Killers Timmy Rattigan and 'Noddy' McCarthy furious over sharing unit with sex offenders

Lifers Timmy Rattigan and Anthony 'Noddy' McCarthy are raging over plans to move a dozen inmates convicted of sex crimes into chalets at The Grove at Castlerea Prison.

The unit is made up of separate chalets in which prisoners look after themselves. They are usually sent there ahead of being released, or sent to an open prison.

But now Rattigan and McCarthy are annoyed over possibly having to share space with sex offenders, according to sources.

While killers serving life sentences are often seen as being at the top of the prison pecking order, sex offenders are seen as the being at the bottom.

Rapists and convicted perverts are often targeted for violence by ordinary prisoners and usually kept segregated from the general prison population.

However, Rattigan and McCarthy can't do anything about the situation for fear of damaging their prospects for release, sources added.

Rattigan was handed down a life sentence over 16 years ago, while McCarthy got his life sentence two years earlier in 2003.

Limerick gangster 'Noddy' McCarthy was sentenced for his part in the infamous killing of Kieran Keane that set off a decade-long lethal gangland feud in the city.

The trial judge said McCarthy, along with three other defendants, should never be released, while the feud remains ongoing.

The killing was part of an elaborate double-cross in which Keane was abducted along with his nephew Owen Treacy and an attempt was made to lure two of the Collopy brothers into the trap.

Keane (36) was shot in the head, and Treacy, who received 17 stab wounds, survived after he played dead.

Treacy was the key witness in the trial of five McCarthy-Dundon gang members, who were later each jailed for life for Keane's murder and his attempted murder.

Along with Noddy McCarthy those who were convicted were Dessie Dundon, David 'Frog Eyes' Stanners, James McCarthy and Christopher 'Smokie' Costello.

Noddy McCarthy later gave evidence in court against Wayne Dundon and Nathan Killeen, who were convicted of the 2009 murder of Roy Collins.

He told the court that while in Wheatfield prison on the morning of the murder, his first cousin Wayne Dundon told him he had "ordered James Dillon to go kill Roy Collins".

McCarthy has yet to enjoy any temporary release despite his help in putting mob boss Wayne Dundon behind bars, according to sources.

One of his co-accused, James McCarthy, has previously spent time in Loughan House, an open prison in Co Cavan.

Timmy Rattigan also has links to gangland criminals as a cousin of mob boss Brian Rattigan, who was released from prison this year after 17 years behind bars.

He is serving life for the murder of a 65-year-old who was blasted with a shotgun at a house in Tallaght in 2004.

She was shot dead through her bedroom door at 6am after two men smashed in through the front door.

It is understood his move to The Grove in 2020 was recommended by the parole board. It came despite previous run-ins with prison staff, including one incident in which he asked someone to attack a dog handler.

He was heard on a prison phone telling someone to follow an officer home from the high security Portlaoise Prison and "to beat the s***e" out of them.

During his 12-day murder trial, the court heard how Rattigan's victim had moved to sleep in that room "because she thought she would be safer" there, after a window was smashed in her front bedroom in November 2003.

Rattigan and another man, who was found not guilty of the killing, had been drinking together from the night before the killing at Ahern's pub in Tallaght.

A neighbour of the victim told the court how he had woken at around 6am to shouting, smashing noises and two loud bangs. He saw two men, one of whom had a shotgun, at the dead woman's gate, walking away slowly.

The shotgun was found taken apart in three pieces in a blue bag in the bushes close to Rattigan's sister's flat.

The one fingerprint found on the double-barrelled shotgun matched Rattigan's left ring-fingerprint.

The print was on a part of the barrel which would only have been exposed had it been taken apart or put back together.

The killing was possibly a case of mistaken identity, it was heard in court at the time.

Rattigan's own father, Timothy Senior, was shot dead in a bookies' shop at St James's Gate in 1997.