:17]

But now they are telling the story, the whole story, for the very first time. So what was the chink in the book, his armor, that was to expose them to losses of between two and three million euro, a 20-20 prices sitting in his kitchen? And I feel Tim Spike Murphy, then a Part-Time bookmaker, explains it was spotted by his late brother, Conn. Murphy won Monday night at Lemrick Greyhound Track.

[00:04:45]

It was a mere five days before the plotters and their accomplices set off by convoy from West and not carry to the track and malingerer to pull off the coup of a lifetime. One Monday night in the Limerick track. We were down there, my brother Austria, Connie Mack man myself and somebody but the dog below, anywhere from six to four or five to four.

[00:05:08]

In the betting world, when you put money on anything our a football team or in this case, a dog, a bookie will give you what known as odds. Odds determine what the bookie promises to pay you. If you win, for example, the bookie might offer odds of ten to one. That means if you place a bet of one pound with a bookie on, say, dog number three and he wins, you win ten pounds ten times the amount.

[00:05:32]

You bet. Ten to one. If you lose, as most people do, the bookie keeps all your money in second place back home for on six.

[00:05:42]

The bookies do not want to lose.

[00:05:44]

They want to hold on to your cash, not give you theirs. So they're extremely careful to make sure they don't expose themselves to having to pay out too much money on any winner. Bookies try to take everything into account. If a horse, a dog, a football team is good or having a good run of farm, then they'll have a very good chance of winning and the bookies will keep their cards very low. The Dog and Spike story was obviously one of the favorites to win.

[00:06:11]

The bookies set his odds at sixty four or about one and a half to one without a pound and you stand to win just one pound fifty. Let's get back to Limerick Racetrack.

[00:06:21]

That night in 1978, the same man, a friend of his, had a tenner on the dog and al for when the oldest daughter died and he paid four to one shot if you liked him.

[00:06:35]

And Gilbert, 64, with the bookmakers and you fought on the taut spike, mentioned something called the tort.

[00:06:42]

This is another way of betting that horse has run by the state, not by individual bookies. It's more like the national lottery. People's better placed in a pool and if your dog wins, you share that pool with the other winners. The tort is a mathematical system. It doesn't ask if the dog is good or bad. Has it ever won a race or even does it have four legs or three to talk? Just looks at how much money has been better than a dog.

[00:07:07]

But this leaves room for manipulation.

[00:07:12]

If you were betting your dog, the more you would get if you went, because the thought reflects that the dog is unpopular and possibly not very good, that means that if a great dog, even the favorite, was running and for some a logical reason, only one person decided to bet on him at the racetrack.

[00:07:28]

His answer would be very big, even though he's the most likely to win.

[00:07:32]

Of course, this never happens, or at least it didn't until the evening of the 21st of October 1978 that I joined contest and the car on the way home that night from the last heart, they had spotted something and the wheel started turning inside their heads.

[00:07:49]

We didn't say, I want to go back in the car that night. We discussed it, the variation in the pros and of property. When you sit a room for a straw here and one water bottle another, we went for a drink afterwards and check our spa and we started developing the project. What would we do and how can we benefit from what we had just come across? That's under tort anomaly, taken at a line of small betting windows at the racetrack before the race.

[00:08:23]

But and it's a crucial vote. In 1978, most bookies offices around the country would take a bet at taught odds, agreeing to pay out whatever the odds were paid out by the tort on the course. This was a safe enough proposition for the bookies because if a dog was good, let's say a favorite people were place a lot of money on him at the court so the odds would be low and a bookie wouldn't have to pay out too much even if he won.

[00:08:49]

Unless, of course, for some reason, almost nobody bet on the favorite at the track, then the odds would be huge. It's nearly impossible to trick the bookies. They'll spot a scam a mile off their perceptive, clever, sentient beings, although many punters might dispute that. But you can claim a mathematical system such as the tote by getting it to believe the bookies favourite is useless and should be very big odds to win. The real story is to get the bookies who are far too shrewd to be manipulated, to put their fate in the tote, which can be manipulated.

