Gardai step up search for cop killer around the Border 
PLANNED: Car used in robbery was stolen in ClogherheadIT'S the Bandit Country that hides a cop-killing gang.
From the fields and lanes around the Border, the killers of Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe sprung.
They fled back to the same lawless territory after the outrage and now this Border Country is where they are seeking to hide from the biggest Garda manhunt since the murder of Veronica Guerin.
The most hunted killers in Ireland are a feral young breed, a new generation of criminals and racketeers whose iron hold over the border has turned a strip of Ireland into an outlaw land.
Reared in a lawless region where criminality is deeply embedded, they have been brought up in the shadow of diesel laundering, tobacco smuggling and murder.
However, the older command are now struggling to control the wild younger generations of gangs that they have spawned. And this week the monster they created became a nightmare of their own making.
Today the multi-million-euro diesel laundering industry is shut down, the tobacco smugglers are grounded and the lawless border has come under the intense and unwelcome spotlight of An Garda Síochána and the PSNI.
Teams of detectives are combing the area for clues to the young outlaws who executed Garda Adrian Donohoe last week at Lordship Credit Union outside Dundalk.
Blue uniforms are knocking at every door and the region's web-like road network and dirt tracks - many of which have been laid by smugglers - are being mapped out in the hunt.
Attention
BANDITS: Gardai are now closing the net on killers'Business' has ground to a halt and countless diesel-laundering operations that had before gone un-noticed have come to the attention of a 100-man Garda team intent on leaving no stone unturned in the hunt for the killers.
Senior Garda sources working close to the investigation believe that if the Provos could, they would personally lynch the gang of armed raiders behind last Friday's killing of the father of two.
But it isn't as simple as that and the reality is that the force is in this investigation for the long haul.
Sources say there will be no quick arrests of the gang members suspected of being behind the capital murder - the most serious offence that can be committed in the Irish Republic and one which carries a 40-year jail term.
Progress is slow. And currently there is little point in arresting anyone as there is a mountain of work to do before anything of substance can be put to the five that carried out the raid. Those that stole the car to order days previous in Clogherhead and the people who hid, fuelled and later torched the getaway vehicle.
Senior sources say that the car used by the raiders could have used any of 35 different routes through the area known as Bandit Country to make their escape.
It is understood that hours of CCTV footage from a network of winding roads will be painstakingly gone through over the coming weeks to track the car from Lordship, Co. Louth, to Keady, Co. Armagh, where it was burnt out.
The car was torched in a professional job that left nothing save the chassis number, which has identified it as a 2 litre diesel Volkswagen Passat stolen in Clogherhead days previously and stored for the robbery.
Gardai believe it was stolen to order for the raid on Lordship Credit Union last week by local thieves connected to the south Armagh-based gang, who chose a night that a popular barman in Clogherhead was being waked.
Torched
Bandit Country, where burnt-out car was discoveredHowever, the thieves had to break into the house of a couple to take the keys of the vehicle between 11.30pm and 4.30am, so officers are hopeful they have left fingerprints or other forensic evidence.
They are also hoping to pick them up around the area on CCTV footage.
It is believed that the car was stored and the tank filled to prepare it for the raid and Gardai say anyone involved in any aspect of preparing it could be facing capital murder charges or conspiracy to murder.
Across the Border PSNI officers are working to identify gang members who were waiting at Keady to torch the car. Sources say they too will face the most serious charges in connection with the crime.
Bandit Country has been notoriously difficult to police over decades of the Troubles in Ireland. It is made up of a spider's web of winding roads and dirt tracks used by smugglers, and has long been a stronghold of support for the IRA and other criminal gangs involved in fuel smuggling and armed raids.
A lawlessness and criminality is deeply embedded in this region of north Louth and south Armagh, which is mainly Republican.
It is understood that many known paramilitaries and criminals operating there have indicated to Gardai they had nothing to do with the murder and are themselves furious with the gang that carried out the senseless killing.
It was Christened 'Bandit Country' in the early 1970s by Britain's then Northern Secretary Merlyn Rees.
The Cooley and Mourne Mountains straddle the Border and rise up above small villages often divided into two jurisdictions, giving criminals an advantage over police. The area around Culloville, where the man believed to have aimed and fired the shotgun is from, is one such township.
It is divided a number of times by the Border.
The man who built up the mob suspected of having carried out a series of aggravated burglaries and raids on business premises over the past few years is a close associate of a well-known Provo who was once himself a tight associate of Thomas 'Slab' Murphy.
Calculated 
MURDERED: Adrian DonohoeThe two families fell out after a row which resulted in the murder of one of the gang member's families.
Officers say the suspected gunman is a cold and calculated criminal who has shot at people indiscriminately before during robberies. He has never been so precise in his shot as he was when he aimed the barrel of his shotgun at Garda Donohoe's head in a killing that could only be described as an execution.
He was standing in the shadows of the Lordship Credit Union building while his gang, including an 18-year-old female getaway driver, blocked the exit with the car.
Seconds after Garda Donohoe got out of his vehicle to walk towards the darkcoloured vehicle, the assassin raised and secured the shotgun at his shoulder, aimed and blasted the officer in the back of the head.
He then smashed the glass of the unmarked squad car and warned Donohoe's partner Garda Joe Ryan not to get out of the vehicle.
Meanwhile, other gang members rifled through a jeep that a terrified female staff member was due to travel in to lodge the Credit Union takings in a Dundalk bank.
They stole her handbag containing just €4,000 but left behind more cash in the glove compartment.
All were wearing balaclavas and they took off in the direction of the Dublin road at a furious speed.
The female, who Gardai are confident was driving the car, manoeuvred the vehicle through floods, under tight railway bridges and around tight bends, rarely dropping below 100mph. She is believed to be in a relationship with the gunman and an expert driver.
It is understood that the gang, who are holed up in safehouses, are being closely monitored by surveillance experts and anyone harbouring them will also become the focus of the massive investigation.
The Irish League of Credit Unions has offered a €50,000 reward for information leading to the killers, an incentive that officers believe could help crack the veil of silence that traditionally hangs over Bandit Country.
