Gardai are working to establish if murder victim Tony Dempsey was targeted over a woman’s drug debt.
The 28-year-old had suffered severe head injuries and bruising to his body in a flat in Dublin’s north inner city. His decomposing remains were only discovered after residents in Kevin Barry House on Coleraine Street concerns over the smell coming from the property.
Gardai discovered Dempsey’s body on Monday evening but believe it had been there for at least a week with drug users coming and going. Dublin Live has learned detectives received information a female associate of Dempsey’s was being sought by dealers but he was targeted instead.
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Locals had raised concerns about the particular flat as it was being used as a “drugs den”. As well as the debt line of inquiry, detectives are also looking into other theories including a “spur of the moment” row or a personal grudge.
A source said: “He may well have been wrongly targeted over a particular drug debt but there is a range of things that gardai are looking into and are narrowing down at the moment.” When his body was discovered, there were people present, while others came in and were interviewed by gardai.
Another source said: “There is a lot of difficulty in these cases as you are dealing with addicts. So there’s a major workload in deciphering between truth and fiction. There were also a number of people coming in and out of this apartment, so it’s about establishing who was there in the time his body lay there and also who was present when he was beaten.”
Dempsey was originally from New Road in Inchicore in Dublin and did not live in the complex where he died. Charity Peter McVerry Trust managed the property under the Housing First programme for the city council. It said the tenant was successfully accommodated in the property more than 18 months ago.
But the charity stated the tenancy began to break down over recent months, as the tenant was “struggling to manage the front door. Individuals, who had no interest in the property or the tenant’s recovery, were gaining entry to and using the property”. Dempsey had done various stints behind bars and had at least 50 convictions including theft, drugs, criminal damage, possession of knives and firearms and road traffic offences.
In 2014, he was sentenced to two years over an attack in Dublin’s south inner city in the previous year. On that occasion, he and others beat a man before knifing him twice in the back. He was jailed for four years after a 2017 attack in which he bit the tips of the ears off another man in Donegal.
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Dempsey had come from a deprived background in which a court heard he had an “horrifically chaotic” upbringing. He had been placed in care 10 times and as an adult had drug rehabilitation treatment.
The Dubliner had also spent spells of homelessness. His grieving family vowed to get justice for him. One said: “It’s not a dream, it’s real, don’t worry we will get justice for you. Our lives will never be the same again. All the kids are heart broken.
“I hope the scum rot and are caught fast. The amount of people in and out of that flat had to have seen something. Please come forward, we deserve the answers so he can rest in peace and our family have closure. It’s just not fair at all. It won’t bring him back but we will get justice for you Tony, don’t worry.”
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