[00:09:25]

As they sat on jackalopes. Barnaby Feed sipping their pints, the lads pondered how they could make this happen. It was Monday, the 16th of October 1978, just five days before they set out to fleece the bookies.

[00:09:41]

Whatever the plan was going to be, they needed a dog and a very good one at that. Can't hit a dog in the semi-final of the season, Average Family Guy, and he was one of the best up and coming dogs in the country, stand dogs. And we talked about that. The dog was barely Donald Trump, a handsome, sleek black greyhound with natural features weighing in at between 77 and 78 pounds. He turned out to be one of the finest greyhounds of his generation, Bailey Donaldson was running out a track and Malaga on the coming Saturday night, the 21st of October.

[00:10:27]

What the plotters wanted to do was to make sure that just one bit went down on their dog on the court at the racetrack. This would lead to big odds and bellydance, even though he was the hot favourite to win the race. If they could artificially create odds of, say, 500 to one any better was put down in any book I taught, odds across the country would have to be paid out at those odds, 500 to one a pound here, two pounds there.

[00:10:54]

And multiple shops across the country wouldn't be long, accumulating a small fortune for the lads behind the coup.

[00:11:00]

Every other loophole for the bookmakers had outlawed. And this was the last loophole that was left in the system. And that Fairplay attaboys there covered it and they had the dog that probably would be good enough for it. That happened to me on a Wednesday. They said to me, how did that work? And then Dirty Eric Brown from the store in 1978. He was a family butcher and sometimes a bookmaker.

[00:11:26]

Then there was nothing hokey. You know, I'm not in Hawkie whatsoever. This was jaunting left and would be a dream to put it off for the rest of the group.

[00:11:34]

Eric's knowledge of the system was pure gold dust, but time was of the essence. It was now Wednesday, the 18th of October, leaving just three days to pull off one of the greatest coups in the history of Irish betting.

[00:11:45]

When you came to me, they wanted to know how would it work? And the first thing I said, I said, time to go back and kiss the joint and see how many windows are there. Was this now? And in Berlinguer I said, go back and kiss the joint. So they went up and they went off tonight and they looked at it and there was five windows there. And there was four more often, but if there was a busy night and the fifth would open, then we had to figure out how many people we'd put in that window.

[00:12:16]

So that was one part of the plan to one way or another for cues of their own people at the windows of the racetrack on the night of the race to stop bets going down from other punters. The second part was to place bets of up to two pounds with bookies around the country to see if they'd give them towards. Little to the bookies know if the plan worked and Mullingar, those odds would be colossal.

[00:12:41]

It was time to test the theory with little more than 72 hours to go before bellydance into the traps in Mullingar, what we said, we do have to do a dry run and see what they accept the bridge because we had never tried it before.

[00:12:55]

Spike Murphy. So I went to court and I went and I went around. There was all independent bookmakers that I want to know, like Paddy Powers, and I was not ready to let him out blind spots on a neutral independence of the police. So I went into about five or six and I was having two pounds going in and two forecast just to see.

[00:13:18]

I put two shot dogs and children and all the vets are accepted so that we were set down for the project. I need to try and develop it. And we spent the week putting it together and there was no set Formula One thing. We were just we sat down at night and we want to donate. And that's how the things that this. The dry run on Wednesday walked more spookies accept a better tote odds, but then there was the task of somehow unobtrusively blocking five taut windows at the track, meaning almost no money being placed on their dog, the favorite bellydance, sending his odds into the stratosphere.

[00:14:02]

Blocking five windows at a racetrack and getting their bets down around the country was going to take manpower. It was now the Friday night of the 20th of October, 1978, the night before the coup on a most unlikely troop of 60 volunteers was mustered to do battle with the bookies. Eric Brown, the court, everyone and anyone.

[00:14:22]

They didn't know the first thing about race and they just went to their job. Come on, they didn't know what to with a boxing match or what it was. But I think there's a bit of a cold coming on. They were made for it. They didn't want to know. And I said, I don't know myself, which was annoying. And Warroad. So there was sinister that there was teachers there. There was a couple of inseminator there.

[00:14:46]

There was health inspectors, there was Doros.

