Career criminal with 120 convictions back in jail after threat to burn out ‘wee b***ard’ loyalists

Gerald Gould – also known as Gerald Conlon – is behind bars after he threatened to torch the homes of loyalists in the town following a row over paramilitary flags.

Pictured here for the first time, we can reveal 46-year-old Gould is a notorious armed robber who has spent years behind bars.

For the last 25 years Gould has been torturing the people of Antrim and once staged a violent and ludicrous bid to rob the local credit union but ended up trying to escape police by swimming across a river after his getaway car broke down.

“Gould is a nightmare and everyone in Antrim is glad he’s behind bars for a while at least,” said a source who knows him.

“He’s violent and dangerous. He fell out with the loyalists in Parkhall because they’d put up paramilitary flags and he wanted them removed.

“Though he had a case, he didn’t exactly handle it very well and started issuing threats. I think they might have attacked his house at some stage and he threatened to burn them all out – which wasn’t the wisest thing to do.”

We can reveal Gould has more than 100 previous convictions, but many are under his own name Gerald Francis Conlon.

He changed his name to Gould – the surname of his wife – to try and cover his past.

But despite his new identity he has continued to wreak havoc in the homes of the people of Antrim.

Last week though he was jailed for three months for threatening to burn loyalists out of Antrim but was already in prison for breaking into a pub to steal booze on St Patrick’s Day.

As reported in Court News NI this week, Gould told a police officer he would “burn” homes belonging to “loyalists”.

Gould, with an address listed as Linenhall Street in Armagh city but formerly with an address in Antrim town, pleaded guilty to making a threat, on July 23 last year, to damage property.

The charge sheet said it was “a threat to destroy or damage certain property namely houses and flags belonging to another/others”.

At an earlier court hearing it was said the allegation related to “flags belonging to residents of Parkhall” estate in Antrim.

However, there was no reference to flags when a prosecutor outlined the background to the case at Antrim Magistrates Court, sitting in Ballymena, at the latest hearing.

Gould appeared via video link from prison, where is a serving prisoner with a release date of October this year, in relation to breaking into a pub on St Patrick’s Day in 2021 while off his head on drugs.

In that case he was jailed for 36 months for aggravated burglary and criminal damage after cops caught him red-handed inside the Top Of The Town bar in Antrim just before 2am.

Gould caused significant damage to windows, a drinks door and plastic roofing while the coffee machine had been pulled off a counter.

Police believed a pissed-up Gould tried to get in through the roof but when unsuccessful he entered via a window.

An officer said Gould admitted being in the bar and that he was “probably there to steal alcohol” but he said he had “taken pills and had no idea what actually happened or how he had got in”.

In relation to the recent threats against loyalists, a prosecutor said police attended a “domestic” incident at 4.30am on July 23 last year at Donegore Drive in Antrim.

The court heard that after being arrested, Gould told a PSNI officer: “All those loyalists are wee bastards and I am going to burn every single one of their f**king houses.”

A defence barrister said prior to his arrest there had been what Gould “believes was a petrol bomb attack”.

The lawyer added: “There certainly was an attack by fire on his own home and his belief that that had been occasioned by people in the relevant area and what he felt at that time was anger towards people he perceived to have been involved in this incident.”

In 2019 Gould was charged with breaking into the home of a woman in the Rathenraw estate and ordering her to strip naked, though those charges were later withdrawn.

He was however once convicted alongside his now-wife Lynn Gould of fraud.

Gould and his wife were convicted of fraudulently using a pensioner’s credit card which had been stolen by another burglar pal of theirs, who ransacked the OAP’s Ballycastle home in 2013.

The dodgy couple had used the pensioner’s card to buy booze and flat-screen TVs.

And 20 years ago Gerald Gould, then using his own name Gerald Conlon, staged an armed robbery of the credit union in Antrim, which went spectacularly wrong.

Gould jumped over the security counter and assaulted a female member of staff at the Antrim Credit Union.

He was caught when his getaway car broke down and he jumped into the Six Mile River to get across to the other side – only to find the police there waiting for him.