Veronica Guerin Interview With Anne Felloni
Veronica Guerin Interview With Anne Felloni
Veronica Guerin Interview With Anne Felloni
His heroin income was small in the Seventies but was supplemented, says Anne, by "burglaries, tie-ups [robberies where the victim is tied up], warehouse, post office and bank jobs". Despite the fact that he made plenty of money from crime he was never generous to Anne or any of their children. Together Anne and he had seven children. The oldest, Mario Angelo (26) has full blown Aids and is serving a 10-year sentence in Parkhurst Prison in England. He was convicted of an armed robbery carried out to pay for his heroin addiction. His father gave him his first taste of heroin on his 16th birthday. Anne (25) is also a heroin addict. Her father got her involved in the drugs business while still at school. She is in the second stage of Aids as a result of using dirty needles. Luigi (23) is out on bail, having been charged with possession of six grams of heroin. Lena (22) is also a heroin addict. Regina (21) is currently on remand in Mountjoy charged with possession of five ounces of heroin. Renaldo (17) is in St Patrick's Institution. His mother says he is involved in petty crime. The youngest child is Elivita, a beautiful two-year-old baby. Her mother is adamant that she will not become embroiled in a life of crime. I find it incomprehensible how Anne remained with her husband as she shows me the physical scars she bears from the beatings he gave her. The assaults resulted in stitches to her skull after being hit by a hatchet, a scar on her eye where she was hit with a bottle, stitches on her ear from his attempt to bite it off and eight-inch long scars on both legs as a result of being thrown through a glass window. She believes she endured a lot of the pain because she herself was a heroin addict for nearly five years. "In 1984 I was out of my head on heroin, I didn't know if it was day or night, never mind what he was doing to me." During this period she became pregnant and gave birth to a son she christened Benito. The baby only survived three days as his liver collapsed because of his mother's heroin habit. "Tony tried to poison me then, I was near-comatose in the hospital and he was spoon-feeding me with gear he had hidden there." Felloni was responsible for unintentionally poisoning two of his customers. According to Anne he robbed a jar of heroin and a jar of strychnine in a burglary on a chemist's shop in Wicklow. The jar marked heroin actually contained strychnine and vice versa. He liberally used the strychnine instead of the heroin in his sales packs, causing two young addicts to die ... Last Thursday the success of Operation Pizza, designed to destroy the Felloni drugs empire, came to a successful conclusion when Felloni was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment. According to his wife Anne, prison is too good for him. "He's f***ed up every one of his own kids so he doesn't give a shite about anyone."