[00:14:51]

There was every MC and breed that you could think of all I matobo. And they were all Metford one because it was a bit of fun.

[00:15:00]

Danny Brown, then living in South County, Dublin, only got wind of the caper with a little more than 24 hours to go.

[00:15:07]

The first day I knew about this was I was I got a phone call at work in Tyler on the Friday and on October 78. From Spike Timofey. And he asked me, because I don't know anything, and the following day and I sat and I said I was working. Spike straight away, I said, don't worry about that bus, we fix up our expenses. So I asked him, I said, what's involved? Spike said, I'll fill you in that tomorrow.

[00:15:37]

There's no need to go into that. No, he said so that was typical Spike, because I guess like that has something to do with accounts or something. So anyway, next morning, Spike arrived out of our house in L.A. and we were no longer in this house. We would have to buy a new house and volunteer and Joselin myself. My wife wanted to sit in a room when Spike arrived in anyway, and we had a black and white television in the corner.

[00:16:04]

And the first thing Spike said to Josephine was, Jor, you'll have a color TV that morning. I wanted it to be honest. At that stage I got a bit worried. But, you know, no one spoke and I was satisfied we could be up to speed. So that was that was the start of it for me.

[00:16:22]

In 1978, there were no mobile phones, no internet, no gambling. Apps are online betting. Nobody in the betting world would have believed that this group of seemingly inoffensive punters could execute a task of this scale and beat the system over a pint. And Jumba Spike recalls the Saturday morning of the coup just hours before polytunnels was due to rest.

[00:16:44]

And Mullingar, when I started off in Dublin, I went to Dublin that morning. I left everything around five o'clock and I dropped it off and I had walked in Dublin for six years. I didn't know what they were all about jobs. And I know Dublin like the back of my hand.

[00:17:03]

For the call to work, the crew had to play 700 pounds and small wages of less than two pounds with bookmakers around the country so as not to draw any attention to the amount of money being placed on bellydance. This part of the plan was to be executed on the morning of the race with just hours to go before the off anywhere, we decided we would start in to silverside Danny Brown and walk away into a whole kind of street and if possible, hit a bit of an outside.

[00:17:34]

But without a building, officers could be between gravestones and knock on the street. So we start off as soon as the officer opened, I think good old half, nine or 10 o'clock, whatever it was. Spike Murphy inveigled his first cousin breathily to take part based in Dublin and working for the city council. Brady was signed up to speak around Dublin on the morning of the race as he placed his bets with Danny Brown as his lookout. It was not to be her only involvement in the coup.

[00:18:02]

I was driving Spike and Danny were, said Doxiadis. Betting shops are going to have a bit. I let them off. I stayed in the car and waited for them and we went from we started in Greystones. We went into Brai and we came to Donlevy all the way into a corner of the street, stopping us from betting shops that I was told where to stop and where to pull out again. And off we went again. And that went on for most of the day.

[00:18:28]

My job was to spy Patreus, the bit in the betting shop, and it was right on two pounds, went on polytunnels, two pounds went on this dog that was going in Cheltenham Park and one pound double. And the reason the Shelbourne Department was put in was not to draw too much attention to anyone else, but the main thing. And that target had to be that he wrote and it taught us. And if the bookmaker accepted that, he could say he told us that was right.

[00:18:58]

But my job was to look around a bit to shop, because at that time there weren't any screens around the shop. There were these notices up about the bookmakers rules. And I was there to check out those and to see if there was anything regarding taught odds on them that you would be prohibited from back in or taught us anything like that.

[00:19:19]

With Danny and Spike covering off the East Coast, other teams were dispatched across the country, a group set out from Abbeville and went down to Newmarket and can talk and into Karch and did all Britain shops along. There was another group that went down by Waterford into Tounkara and I part of Wexford. Then there was a group that went up by Limerick inUS up to Galway, and then there was a further called The Dead Operand, Me or Monohan and across the border counties.

[00:19:51]

So the country was well covered as that Saturday unfolded.

