PJ JudgeAn Irish crime boss and drug trafficker nicknamed “The Psycho,” PJ Judge was a feared and brutal criminal in Dublin’s underworld. Judge controlled the drugs trade in several Dublin suburbs, and was involved in the murders of other criminals, one of whom was kidnapped, tortured and beaten to death in a frenzied psychopathic killing.
In the early hours of December 7, 1996, the Royal Oak public house was full of patrons watching a local band perform. Among those in attendance were PJ Judge, his girlfriend Ellen and Martin “Marlo” Hyland, one of Judge’s most trusted associated. At around closing time, Hyland made a phone call from the pub’s public phone.
It would later emerge that this call had been placed to another public phone in another pub in Finglas West, the Northway House. As soon as the call was received, Hyland left the pub in the company of Judge, but then made the excuse that he had left his phone inside, and went to retrieve it, while Judge sat in his car.
Within minutes of the call being made, and seconds after Hyland went back inside the pub, a masked gunman on a motorcycle fired two shots at Judge, hitting him in the head and killing him instantly. The hit team when sped off, disappearing into the night. In the days after the murder, the IRA announced they had assassinated Judge.
Hyland was subsequently arrested and questioned over the murder, but with no evidence of his involvement, he was released. Several days after Judge’s murder, his associate Mark Dwyer was found shot dead. Hyland then assumed control of Judge’s vast drugs empire, which had been built by the gangland boss through fear, terror and several murders.
Born in Dublin, Ireland, on July 27, 1955, Peter Joseph Judge, known to his family and friends as PJ Judge, grew up in Finglas, an area he would become infamous. Involved in crime from a young age when Judge robbed a firearms dealer at the age of thirteen, a crime for which he spent two years in St Conleth’s Reformatory School in Daingean.
Judge spent most of his teenaged years in and out of institutions, and he eventually began leading a burglary gang of other youths in the area. In one of his hold-ups, he reportedly shot and injured a postal worker, but he mostly acted as a highly skilled getaway driver, and possessed an uncanny knowledge of every back street and escape route in Dublin.
His associates and those who knew him growing up, Judge was described as showing a propensity for violence and a fearlessness of the law from a young age. In one incident, he reportedly drove a stolen car over a policeman riding a motorbike in his native Finglas. In August 1979, Judge was charged after carrying out the robbery of a savings bank in Fairview, which netted him over £1,000.
The gang had used a van as their getaway vehicle, which was registered in the name another criminal. William “Jock” Corbally, an associate of Judge, was an armed robber who had grown up near Judge and the two became involved in various criminal acts. However, when question by police, Corbally said he had loaned the van to Judge, leading to his arrest, conviction and subsequent ten year sentence.
Because of this, Judge developed a grudge against Corbally. In February 1980, he was charged with firearm possession relating to an attempted robbery of a post office in Ballyfermot, for which he received a further ten years sentence. Imprisoned in Mountjoy Prison, it was reported that in 1984 Judge had gone on hunger strike, in protest at the conditions at the prison.
After serving nine years in total for both offences, he was released. It was not until 1990 that Judge became involved in the drugs trade, having been introduced to the large amounts that could be earned by his neighbour John “The Mexican” McKeown, a cannabis dealer in Dublin city. He soon controlled a vast drug empire through fear.
It was during the 1990’s that PJ Judge’s drug gang controlled the flow of drugs in the Finglas, Cabra and Ballymun suburbs of Dublin. One of his most trusted associates was Hyland, whose sister, Ellen, was the girlfriend of Judge. Together they run a drug organization that netted Judge hundreds of thousands every month.
In order to ensure their drug operation was free from interference as well as their safety, Judge and Hyland paid off the IRA with large sums. Many other drugs gangs paid money to the IRA, whose stance against drugs was strict, but who saw the potential wealth that could be gained from dealing in illicit narcotics.
He eventually presided over a criminal empire that generated a million pounds from dealing in heroin and cannabis. He would also gained a reputation as one of the country’s most vicious and dangerous criminals, who carried out a number of horrific punishment shootings and beatings against suspected informers and rivals.
According to the Sunday World, “One his victims was the younger brother of the notorious heroin dealer and former League of Ireland football player, nicknamed Maradonna, who he shot in the legs.” It was through these acts and later suspected murders that he earned the nickname “The Psycho”.
