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Comment by Brenda on December 9, 2011 at 9:40pm

Joseph was Identified..

Comment by Brenda on October 22, 2011 at 11:16pm

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/2007...

Hot on trail of two local cold cases

Authorities Unearth New Evidence In Crimes With Links To IRA,
1993 Brink's Robbery.

Gary Craig
Staff writer

June 3, 2007 4:55 am - Damien McClinton was finishing up his
shift at Genesee Brewery's northwest Rochester distribution
warehouse when someone fired six shots into his midsection, knee
and face, killing him.

That Dec. 3, 1987, slaying remains unsolved to this day.

Almost eight years later, Joseph "Ronnie" Gibbons, a retired
welterweight boxer, borrowed a car in Manhattan and drove to
Rochester. Here, he spent the night with a friend, drove to a
Greece restaurant the next morning, left the car and stepped into
another vehicle with two men.

Since Aug. 10, 1995, he has not been seen or heard from and is
presumed dead.

Gibbons' disappearance, like the McClinton slaying, is also
unsolved.

Now, Rochester police and State Police are reviving
investigations into the two "cold cases."

In a city with dozens of homicides annually, police have no
shortage of unsolved crimes to investigate. But these two cases
are uncommon, involving one of the largest robberies in the
country's history and rumors of connections with the Irish
Republican Army.

Police will say little about why they've reopened the cases.

Rochester police Lt. Michael Wood, who heads the department's
homicide investigative unit, would say only: "We have had some
recent developments (regarding evidence)."

State Police Lt. David Hennessy said recently that the State
Police unearthed some evidence in a different investigation that
they brought to Rochester police, prompting them to reopen the
cases.

Neither Hennessy nor Wood would provide specifics about the new
evidence. They did say, however, that in recent months police
have:

Scoured the hundreds of pages of police reports and court files
connected to the cases.

Conducted more than a dozen interviews.

Reviewed what evidence can be submitted for state-of-the-art
forensic testing. "Things have changed in the last 20 years,
especially as far as science goes, and our evaluation of physical
evidence and our ability to link certain people to crime scenes,"
Wood said.

Researched claims by an incarcerated killer from Orleans County
that he knows where Gibbons' body is buried, as well as the
bodies of others who have no connection to these crimes. That man
has refused to provide specifics to police, and some authorities
think he's lying.

At first blush, the two crimes - McClinton's slaying and Gibbons'
vanishing - appear unconnected. And, in fact, the two men
apparently did not know one another. But there are common
threads.

Both McClinton and Gibbons shared a passionate Irish nationalism.

McClinton, an Irish immigrant, was once active in Irish political
organizations, and some Irish media outlets covered his slaying,
alleging that it could have been linked to militant groups such
as the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

Gibbons' roots also are Irish, though he lived in England before
moving to the United States in the early 1970s. Similarly, he had
ties to a crime that also prompted claims of IRA links: the 1993
robbery of the Brink's Inc. depot in Rochester.

Some authorities speculated that the $7.4 million robbery, then
the fifth largest of an armored car company in the United States,
provided funds to the IRA, although police provided no evide

Comment by Brenda on October 22, 2011 at 11:14pm

GOING DOWN FOR THE COUNT EX-BOXER VANISHES; WANTED PART OF LOOT
BY MICHAEL DALY
Sunday, January 5th 1997, 2:01AM
THREE YEARS AGO TODAY, masked gunmen drove away from the Brink's depot in upstate Rochester, the weight of $7.4 million in cash deepening a tire track that would lead investigators from a retired cop to an IRA man turned Queens comic book dealer to a Manhattan priest.
The priest and the comic book dealer were subsequently convicted of having $2 million of the loot, but the retired cop, whom prosecutors consider the mastermind, was acquitted. The case seemed almost certain to end there, with $5.5 million still missing and nobody jailed for anything more serious than possession of stolen money.
Then, just as this wild tale seemed concluded, a woman from Liverpool, England, walked into the FBI office in Manhattan to say her son had disappeared.
Margaret Gibbons was the mother of Joseph (Ronnie) Gibbons, a former prizefighter who had for a time managed a string of illegal casinos in Manhattan. He had told friends he had been included in the preliminary planning of the heist, but armed robbery was not his game and he had bowed out.
Ronnie Gibbons had kept silent during the trial and he had convinced himself that he deserved a share of the unrecovered loot. His mother now reported that he had disappeared after going to collect his cut from the acquitted mastermind.
The FBI began interviewing people who might offer clues to Gibbons' fate. The agents learned that Gibbons had arrived in New York from England in 1970, a 17-year-old welterweight who became a protege of champion Emile Griffith. He had retired in 1981 with a record of 23-3 and embarked on a career managing a string of illegal casinos in the city owned by an Irishman known as "Johnny Mac."
Nattily dressed and in constant good cheer, Gibbons went from spot to spot. The places did big business with Israelis and Russians and Koreans, and he spent his cut in zesty accordance with the principle of easy come, easy go.
"He didn't smoke or drink or take drugs, yet it was all gone," a relative says.
After the police padlocked an 18th St. spot, it became a school for new employes. A large number were Irish Republican Army veterans, Johnny Mac finding them to have the toughness of those who had done time, but the honesty of those who had risked even death back home for not a penny's profit.
Sammy Millar of Belfast earned some $600 a week zipping among the casinos on a motor scooter, collecting the take lest it fall to the police or stickup men. His sense of humor was darkened by eight years in a British prison, and he had the air of one who felt he had given all that the cause could require.
"It was, 'Been there, done that,' " a former co-worker says. "He was looking for something for himself."
Millar was a family man by temperament and thrifty enough that he was able to open a comic book store in Queens after increasingly frequent police raids shut the casinos. Gibbons had saved nothing, and where he once hit bars and restaurants with wads of cash, he now arrived with a shopping bag of hot merchandise.
"A nice tie?" Gibbons would ask. "A belt?"
In 1990, the birth of Gibbons' first and only child made the need for money more pressing. He had himself become family minded when Millar came to see him.
MILLAR had been smuggled into the United States via Canada six years before by a retired Rochester cop he had met in Ireland. Thomas O'Connor had gone on to work at a Brink's depot.
Now, Gibbons would tell friends and family, Millar invited him to help rob the place. Gibbons said he spent nearly two years helping to plan the job.
The security at the cinderblock depot was so lax that a pizza delivery man once wandered into the money room unchallenged, but Gibbons still felt there was too much potential for something to go wrong and prove how right he was to dislike gun