[00:19:56]

The money went down quitely and bellydance all over the country. The majority of bookings accepted a bit, promising to pay whatever the tote odds were on the court that night. The bookies felt comfortable that so much money will be placed on belly down in the hot favourite at the taut windows of the course, they wouldn't have to pay out too much, even if you want. Little did they know the bookies were sleepwalking into a carefully crafted ambush, although the group put off, they weren't entirely heartless and one even tipped off a friendly bookmaker.

[00:20:31]

Well, yes. Before I left Katherin Eric Brown, there was a bookmaker, a referendum on the story out of a brother and I don't know, says whatever you do, don't know a bit today. I thought I had a track and he said, Well, you know what? No, don't do it. So it was a man in blue and his house in the street. And I said to Paddy, when I photograph is just about to cause this evening.

[00:20:55]

And I thought a bit of 20 pounds went on, but it didn't matter to us.

[00:21:01]

So he'd done it for me anyway. And the following day when I went down there and I got him here late photographer, I got him to go down and take photographs of the limits in the shop limits because shops were closed at ten minutes on the limit. Don't talk to anyone. No limits to what I saw. I know I was right.

[00:21:21]

I printed myself back in the current Dublin, Danny and Spike at the bets placed with the aid of their unsuspecting driver. Breathily It was time to get to the track and Mullingar.

[00:21:33]

And then I was told I was driving them to Mullingar. That's I knew where the dog was running there that night. So I thought we were just going down to see the dog running. Had no details at all because the details were very sketchy and I was asked not to ask any questions.

[00:21:47]

All the top of the. So when the teams converged on Mullingar Doctor less than an hour before the race, Bellydance was presented for the prerace win by trainer Francis Morris hander's totally unaware of the betting coup that was underway. All eyes were on those crucial five tote windows at the track. If they could be taken out of action for the 13 minute interval between races, the coup plotters were in for a substantial payday. Aragón con part time bookies themselves managed the operation.

[00:22:20]

American can't control bookmakers. They were fairly shot in a new hotel. There were good judge of dogs and horses, but they were better judges of human beings.

[00:22:30]

I think, you know, teams in place had to execute their plan to make sure the windows at the track were so casually congested that just a single bet will go down and polytunnels.

[00:22:41]

We had a map drawn up of the of the team and Holby and what went down Holtby and the other one to see. There was one point and that was only to get more time. I picked Michael anywhere from Parminder for Cureton of and felt as though nothing about getting in. I put them under the other window. I just talking up and back every dog in the race with a number five drawn back number five. What, we give him the money then and we get him the Bronx.

[00:23:11]

I was on the floor ten and the red twenty four onwards and and and if had given a twenty four, not if you've got to change back then after he never used to change you got he said push for a different person. So we brought a change and an order change finishing up.

[00:23:33]

It couldn't have been smoother, there was a pal of mine, Bob Sullivan, Jackalope got a message and he called me and he says, one of your men is after double crossing us, he knew that Bobby was mine, the story.

[00:23:46]

And he says there's no one among them and double crossed you all the time and not to the people. And he says, follow him and see. I followed him and there was blood trails anyway. And I said, Bob did go back, but he done the same. I did no such thing, he says. And he pulled out his pockets and had 20 pins with him since she was in another state. I took him back up to the wind anyway and put him in front of the queue to go from the beach.

[00:24:10]

And once I can see. But well, you get back a different dog and the next train was going on and on and she decided to take it back.

[00:24:21]

With the minutes ticking down to the nine o'clock race time, the team became concerned that a rarely used tote window might be opened. Eric conjured up a novel strategy just in case, so he took one photo out of Auburn. Freddy says, whatever to do if that window opens, if anyone comes near my head start to roll over and disappear, then would start to roll if that window open.

[00:24:49]

But there was a lot of shuffling and yeah. What is going on at at at the torch and why is the delay. Yeah, there was you could hear people were getting a bit anxious about what the hell was going on and why wouldn't they get it up to the windows, what people were placing their bets and they couldn't really do anything about it. And there were five or maybe six of us in the queue anyway. They've never got bets on at all.

[00:25:09]

That night was only about two or three people because there were so good at what they've been asked to do that nobody else got near the place.

