THIS PRISON snap shows three former drugs godfathers defiantly toasting their home-made hooch in the country's maximum security prison in Portlaoise.
Despite posing under the Ferrari flag, it still hasn't dawned on 'Warehouse' John Gilligan, 'King Scum' Tony Felloni and Michael 'Roly' Cronin that life in the fast lane has come to a juddering halt - for good.
They're all smiles for the camera in another of our behind bars shots, as Gilligan gives the fingers and Felloni -who's missing one on his left hand manages a flimsy wave. The lags, who once thought they were untouchable, were celebrating Gilligan's first year in prison with a cake washed down with home-made alcohol, his fond- ness for which landed him a 56-day stretch in solitary last year.
But as time would tell, the three amigos' luck was about to go from bad to worse. First be freed - Michael 'Roly' Cronin -was shot dead in Dublin's Summerhill three years ago as he chatted with a pal.
Trusted
The 35-year-old heroin trafficker from Ballymun learned the hard way that drug friendships come cheap. He didn't even see the semi-automatic being lifted to the back of his head by someone he trusted enough to allow into the passenger seat of a Northern registered Volvo.Cronin was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1998 for heroin dealing. By the time he was released,the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) had seized all his assets, so despite controlling drugs in Ballymun, Finglas and the north inner city, he died broke. He was shot dead at Langrishe Place in January 2011 along with his driver .Iames Maloney (26), on the orders of murdered don and underworld assassin Eamon Dunne. It was an end as ignominious as the prime of his life - spent parrying in tacky prison cells. The second man to be freed in the prison party line-up has not seen any improvement in his own living standards since his release. Tony Felloni was freed in 2011,after being jailed for 20 years in 1996 - the longest drugs sentence of its kind at the time. The 69-year-old from Dublin's Dominick Street has also been hit by CAB, and when he left prison he carried his possessions in a bin bag as he headed home to his squalid house on James's Walk in Rialto.
He fled Sunday World photographer,Liam O'Connor like a man possessed, using a scarf to conceal his face and bolting over the Ha'penny BridgeThe pensioner, who is credited with flooding Dublin with heroin in the 1980s and 1990s has also been spurned by his family - his former wife Anne refers to him as 'pig'. Marriage Anne has revealed how Tony had beaten her continuously through their marriage. Her last baby, Benito, died a few days after birth when his liver collapsed as a result of her heroin addiction. "I was near comatose in the hospital and he (Tony) was spoonfeeding me heroin," she told murdered reporter, Veronica Guerin. HIV positive Tony also introduced his children to the horror of heroin addiction. A daughter Ann became hooked on hard drugs at the age of 13 after her dad gave her a job in his business.
Their oldest child, Mario Angelo, was jailed in Parkhurst Prison in the UK and diagnosed with full-blown AIDS. Other siblings Luigi and Regina were jailed for drugs offences.
His ex-wife Anne would also claim the deaths of some of Dublin's heroin addicts were down to Tony mixing up heroin with struchnine (rat poison).
Father-of-eight Tony fought a 14- year battle for his assets, but lost everything following a life of crime.
Sources say he drinks in pubs in the Rialto area and "is a pathetic old man".
The last man smiling in our prison snaps
John Gilligan - has fared no better locked behind bars than his old buddies.In 2002, he was tried and acquitted by the Special Criminal Court for the murder of Veronica Guerin. His original sentence of 28 years for drugS crimes was reduced to 20 on appeal, but he got a further two years in 2002 for threatening to kill two prison officers, another eight months in 2011 for possession of a mobile phone in 2008, and six months in 2012 for possession of a mobile phone in his cell in March 2010.
Crime
Gilligan is due to be released next year, but CAB put his €2m Jessbrook equestrian centre up for sale late last year. And the pint-sized 60-year-old was sent solitary confinement last Christmas after a 56-day stint for drinking his favourite tipple.
As our pictures show, a leopard never changes its spots.
