FASCINATING –
Oct. 20, 2025 – In the late seventies, heroin began ravaging Dublin’s inner-city projects. A man named Larry Dunne was the city’s first godfather of heroin importers, but he was jailed in 1985. Kinahan, Sr., seeing a business opportunity, filled the gap. A sharp young detective, Michael O’Sullivan, noticed him. “There was somebody new in the market, and it just didn’t fit,” O’Sullivan told me. “Often, people in the heroin business get messy. They know the heroin trade because they use heroin.” But, in O’Sullivan’s opinion, Kinahan, Sr., wasn’t a dope fiend, and he ran an efficient business.
One day in 1986, O’Sullivan disguised himself as an electrician and followed Kinahan, Sr., to his apartment, where he caught him with a large quantity of heroin. The police later found other contraband, as well as various language-studies cassettes—Kinahan, Sr., was teaching himself French and Arabic. He was convicted of heroin possession, jailed for six years, and released in 1992. Months later, he was caught with stolen checks. The arresting officer told me that Kinahan, Sr., was an “impressive, kind of intelligent guy—no aggression.” After the arrest, Kinahan, Sr., was granted bail, then vanished.