[00:25:16]

You know, that was my aunt initially told me, have 20 cent better than handy and save twenty or no note that to get the change back, somebody else would say, well, I'll have each way with no number two, number three and reverse that.

[00:25:29]

Now everything everything was dependent on the Greyhound polytunnels winning over and over again.

[00:25:41]

The whole game was up in smoke filled largely. It was raining that night anyway, and Belitung was not in early pistol. He was a dog that he kicked on from about halfway. But he was very attractive and he would not he wouldn't cut it had been trying to wait for his turn. That was written, dear boy, anywhere and down the street. He was three to four million dollars on his extremely the race. And he got a clear on and on and on.

[00:26:06]

The last twenty were still two off. And there's a good long, straight Mullingar.

[00:26:10]

Well, we know like that once halfway up the street, he was going to win, but he got up to win by a going away for a second there.

[00:26:19]

Dog had gone and done some wanted odds of nine hundred and forty five to one on the court, a record that stands to this day. He was returned as a total one on hot favorite by the bookies. Eric sent his man to collect from the tote. That had the 20 pins, didn't do it then when Jimmy Collins and Kelly would have to win and some few weeks before that, she went off to collect 190 pounds of her Forever 21 and put his money.

[00:26:53]

And she said to Jimmy, I know from today and he wasn't, that he was across the river from country, but it was the end of it. And he said, I am. Why? He said, because you're the smartest people in the world.

[00:27:07]

She said to Jimmy Duncan did not let his connections down.

[00:27:14]

The next thing I when the alarm bells went off in the track that nobody ever would decide to do it at all, I'd be delighted to have you had a lump and never I never had done it before. And the alarm went off and on long sleep all of the sudden went off. There was a fire and in general there was something happened. I said the machines went off a 40 foot cosmosphere myself and of a renford for the styles. We jumped over the stones and we ran downtown into a pub and we ran down the street corner from a grand for every pound.

[00:27:52]

Whatever the race was over, the odds were announced and suddenly the penny dropped. This is a mad coup altogether.

[00:28:02]

I got I got a bit scared, to be honest with you. And I thought, let me out of here first.

[00:28:06]

The group disperse quickly. Their mission successfully completed a Mullingar and everything above board. They set out on their journey home and began to plan what they would do with their winnings.

[00:28:17]

We may feel burn in the sun, rising and more. We're going anywhere. And the woman was delighted. I was a quiet night in the pub and about 50 to 60 people came in and she thought we were coming for a wedding, but we didn't declare where we were coming from. Would you all about it in the papers tomorrow morning, Posterboard going to have a victory dance and also that we feel then we were going to go to Canary Islands and on holidays, which Porkbusters and we were taking everyone with us and we were going by the buses.

[00:28:51]

And the only argument we had that night when we got drunk was pulled on the buses.

[00:28:57]

When we came back, that was the only argument we had, because when we come back, we're going to get the buses.

[00:29:06]

Others who took part in the queue were returning to Dublin.

[00:29:09]

Danny Brown, when we were coming back from from Olingo, we stopped in go and that chapter was put under the bed. And the black dog and that had the tickets was was in the pub with us and Denis Murphy, Spike's brothers. Artemisinin was an accountant at the time and he was explaining to us in the pub to where the payout would be for everyone who took part in this. And he said it was like a pyramid. And the guys that organised it in the pub with Jack Rocks were at the top of the pyramid and it worked its way down.

[00:29:45]

So in other words, the guys put out the windows, put down to tickets to the base of the pyramid. So put the guy to put under the tip of the money and had all the tickets he pulled out.

[00:29:56]

It was thirty or forty tickets, whatever, to our tickets. So he said, Dennis, Dennis, I want to move up to the top of that. But he said, like, I want the tickets like it. Also, Dennis being diplomatic, pacified him anywhere, you know. But that was alright until the next morning anyway.

[00:30:14]

Breathily was taking it easy the following Sunday morning.

[00:30:18]

So we were having to lion, but only with the radio audience. Went down in the morning when we got up.

