Gardaí have recovered a gun that they believe was used to murder a man found dead beside the river Blackwater in north Co Cork earlier this month.
The weapon has been sent for ballistic examination in an attempt to determine if it can be forensically linked to the killing of Paul “Bosco” O’Connor.
Detectives investigating the murder of the 56-year-old, from Connolly Road, Ballyphehane, Cork City, recovered the shotgun with the assistance of a sniffer dog. It had been dismantled and concealed in a secret compartment, accessed using a lever, in a car that was parked in Mallow.
It is understood that the compartment also contained a quantity of cocaine which gardaí believe can be linked to O’Connor’s murder.
Gardaí were on Saturday continuing to question a woman (40s), arrested in Mallow on Thursday night and detained at Cobh Garda station under Section 50 of the Criminal Justice Act 2007, about the murder.
They were also questioning a man in his 30s from eastern Europe who was arrested at an address in Mallow on October 19th. He is being detained at Mallow Garda station under Section 50 of the Criminal Justice Act 2007, which allows suspects to be detained for up to seven days.
O’Connor was found dead on the banks of the Blackwater near Ballyellis, some 2km east of Mallow, on October 15th. A man out walking his dog made the discovery and alerted gardaí, who cordoned off the area and declared it a crime scene.
Gardaí did not release the results of the postmortem, carried out by Assistant State Pathologist Dr Margot Bolster at Cork University Hospital, for operational reasons. However, The Irish Times has learned that O’Connor was shot in the back of the head and in the face with a shotgun.
Gardaí established from CCTV footage that O’Connor travelled by train from Kent railway station in Cork City to Mallow at 7.20pm on the previous night, October 14th, and were able to trace him via CCTV footage calling to a house near where his body was found.
They believe O’Connor went to Mallow to retrieve a consignment of cocaine that had been stolen from an Irish criminal organisation but he was instead shot in what one Garda source described as “an execution-style killing”.
O’Connor, who had convictions for armed robbery and assault in the 1990s, is survived by his brother Terry and sisters Mary and Valerie.