He was the gangland fixer known as 'The Coach' and for decades he tried to play the criminal underworld, police and the media.

Criminal John Traynor dreamed of wealth and women when he joined the ranks of Martin ‘The General’ Cahill's armed robbery gang, but he would later turn on his old boss in favour of the new order under John Gilligan.

Traynor believed himself to be a master manipulator, but in the end he wasn’t quite as clever as he believed and spent his last years living in a dingy flat in a washed-up English seaside town before dying in a hospice far from home.

Nicola Tallant chats with Sunday World Deputy Editor Niall Donald about the life and crimes of the one that got away and the sorry end of the once powerful Coach.

Crime World Extra: The sorry end of once-powerful gangland 'fixer' John Traynor

He is a well known Criminal Assets Bureau target who was once put on trial for a tiger kidnapping, but Dubliner Jonathan Gill has now launched a new venture as a conflict negotiator and says he can solve disputes in broken marriages, business upheavals and even in neighbourhood rows.

With no major convictions, Gill says he is innocent of any involvement in crime but the courts have heard differently - and on one occasion he was described as one of Ireland’s top criminals.

Here, Nicola Tallant chats with Sunday World Deputy Editor Niall Donald about Gill and his new business venture.

Episode 60: CAB target Jonathan Gill and his new 'dispute-solving' business

The antics of Daniel Kinahan and his insistence that he is an innocent boxing promoter wrongly accused of involvement in organised crime spectacularly backfired this week.

In an extraordinary conference in Dublin, the Kinahan mob were sanctioned just like Russian Oligarchs as the forces of law from the US, Europe and the UK stood together to declare Christy Kinahan Snr and his two sons as enemies of the State.

In a series of speeches, border officers, police chiefs and our own Commissioners laid bare the Kinahans' journey from the streets of Dublin to the very top of a trans-global network dealing in drugs, guns and murder while laundering €1 billion profits in business interests across the world.

Nicola Tallant chats with Sunday World Deputy Editor, Niall Donald, about the most incredible day in Irish criminal history – one which will cement the role the Kinahans have played in changing the face of crime fighting for good.

Episode 94: How the world's law enforcement plotted the downfall of the Kinahan Cartel

Emer O'Loughlin (23) had her whole life ahead of her when she was brutally murdered in a mobile home in Galway in 2005. 

She had just finished a year-long trip across the world with her boyfriend Shane and they were living in caravan site while they saved money. 

But on April 8 2005, Shane received a call to say that the mobile home next to theirs, owned by a man named John Griffin, was on fire. 

Human remains were subsequently found in the burnt wreckage of the caravan and DNA tests confirmed Emer's family's worst fears, that she had died in the blaze. 

A post-mortem was unable to determine her cause of death and it was not until 2010, after her body was exhumed, that it was discovered that Emer had suffered a violent death before the fire. 

Today, I’m joined by April Keogh, whose new documentary on TG4 about Emer, explains how her family's lives changed forever the night she was murdered.

Episode 109: The Brutal Murder Of Emer O'Loughlin In A Mobile Home In Galway

It is a story that reads like the plot from a Hollywood movie and punches right into the heart of one of the most secretive regimes in the world.

Hackers from the so-called ‘Lazarus Group’ first shut down Sony Studios when it attempted to screen a movie about North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and then went on to attempt a daring theft of $1billion dollars from a Bangladesh Bank.

But who are the Lazarus Group and how did they emerge from a secretive nation where only the chosen few are allowed online?

Nicola Tallant talks to author and journalist Geoff White about the incredible tale played out in his top podcast 'The Lazarus Heist' and in his new book of the same name.

Episode 112: The truth behind North Korea's cyber-crime gang 'The Lazarus Group'

PODCAST: Awkward Thursday Phone Call  - "My BF, the Hawks Fan"

Friday After Ash Wednesday 24feb23

Nihat'la Sivrisinek (27 Mart 2023)

PODCAST: Drunk Movie Reviews - "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" (07/10/14)

PODCAST: Awkward Tuesday Phone Call - My Fiance's Ex is a Jerk

PODCAST: Shock Collar Number 500 (10/20/14)

Crime World, with Nicola Tallant, is a weekly Irish podcast about criminals, drugs and the sins of the underworld. Discussing the real stories, and the real people, behind the grisly headlines.

Crime World Extra: The sorry end of once-powerful gangland 'fixer' John Traynor

Crime World

Related tracks