40 years since death of Frank Hand shocked the nation

This Saturday, 10th August, marks the 40th anniversary of tragic happenings in Drumree, which saw the death of Detective Garda Frank Hand during a raid on a post office van delivering social welfare and pension money to the local post office.

Detective Garda Hand and his colleague, Detective Garda Michael Dowd, were escorting post office driver, James Bell and his helper, Donal Brady, who were driving 'Route 3' from the central sorting office. They were carrying 23 mailbags, containing almost £300,000 in cash, to be dropped off at 19 sub post offices along the route.

Drumree was the furthest point on the route. Route 3 began at Dunboyne, onto Batterstown and Drumree and back through Blanchardstown, Cabra and Phbsboro. The last stop was Berkeley Road, not far from O'Connell Street. It was a bizarre method of delivering the cash, meaning that most of it was still on board when the van arrived at remote and rural Drumree.

The gardai were travelling in an unmarked light beige Fiat Mirafiori. Dowd had a Uzi sub-machine gun, while Frank Hand had a .38 Smith and Wesson revolver. A native of Ardmullen, near Curraghboy in Co Roscommon, he was based in the Central Detective Unit in Harcourt Square, Dublin, but was rostered on post office duty that day.

It was 8.03am when they arrived at Drumree, carrying £202,900. Michael Gilsenan, son of Mary Gilsenan the postmistress, was preparing to receive the delivery. The post office and adjoining pub, formerly the Spencer Arms Hotel, associated with the old Drumree Railway Station, are partly hidden from the road due to an incline on the road and a wall. From the raiders' perspective, the ideal location.

Two gunmen were crouching behind the wall of Gilsenan's garden as Donal Brady grabbed a couple of mailbags from the van and headed for the front door of the post office. They rushed from the garden gate as he approached. The gunmen began shooting almost immediately. Frank Hand was halfway out of the driver's door as the shooting started, his Smith and Wesson in his hand. He fired two shots, one hitting the post office wall seven feet from the ground. Two more bullets from a raider's Sten sub-machine gun hit the Fiat's windscreen and a seventh hit the window of the driver's door. The eighth and last bullet struck Frank Hand in the upper right chest and travelled through his body, causing profuse bleeding. He spun around, falling face down towards the back of the car.

The gunmen began transferring the mailbags from the van to waiting Opel Ascona and Mercedes cars. Michael Dowd believed there were eight raiders in total.

The entire raid lasted just three minutes, and at the end of which Frank Hand was dead. The Opel took off towards Dunshaughlin, turning at Grangend. The Mercedes headed for Skryne before being burned in a field in Rathfeigh.

At a meeting of members of the cabinet a few days later, ministers were alarmed at the apparent ease with which heavily armed gardai had been ambushed. They questioned the methods used by the security forces in providing protection for large anounts of cash, particularly at a time when the IRA was carrying out a campaign of robberies and kidnappings to replenish their dwindling funds.

After that meeting in Athlone, Garret Fitzgerald, the Taoiseach, announced that army back-up for gardai escorting large amounts of cash and other high-risk deliveries would now be mandatory.

It also emerged that senior garda officers had been warned that Drumree Post Office was vulnerable to attack, in an internal memo dated 29th September 1983 sent by a sergeant in the Central Detective Unit to his superior officers.

It warned against the dangers of delivering large amounts of cash in ordinary post office vans, and the practice whereby van loads of cash made their first deliveries to post offices farthest from Dublin. The first post office listed to be vulnerable was Drumree. It was learned that An Post were unwilling to change their method of delivery. That was soon to change. Within four days of Frank Hand's death, a new credit card system for payments to social welfare recipients was announced.

The investigation

Shortly after midnight on 15th August, gardai based in several Dublin stations were roused from their beds and told to report to Garda Headquarters in the Phoenix Park at 8.30am. They were going to Navan. Shortly after dawn, hundreds of armed detectives and troops descended on the Brownstown area of Kentstown. Every road leading to the area was sealed off as detectives surrounded a large barn at the end of a lane. Inside, in a disused tank, they found orange post office bags within a large grey post office sack containing the £202,900 taken at Drumree. The machine gun taken from Michael Dowd was also hidden there, along with handguns, and assault rifle, and walkie-talkies.

Six men were arrested under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act. These included Joe Gargan, a former Sinn Fein branch chairman from Kentstown, and Seamus Lynch, also of Oliver Plunkett Park in Kentstown.

In the subsequent trial, Tommy Eccles, Brian McShane, and Pat McPhillips were found guilty of capital murder of Frank Hand while Paddy Duffy was found guilty of non-capital murder. Seamus Lynch pleaded guilty to robbery and was sentenced to four years imprisonment, and Joe Gargan also pleaded guilty to robbery and was given 10 years, suspended. Their role was to provide a getaway car in the field at Rathfeigh, a Ford Escort owned by Gargan and driven by Lynch. Another man, Noel McCabe, also received a 10-year sentence, also suspended, for supplying a Ford Cortina escape car.

At the time of Frank's death, he had just returned from honeymoon in Venice with his wife, Breda, When he died, she was pregnant and later gave birth to daughter, Fiona.

Twenty years after his death, Frank was remembered with a plaque unveiling at Dunshaughlin Garda Station, where family and former colleagues came together to commemorate the late Detective-Garda.

Fiona unveiled the plaque where the gathering also included those who had worked on the investigation into his death, post office representatives, and residents of Drumree.

Breda Hand thanked all those involved in the investigation of her husband’s death, saying it offered some consolation at the time that those responsible had been sentenced.

Assistant Garda Commissioner Tony Hickey recalled how Frank, who was almost 27 when he died, had been instrumental in the arrest of murderer Malcolm MacArthur in August 1982.

“When MacArthur was in the apartment in Dalkey, we arrived at the front door,” Tony Hickey recalled. “Frank was a young detective, and together with a number of others, went to the back door. When all the excitement started at the front door, some of them returned to the front, but Frank stayed at the back, and if he hadn’t, MacArthur would have got away that way.”

Also present was Jimmy Bell, one of the two postal drivers involved in the Drumree incident of 40 years ago, as well as Michael and Gerry Brady, sons of the second postal driver, the late Donal Brady.

This year, at the annual memorial service at Dublin Castle for members of An Garda Síochána who died in the line of duty, Fiona Hand was one of the relatives and friends of deceased gardaí who took part in the inter-faith ceremony.

She told RTE News that believes the memorial service brings a sense of community to those in grieving.

“I would have friends in similar situations whose fathers had passed away,” she said. "It gives you a shared sense of what's going on. It's very difficult to make sense of it as a child growing up, but the community that's here, it's lovely to come together once a year and remember them."