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Alan O’Neill was shot dead in the driveway of his home on Kiltalown Road in Tallaght. A burnt out motor vehicle was later recovered.

Warren Nolan was the suspect for Alan O’Neill’s murder and for burning out the motor vehicle. Fire arm residue and petrol were found on Warren Nolan’s gloves. Petrol was found on Warren Nolan’s t-shirt, tracksuit bottoms and runners

Warren Nolan, 22, was found guilty of Mr O’Neill’s murder by a majority jury verdict at the Central Criminal Court in December 2018. Mr Nolan was sentenced to the mandatory term of life imprisonment for murder and six years for setting the motor vehicle on fire.

Eric Shorthall, an accomplice of Warren Nolan, who had used his own car as the getaway car was jailed for 6 years.

A Donegal father of three, Jeffrey McLaughlin, who lived with his wife in Derry, suffered an immediate death following an explosion and fire that ripped through a holiday home at Carnmalin, Malin Head, Co. Donegal, on October 31st. 2014 an inquest in Carndonagh heard in June 2016.

The deceased, Jeffrey McLoughlin, was found in the garden of the fire damaged property. Petrol was detected on Mr McLaughlin’s clothing. Nine seats of fire were found in the property and petrol was detected in each. In addition, paraffin oil was detected in two of the nine seats of fire.

Mr. McLaughlin’s Nissan Juke was located 317 metres away from the property, and was found to have had a false Republic of Ireland registration plate over a valid Northern Ireland number plate.

The jury at the coroner’s court in Carndonagh returned a verdict of accidental death by misadventure into the death of Jeffrey McLoughlin.

Shortly after 2pm on December 23, 2019, Clifford Power was shot a number of times at close range by a perswearing a Hugo Boss-branded tracksuit top. Two bullet casings were recovered from the scene.

CCTV footage showed a man wearing a Hugo Boss branded clothing entering the Eight-to-Eight shop where, using a €50 note, he bought a bottle of Innocent Orange Juice, a Muller Corner yoghurt and a packet of cigarettes.

Following the shooting, a witness, who was out walking his dog that afternoon, said he observed rubbish thrown over a fence and into an area of rough ground. A navy “Hugo Boss” tracksuit was recovered in a plastic bag.

During a search of an apartment that same day, an orange juice bottle and yoghurt pot matching those bougearlier in the Eight-to-Eight were confiscated. Matching DNA profiles were obtained from the spoon in the yoghurt pot and collar and cuffs of the discarded “Hugo Boss” jumper. In addition, blood from the €50 note in the shop and a fingerprint from the orange bottle were all identified as coming from the same source. The DNA profile from the Hugo Boss top, spoon and the €50 note and the fingerprint matched Gavin Ryan’s.

Firearm residue was identified on the “Hugo Boss” top and it contained the same range of elements as the residue from the spent bullet casings retrieved from the scene of the shooting.

Gavin Ryan was found guilty to the shooting of Clifford Power and sentenced to 13 ½ years imprisonment.

Between May and September 2018, Lee Hutchinson, a former secondary school teacher sent handwritten anonymous letters containing spurious allegations about officers to their families, colleague and superiors including the then Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan. The claims in the letters were forwarded to the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission whom deemed them “unfounded”.

A number of the letters and the envelopes were submitted to Forensic Science Ireland for DNA and handwriting analysis. A DNA profile matching Mr.Hutchinson’s DNA profile was obtained from one of the letters. The handwriting present in this letter, along with that of a number of the other anonymous letters and their envelopes, were compared to a specimen of handwriting from Lee Hutchinson by the Handwriting experts of FSI. Their findings offered “strong handwriting evidence” that Lee Hutchinson wrote these envelopes and letters. In November 2023 Mr. Hutchinson was sentenced to six years in prison, with one year suspended. He was also ordered not to contact any of the victims for 10 years.

A 25-year-old young man was fatally injured following a road traffic collision between a car and a truck on the 27th of March 2024 near Newtown, Roscommon on the N61.

Following a Garda appeal and investigation a Scania articulated truck was suspected of being involved in the incident. The tachograph data from the truck was downloaded and examined by the Chemistry team in Forensic Science Ireland. The data from the tachograph correlated with a journey described by the truck driver through Donegal, Antrim, Louth, Limerick and Clonmel. However, the forensic analysis of the tachograph data showed that two cards had been used during this journey. In addition, the scientist was able to demonstrate that the card of the truck driver was not in use at the time of the incident and had been changed shortly after the collision occurred.

On foot of this evidence in February 2025, the driver of the Scania Lorry entered a guilty plea before the court, having been charged with the offence of Dangerous Driving causing death.

This plea in essence prevented a prolonged agony of a court case for the injured party’s family.

In June 2021 Counter Terrorism International were contacted by Police in the UK seeking information on an individual, Mark Peppard/Nolan, who had been charged with terrorist offences, child grooming and assaulting a police officer. Peppard/Nolan had changed his name to Mark Wolf via Deed Poll and acquired an Irish passport under the same name. Whilst on bail for these offences it was suggested that Wolf had fled England to the Republic of Ireland and was making efforts to obtain firearms. Gardaí arrested Mark Wolf at the address he was staying at on foot of an Extradition Warrant.

Following a search a tactical weapons kit featuring multiple firearm components, barrels and scopes, several passports with different aliases, a 3d printer and accessories, several mobile devices with evidence of right wing violent extremist ideology and flags relating to right wing violent extremist ideology were recovered and submitted to FSI for examination for fingerprint analysis.

The majority of the items recovered were firearms components contained in a bag with no other identifier and so it was crucial for the investigation to link the paraphernalia to the suspect.

A total of 43 finger marks were developed and captured from these items, 19 of which were identified to the suspect. Crucially, the suspect was identified 14 times on various plastic packaging containing the internal mechanical components for building semi-automatic firearms. Investigators believed Wolf was in the advanced stages of planning a Right-Wing Lone Wolf Terrorist attack.

Mark Wolf was sentenced to 10 years in prison in March 2023 following a guilty plea.

In 2020, Jean Duggan made claims that documents bearing signatures in her name had been fraudulently produced during the course of a land sale between a property developer and Conor Clarkson, the accused. The documents were necessary to approve the expansion of a right of access into a development site along a laneway close to Mrs. Duggan’s home and the right of access was considered to be necessary for the site be developed for housing. In 2014, the development site at the end of the laneway was sold by Conor Clarkson to a property developer, one month after the questioned documents were produced, in October 2014. Uncertainties on the right of access only arose following a chance discussion between Mrs. Duggan’s son and a neighbour regarding the responsibility for clearing a tree which fell on the laneway during a storm.

The documents bearing the question signatures were submitted to Forensic Science Ireland for examination and comparison to specimens/genuine samples of Jean Duggan’s signature. In total, 9 specimen/genuine samples of Jean Duggan’s signature across a number of years were submitted for comparison.

Following a comparison of the questioned signatures to the genuine signature samples from Jean Duggan, it was concluded that the findings provided “limited handwriting evidence” that Jean Duggan was not the author of the signatures on the questioned documents. This limited strength of evidence was as a result of a number of limitations with the genuine specimen signature samples including but not limited to a lack of specimen signatures contemporaneous with the questioned signatures from 2014.

In February 2024, Conor Clarkson was found guilty on four charges of creating and using forged documents in the course of a sale of a development site and he was sentenced to two years in prison with the last 9 months suspended.