Comment by Brenda on October 22, 2011 at 11:13pm

The FBI is investigating claims that a British man was murdered by gangsters behind one of America's biggest security van raids.

Margaret Gibbons says son Joseph "Ronnie" Gibbons vanished in August 1995 after demanding a share of pounds 4.5million haul stolen from a Brinks security depot in New York in 1994. Mrs Gibbons, from Liverpool, claims Joseph, 43, was killed when he backed out of the robbery then demanded his cut.

An FBI agent said: "She thinks that one of the gang had him whacked, but we can't find any evidence so far."

A priest and an IRA terrorist were jailed for their part in the heist but the man thought to be the brains was acquitted.

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/FBI+PROBES+BRIT+GANG+KILL+THEORY.-a06...

Comment by Brenda on October 22, 2011 at 11:11pm

Date Posted: 14:12:29 08/18/09 Tue GMT
Author: Lynn
Subject: Police turn to inmate to solve 1995 case (Rochester Democrat/Chronicle)

August 16, 2009

Police turn to inmate to help solve 1995 case of disappearing man

Gary Craig
Staff writer

Earlier this summer, two police investigators traveled to the Mohawk Correctional Facility near Rome to see whether a 71-year-old inmate and two-time killer — a prisoner almost certain to die behind bars — could shed light on unsolved crimes connected to the 1993 heist of $7.4 million from a Rochester Brinks depot.

In particular, Rochester police Investigator William Lawler and State Police Investigator Thomas Crowley hoped the inmate, Gerald O'Connor, could reveal what happened to a man who vanished in Greece in 1995, and whose disappearance is suspected to be linked to the robbery of the Brinks depot.

Police say they believe the man, Joseph "Ronnie" Gibbons, is dead. O'Connor has claimed he helped bury Gibbons after another individual killed him. In a series of about a half-dozen interviews with police over the past two years, O'Connor has occasionally related what he claims happened to Gibbons, but police say he has never been willing, if his story is true, to lead them to where the corpse was buried.

"He certainly, given his history, has the potential to know this information," Crowley said of O'Connor, who is imprisoned for an Orleans County murder, kidnapping and sexual assault. O'Connor had previously been incarcerated for manslaughter in a separate slaying.

About two years ago, police renewed the investigation into Gibbons' disappearance. With the 14-year anniversary of his disappearance last week, police revealed in interviews some of the successes and hurdles they've faced with the ongoing probe.

Police have linked Gibbons to the Brinks heist; most of the money from the robbery remains missing. Two men, Samuel Millar and the Rev. Patrick Moloney, were convicted of possessing money from the robbery, while two — former Rochester Police Officer Thomas O'Connor and Charles McCormick — were acquitted at trial of involvement in the crime.

Thomas O'Connor and Gerald O'Connor are not related.

Both Moloney, who lives in New York City, and Millar, who lives in Belfast in Northern Ireland, are now free.

Despite Gerald O'Connor's recalcitrance, police say they're continuing to amass evidence about Gibbons' disappearance. They have a suspect — the individual O'Connor said killed Gibbons — and last year furtively secured a DNA sample from the man, Lawler said.

Police say the individual was questioned in the late 1980s about an unsolved slaying — the 1987 shooting death of Damien McClinton at a Genesee Brewery warehouse in Rochester — and they are now re-examining information and physical evidence from that killing.

Police were able to obtain DNA samples from the suspect at a social event he attended locally last year, Lawler said. At the event, undercover State Police posed as waiters and waitresses and secured a soup spoon used by the individual and beer bottles he drank from, Lawler said.

Now they have the DNA, Lawler said, should there be physical evidence available from the McClinton slaying or from Gibbons' disappearance, or should a crime scene or body be discovered.

Police also say they have conducted numerous interviews in the past two years that may help answer what happened to Gibbons, who was a retired welterweight boxer.

Fourteen years ago last week, Gibbons drove to the Rochester region from New York City after borrowing a friend's car. Gibbons told the friend that he helped plan the Brinks heist, though was not involved in its execution, and was going to travel to Rochester to get what he believed to be his fair share of the stolen loot.

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