[00:30:22]

Ah, when we woke up and the next in the news headlines came on, a daring betting gang have taken the bookies to the cleaners. Fifteen punters mounted the operation, resulting in huge arms being paid out on the hot favourite.

[00:30:37]

Big headline B betting in Mullingar last night.

[00:30:40]

The dog involved was Bulley Donelle Sam at Bulgar County Westmeath. On Saturday night he won by one and a half lengths at the starting price of one to two favourite, but the tote paid staggering odds of 945 to one, a police spokesman said last night. The matter is under investigation.

[00:31:02]

Guards are investigating at the fraud squad are being brought in. Nearly had a heart attack. Now, what was I going to do? I was going to tell them in work that I had got myself into serious trouble. Would they know I was there or how they were going to get into it to actually Trace's, etc, etc, etc..

[00:31:19]

The coup had made national headlines. It was all over the radio and the newspapers here in Ireland, England and beyond.

[00:31:26]

The Pachinko came in the third race at the Greyhound meeting in the tiny village of Mullingar County, Westmeath. The gang blocked all five windows at the Target office and. Anyone else place a bet to be a large scale betting coup, the first of its kind in this country and one that could cost Bookmaker's thousands of pounds, was executed at Malinga Greyhound Track on Saturday night.

[00:31:50]

Danny Brown also caught up with his friends the following morning in a flat and rat minds on the south side of Dublin.

[00:31:57]

So we arrived in anyway and I party Independence Day, sort of independent Dublin edition and the way down, I never looked at it, you know, but people inside the flat anyway, and my friend in Dublin, and they were ordered to pay up and he said, did he say this?

[00:32:12]

He said, right out the front of the Independent was a big coup in Wallinger.

[00:32:18]

Fraud Squad called in. So with that. My friend, with all the tickets, he said he'll be going for those tickets. He said, I want to burden them. So he wanted to get from the top of the pyramid live as it was.

[00:32:32]

The bookmaker's facing a massive payout who called in the fraud squad and some of the footsoldiers began to get worried.

[00:32:39]

My sister arrived into us and she said, oh, my God, now what's going to happen? I know that my father down here, OPL, had heard about it.

[00:32:47]

And I said, oh, my God, my family, I wouldn't be out of jobs, that we'd be granted my joy to visit them. And I knew my cousins and I know there had to be some trickery of where we weren't sure of what the details were. But you could know they were up to some tricks.

[00:33:04]

My father was a bit anxious about his family being involved in a basically nothing like that had ever happened in our family before. So anyway, he worked on in town and he used to go down to see my aunt, who was Dennis Murphy and Spike's mother every day at lunchtime, and to have a bit maybe there sometimes. And anyway, she was really she was very, very worried about her boys being involved in this betting pool and what might happen to them, what they're going to end up in Mountjoy Joy, what they are going to be called.

[00:33:37]

The guarantee did carry out a thorough investigation carried. Inspector Martin McCarty, now retired, was one of the investigating officers. I was a detective Garda station, atlast all at the time, which would have been around November 1978 or thereabouts. I can recall that I got a request from the Guardian Malingerer Videojet gathered channels down that with a number of named local people that may or may not know something about this alleged incident involving the dog at the at the track in Wallinger and asked me would I interviewed them on memory, you know, what they would have been about for four people or thereabouts that were there.

[00:34:26]

And I saw four, including one. Well, not look at Bruggen and a colorful character locally.

[00:34:38]

Nice man, and give me his version of events that took place there, as did to the others. And I compiled all that into a got report and I submitted it to a back up again with the usual route and that lenda with the garroted Wallinger. They in turn pieced together their end of it from the complaints made by the BOOKLESS to them. And I went to the DPP, as far as I know, although I got no direct communication from the DPP.

[00:35:12]

But as I understood it, in any event, wherever it went, it would have gone. Somebody would have given a direction to it. Normally it would be the DPP and there was no prosecution arising out of the complaint that was made.

[00:35:25]

In your opinion, do you think was there a case to answer are did they just play the system?

