How dark reimagining of ‘Dumbo' shaped business dealings of Christy Kinahan Sr

Sunday World

18-05-2025

Decades before the cartel boss fled to Dubai, he dabbled in prison poetry and prose alongside criminals including Dessie O'Hare
Christopher Kinahan Sr edited an anthology called 'Prose and Cons' while incarcerated in Portlaoise Prison
You could call it the Deadly Poets Society. As he rose to become a cartel godfather, Christopher Kinahan Sr wrote and edited poetry and prose under a pen name.
He was part of a high-security prisoners' writing group that included a killer with mystical pretensions.
And it emerged that Kinahan Sr later named two of his companies with the same nom de plume he had used, Cian Sharkhin, which is an anagram of Chris Kinahan.
US authorities have offered rewards of up to $15m (€13.4m) for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of Kinahan Sr and his sons, Daniel Kinahan and Christopher Kinahan Jr.
They are accused of leading one of Europe's most notorious gangs – a narcotics, money laundering and arms-trafficking cartel with ties to Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.
In 1999, while serving a sentence for receiving stolen traveler's cheques, Kinahan Sr was moved to Portlaoise Prison.
Kinahan Sr was housed on E1 landing with prisoners known as 'the heavies'. While incarcerated, he edited Prose and Cons, a slim anthology of writings on loss, longing, love, admiration, addiction and rage by E1 landing prisoners.
Under the guise of Cian Sharkhin, Kinahan Sr also contributed a dark short story, Dumbo the Elephant, and a sibilant poem called The Serpent to the poetry and prose pamphlet.
A wanted poster of Christopher Kinahan Jr, Daniel Kinahan and Christopher Kinahan
Forensic psychiatrists could pore over Cian Sharkhin's varied musings.
Dumbo the Elephant is a very different beast to Disney's animated classic.
Kinahan Sr's story recounts the frightening experience of a young boy named Christopher who is pinned underfoot by a lurching 'bark-skinned' baby elephant with 'sad piggy little eyes'.
Young Christopher's ordeal is compounded by his mother screaming at him while his foot is trapped under Dumbo, causing a zookeeper to 'thwack' the elephant with his cane to free the boy.
''Christopher! Christopher!' Her voice 10 decibels higher penetrated me,' Sharkhin – aka Kinahan Sr – writes.
'The small crowd looked around at each other, all looking to see who Christopher was, I guessed. I joined in, ignoring my mother, not a good idea at the best of times… She came striding towards me, or should I say that possessed creature that was once my mother and now like Mary the mad Maenad came bouncing towards the crowd, her hair was flouncing up and down…
'That look said it all 'You Dare Defy Me!' I stared back at the Maenad, I felt small, insignificant and terrified. The silence screamed in my ears, the spell was shattered by a squeaky little voice that rose up above the deafening silence. 'I can't move.'
The corner of one of her eyes began to twitch uncontrollably. She was poised to strike
'The Maenad's merciless eyes kept me fixed, only her lips twitched and twisted into a grim unholy grimace, those eyes with their feral bloodlust were unhinging.
'The corner of one of her eyes began to twitch uncontrollably. She was poised to strike.'
Born in 1957, Kinahan grew up in a lower middle-class family in Dublin. Like the character in his short story, Kinahan's real mother was named Mary.
The character Dumbo was inspired by a 19th-century animal superstar, Jumbo, who drew crowds in their millions to Jardin des Plantes in Paris, London Zoo and PT Barnum's travelling circus in the US.
Christopher Kinahan Sr edited an anthology called 'Prose and Cons' while incarcerated in Portlaoise Prison
Investigation links Christy Kinahan's literary pseudonym to money laundering companies
More reminiscent of Kinahan's sombre elephant, Jumbo did not live a happy life – separated from his mother by hunters, the elephant was routinely sedated with vast amounts of alcohol during his life in captivity.
Hunters captured Jumbo, reportedly in Eritrea or Sudan, and separated him from his mother, who was slaughtered for her tusks and hide.
