The 'truth' according to mob boss Gilligan

EVIL mob boss John Gilligan today confesses that he pocketed €12million from the drug empire that had Veronica Guerin murdered, and says: "I'm going to hell."

- MICHAEL O'TOOLE

"I'll more than likely die soon. I've wasted my life, I think I'm going to hell," the veteran gangster admits in an explosive new book, extracts of which are published today in The Irish Mirror.

In The Gilligan Tapes, Ireland's most notorious crime boss in his own words, by investigative journalist Jason O'Toole, he also claims that he knew he would never be convicted of the June 1996 murder of Veronica.

"I never thought I was ever going to be convicted, because I didn't do it," he says.

Ms Guerin was killed in west Dublin by a two-man hit team on a motorbike in June 1996-a day before Gilligan was due to stand trial for assaulting her outside his home in Jessbrook.

ACQUITTED

The 70-year-old mobster was tried for her murder, but later acquitted.