[00:35:32]

Well, my memory was at the time was that I would have suspected maybe I was a bit of roguery involved with a robbery now is far removed from from a criminal offence. And then I did with a lot of fraud investigations at the time. And this was this would not be in the ballpark, but there would have been a little bit of robbery involved here and there. But however, there was no criminal offence, in my opinion.

[00:35:58]

No, it was time for the conspirators to collect. The bookmakers who called in the fraud squad did not want to pay out. The money involved was just too big. What would happen when the crew members went to collect their winnings? Spike, who placed a lot of the bets, was forced under road.

[00:36:15]

They went to Dublin anyway, and I stepped it up and done Larry and I was refused payment and I went to Black Rock. I never heard of George Bement.

[00:36:23]

It was to be the same. All over the country. The bookies refused to pay up, with a few notable exceptions.

[00:36:29]

One card per mile give them 10 out of 10. Anyway, John Timoney is they paid the full amount anywhere at 100 to one, which was their limit. And we had about six a.m. and they paid us to 600 quid.

[00:36:41]

The failure to get paid had ramifications for the footsoldiers to the coup is over.

[00:36:47]

I'm getting paid. Yeah.

[00:36:51]

Were you disappointed? We were promised anyway. I was promised when I was promised that obviously there'd be there'd be something in it for me because here I am. Driving around in petrol was scarce and expensive at the time. And then to drive down to one and and drive back. And I was. Oh yeah. Would be doing nicely out of it. Maybe I might get a new television here. I'd certainly give my expenses for the day, but time went on and and I never even got my petrol money unfortunately.

[00:37:23]

At the end of the day, a few bookies coughed up bringing their takings to just twelve hundred pounds, a far cry from the 400000 to 600000 pounds they expected, but it was still enough to cover their OK.

[00:37:39]

But would there have been an investigation if Taliban or had lost as an alternative bookmaker's Dilshan not doing any mistake, we made it.

[00:37:50]

We hadn't the money to go to the high court if we went to the high court. There's no judge to go get it because we do nothing wrong and didn't know anything about it.

[00:38:00]

The dog didn't know anything about it. The fat has gone back and did nothing about it. But a few of us, we stopped knowing going into the thing, people couldn't get in because we were still putting on bits. There was nothing at the wrong put the most perfect job that was ever pulled off. Just perfect. And 2020 betting is a global business dominated by mega companies courted on the world stock exchanges, which he uttered bytes of data data scientists and teams of risk managers, Eric and Spike are adamant that betting cues such as ballet similar are a thing of the past, and punters today would find it hard, if not impossible to do and successfully.

[00:38:39]

They say they're going to find it very hard to see him do it because there's a great kick out of it. They want money, Mollymook and things, and like I never want until I put enough. Of course, it's it's a great feeling.

[00:38:52]

Bookmakers know you won't like that. When you went into the shop, all they did was take photographs of the beach. There was no computers arranging to track the match, like the technology and all the multinationals, because they can track it, but not in a split second and see the liability coming up and see a trend building in their head offices and village paid to track this so you wouldn't be able to do a digital no spike. I and the boys came back at the bookies, but they are slow to talk about the calls they got paid for.

[00:39:27]

Did you have revenge on the bookies at any stage?

[00:39:29]

We did. We did. Yeah, but I can't tell you why. For a special reason. For all the reasons we got him back, I put like in a small way justice was on all fours because that was the last loophole that was left in the neck.

[00:39:44]

And part of it, you know what?

[00:39:46]

We got him back once or twice after in a small way would have taken much of them. I'd say a couple of hundred grand. That wasn't the smuggler, the mastermind behind the Bali, Daniel Zankou, might not have been paid, but it gave them immense satisfaction that they executed a coup to perfection. Eric Brown explains just what it meant to them.

[00:40:10]

What was the greatest feeling in the world? Because like without having sex or getting a goal in the last minute of an order to win the argument for the good of that.

[00:40:39]

This week's documentary, A Very Irish Coup, was narrated by Conor Keane. It was produced by Conor Keane and Donal O'Herlihy. Sound supervision was by Liam O'Brien. Until the next time. Thanks for listening.