During his life, Jumbo had to be routinely sedated with vast amounts of whiskey, port and champagne. After he died, hundreds of coins thrown by visitors were found in his stomach.
But perhaps Kinahan Sr's tale drew inspiration from another elephant, Sita, the star attraction at Dublin Zoo until a fateful summer morning in June 1903, when the elephant killed veteran zookeeper James McNally by crushing his skull under her foot.
Though an inquest suggested that Sita's actions were more likely caused by pain than malice, the Zoo Society deemed her dangerous and ordered that she be shot.
Appeals were made to pardon Sita to no avail. She was felled in a hail of bullets, including from a 12-bore elephant gun, by members of the Royal Irish Constabulary's musketeers.
Meanwhile, Kinahan's poem The Serpent is a dark and alliterative ode to a svelte and shimmering reptile in the Swaziland savannah. The poem begins:
'Sliding through the swaying Savannah
His presence is scarcely felt.
Satan's sacred servant
Is slinking through the veldt.
A glint, a gleam and shimmering sheen,
His form so lithe and svelte.'
Christopher Kinahan Sr edited an anthology called 'Prose and Cons' while incarcerated in Portlaoise Prison
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David McDonald, a former Portlaoise Prison officer, said Kinahan Sr's gift with words and tactical nous made him stand out – even among his feared prison contemporaries.
He said Kinahan Sr, known as 'The Dapper Don', mostly kept to himself and never had an interest in 'prison hooch' or drugs.
Instead, he was an early adopter of the internet, which he accessed on a smuggled mobile phone.
'He was organised, intelligent and always impeccably dressed in shirts and slacks, as if he was going to a wedding,' Mr McDonald, who is acknowledged by name in the Prose and Cons pamphlet, said.
'Kinahan studied Spanish, Russian and one other language while in prison and, remarkably, he refused early release because he wanted to finish his studies in prison where he had fewer distractions.'
Mr McDonald said other inmates would seek Kinahan Sr out for advice on their legal problems, describing him as 'a jail lawyer' because he was 'in a totally different intellectual league'.
You wouldn't trust him as far as you could throw him – but he wasn't trouble
Back then, the man who now leads a cartel linked to numerous murders in several countries was not prone to the vicious outbursts.
'There was never any suggestion of violence with him,' Mr McDonald said. 'You wouldn't trust him as far as you could throw him – but he wasn't trouble.'
As Cian Sharkhin, Kinahan also edited the poetry of two of Ireland's most infamous paramilitaries-­turned-criminals: Dessie 'The Border Fox' O'Hare and Eamon Kelly.
Dessie O'Hare, the 'Border Fox'
O'Hare was once Ireland's most-­wanted man and has been linked to 27 murders. In 1987, he kidnapped a dentist, John O'Grady, and chopped off two of his fingers using a hammer and chisel. O'Hare had demanded a large ransom that was not paid.
He said in a ransom call: 'It's just cost John two of his fingers. Now I'm going to chop him into bits and pieces and send fresh lumps of him every f**king day if I don't get my money fast.'
After a 23-day manhunt, O'Hare was tracked down in Urlingford, Co Kilkenny, where he was shot several times by an Army sniper but survived.
O'Hare earned his nickname, 'The Border Fox,' for the way he slipped back and forth across the Border during his violent sprees in the 1970s and 1980s.
O'Hare contributed a saucy limerick to the pamphlet, called Young Lady From Wooster.
In a nod to his own bizarre mystical interests, O'Hare takes authorship of the limerick as 'D O'H, from an Indian Guru'.
Kinahan Sr was also friendly with Eamon Kelly, a one-time paramilitary turned drug dealer and crime gang boss, whose closeness to O'Hare would ultimately endanger his life.
Kelly, an armed robber and drug trafficker, chose the photos for Prose and Cons along with another gangster, Harry Melia.
In December 2012, Kelly was shot dead near his home in the Dublin suburb of Killester. The New IRA, sworn enemies of Kelly's friend O'Hare, claimed responsibility.
O'Hare spoke at Kelly's funeral and carried his coffin.