The death has taken place of Peter Daly – a former US policeman from Ballyshannon.
Mr Daly served as a New York police officer in the 1960s and 70s, before his career collapsed around a drugs scandal.
Mr Daly passed away peacefully at St. John’s Hospital in Sligo, aged 84. The funeral mass will be held on Wednesday 1st February at St Patrick’s Church Ballyshannon followed by interment in the Abbey Shannon.
Born in 1933, Peter grew up in Ballyshannon, where his father was a GP.
He moved to New York at the age of 19 and volunteered to fight in the Korean War. When he returned to New York, he got an American citizenship and joined the Police Academy in 1961.
Peter started off as a beat cop on streets of New York. He moved up the ranks to the NYPD’s Special Investigations Unit, an elite group that probed into the gangsters of New York’s criminal underworld.
Mr Daly allegedly stole and resold drugs from the biggest seizure in US history, earning him a ten year sentence in prison with mobsters and thieves.
In 1970, Peter’s unit uncovered 100kg of heroin and cocaine in a drug seizure bigger than the famous French Connection. In an RTE documentary which aired in 2013, retired authority personnel said it was more likely that 105kg, or even 110kg of drugs was found. The extra kilograms were sold on by Peter and his crew, according to the Good Cop/Bad Cop? RTE Radio documentary.
Peter returned to Ballyshannon as his crimes were revealed to the US courts. He was safe from extradition in Ireland, but a visit to a relative in England turned sour as police swarmed his hotel in Liverpool.
From a prison cell in the UK’s Pentonville Prison, Peter’s efforts to avoid extradition failed.
He stood before a grand jury in the US in 1975, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison because his ‘Irish stubbornness’ meant that he would not tell on his accomplices and reveal information.
It was Peter’s silence and refusal to cooperate with detectives that earned him respect among the tough gangsters of US prison. He befriended thieves and mafia bosses who protected him during his five year incarceration.
Peter returned to Donegal in 1981 following his release and was said to be a respected member of the community. He settled in Rossnowlagh before living out his retirement years in Ballyshannon.
Mr Daly poignantly told his neighbour Marc McMenamin in the RTE documentary that dishonesty comes with many regrets: “I was brought up to know right from wrong. My regrets are innumerable. Whether it was Ballyshannon or New York, it was all part of life and please God we will pass away quietly into the night at the end of it.”
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