Bernard O'Mahoney

Patrick Bernard O'Mahoney (born 15 March 1960 in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, England) is an English crime author of Irish descent. He served in the British Army for three years during which time he was posted to Northern Ireland. The hunger strikes had just begun and the province experienced the worst violence in its long violent history. He later moved to South Africa where he was employed by a private police force during the Anti Apartheid uprising/troubles. In the '80s he returned to Britain where he set up home in Essex. After taking control of security at a local nightclub he formed a partnership with Tony Tucker - one of three men who were later murdered as they sat in a Range Rover. This event captured the imagination of the media and forced O`Mahoney to retire from the security industry. He then began writing books about his many experiences. Several of these books have since become best sellers and one has been made into a film.

O'Mahoney lives in County Durham. He was born in Dunstable and has also lived in Wolverhampton, London, Peterborough, Basildon, Northern Ireland and South Africa.

He has six children, Adrian, Vinney, Karis, Daine, Lydia and Paddy. He is married to Roshea, who is some 20 years younger than Bernard. He was the subject matter of Episode 7 of Series 2 of the Sky "Danny Dyer's Deadliest Men" which was available to view on YouTube and his website but has since been removed.

So this is Ecstasy?

Published in April 1997, it tells the story of dealing of ecstasy and other hard drugs in the Essex area during the early to mid-1990s, which gained a high profile in November 1995 with the death of Latchingdon teenager Leah Betts.

Essex Boys

Published in April 2000, it is a more in-depth story of the Essex Boys, who featured in part of "Wannabe In My Gang" four years later.

Soldier of the Queen

Published in February 2001, this is O'Mahoney's account of his time with the British Army as a soldier in the early 1980s, including his involvement in the Northern Ireland troubles which included frequent clashes with the IRA.

Wannabe in My Gang

Published in March 2004, it tells of the Kray Twins, Ronnie and Reggie, who dominated the gangland scene of London in the 1960s, as well as O'Mahoney correspondence with them during their imprisonment. It also tells of the notorious three "Essex Boys" drug dealers who terrorised Essex with drug dealing and violence during the early to mid-1990s before they were found shot dead in a Range Rover in December 1995. Bernard also, controversially, tells of how well-known British crime-figure Dave Courtney was a registered police informant, dispels several myths about the Kray twins and details how, in his opinion, many high-profile British criminals have told lies and fabricated or exaggerated events in order to boost their reputation/egos and earn money from selling "true crime" books.

Hateland

Published in May 2005, it tells of O'Mahoney's correspondence with nailbomber David Copeland. It also tells of O'Mahoney's violent childhood and youth, including the abuse he suffered at the hands of his alcoholic father and Bernard's involvement with football hooliganism and the Nazi/far-right movement and subsequently his change of views and how he helped infiltrate the British Ku Klux Klan with a News of the World reporter. O'Mahoney also recalls the backlash against his own family and many other people of Irish descent across England in the aftermath of the IRA pub bombings of Birmingham in 1974.

Bonded by Blood

Published in October 2006, it tells of the British drugs scene as a whole, relating to the earlier books "Wannabe In My Gang" and "Essex Boys" which told of the drugs scene in Essex.

Wild Thing

Published in August 2007, it is the biography of "hard man" Lew Yates.

Essex Boys – The New Generation

Published on 1 May 2008, Essex Boys – The New Generation tells of the drugs scene in Essex in the decade or so that followed the murder of the original three "Essex Boys" in December 1995.

Flowers in God's Garden

Published on 1 April 2012, nearly a decade after O'Mahoney began work on it, Flowers in God's Garden tells of O'Mahoney's correspondence with a number of high profile serial killers and child killers, including "Yorkshire Ripper" Peter Sutcliffe, Roy Whiting (who murdered seven-year-old Sarah Payne in West Sussex in 2000) and Ian Huntley (the school caretaker who murdered two 10-year-old girls in Soham, Cambridgeshire, in 2002). It also tells of how he gained a written confession from Richard Blenkey for the murder of seven-year-old Paul Pearson at Marske, Cleveland, in 1991, and how he employed the same tactic when writing to Shaun Armstrong after he was charged with the murdered of Hartlepool toddler Rosie Palmer three years later. In both instances, the letters which O'Mahoney received were shown to the jury at the trial, and both men admitted the murders. In 2001, Armstrong even lodged a claim for damages against O'Mahoney for "breach of confidence", as O'Mahoney had posed as a woman when writing to Armstrong, who had urged him not to tell anyone of his admission to the murder of Rosie Palmer, but he later withdrew his challenge for damages.