Judge, who was a friend of top Irish gangland boss Gerry “The Monk” Hutch, was strongly suspected of involvement in at least three murders, one of which was described as a torture-murder. One criminal source explained, “he is a law unto himself… he is afraid of no one, the cops, criminals or even the IRA. He takes pleasure in giving out pain.”
A Gardai intelligence report described Judge as “a vicious and extremely dangerous criminal and contract killer.” Other criminals who spoke to the press about Judge said of him, “No one wants to fuck with him. He is afraid of no one. If you have any sense you won’t write about him.”
Judge was considered “an intelligent man”, always casually but expensively dressed. “You wouldn’t think he was a gouger. He looked well off and you wouldn’t be worried about speaking to him if you didn’t know who he was,” said one person who knew him. “There’s no doubt he was probably the most dangerous person in the city,” one Garda source said. “But he was very clinical, he didn’t leave evidence.”
Judge and his gang were closely associated with the criminal operation overseen by Joseph “Cotton-Eye Joe” Delaney. Mark Dwyer, a drug dealer and courier was friends with Delaney’s son, and was one of Judge’s associates. Together, these criminal groups were part of the wholesale gang that distributed ecstasy and cocaine across Dublin.
Apart from his extensive drug network, Judge reportedly owned three brothels, for which he used for his own satisfaction. However, Judge was described in the press as homosexual who “sometimes deviates,” by using prostitutes. It was said that Judge was close to “The Monk’s” younger brother, who was also homosexual.
The crime that solidified PJ Judge’s brutal reputation along with his “The Pyscho” nickname was the murder of a low-level criminal who had made the mistake of crossing the Dublin crime boss. This horrific murder, which has remained unsolved, was used by Judge to warn off any potential opposition to his power within the Irish criminal underworld.
In 1991, one of William “Jock” Corbally’s two eldest teenaged sons began working for Judge as a cannabis dealer. When his son lost £800 worth of drugs given to him by Judge to sell, Jock Corbally was just being released from prison for an armed robbery. Judge ordered his henchmen to abduct Corbally, and give him an ultimatum. Pay double the value of the drugs.
Unable to pay the £1,600, Corbally was eventually told by Judge that he would spare him and his two eldest sons if they left the country. According to crime reporter Paul Williams “He thought he was running the show and he was. He (the Psycho) wasn’t afraid of anyone and that included the guards; he was on the way up,” one of his associates said.
Instead of leaving on the boat to England, Corbally and his sons encountered Judge and launched an attack that left him in the hospital. Williams said, “From that moment it was no longer a matter of business with the killer – it was now personal, very personal. He lost face and there was no way he was going to get away with that.”
After his release in December 1994, Corbally moved from place to place in the hope of avoiding Judge. Knowing he was a marked man, Corbally stayed at a flat in Ballymun. He had several near-escapes. During one incident, Judge and his men tried to trap Jock as he drove a car near his mother’s home, but he managed to escape.
During one summer afternoon in 1995, Corbally was out walking with his five-year-old son, when Judge spotted him. Although he lunged at him with a hammer, Judge was disarmed. With his vendetta against Jock becoming and obsession, he plotted a new plan to lure his enemy out and into a trap.
Knowing Corbally was I need of money, since most armed robbers had moved into the drugs business, Judge arranged for an associate drug dealer from Clondalkin to approach Corbally and offer him work smuggling a large consignment of heroin into the country from Amsterdam. Corbally received large cash payments which he thought were an advance for his services.
The identity of the Clondalkin drug dealer is unknown, and referred only as “Mr G” by Williams. Unaware that Mr G worked for Judge, Corbally was told to meet him at a phone box outside the Mullinger House in Chapelizod, Dublin, on the evening of February 28, 1996. Mr G brought Corbally to a flat on the pretext of collecting cash for a drug run.
Instead, Corbally found himself walking into a deadly trap. Inside the flat was waiting Judge and his associate Mark Dwyer. Corbally was allegedly beaten and then bound and gagged before he was put in the boot of a high-powered car and driven to a field near Baldonnel. Williams said that Judge had chosen that spot specifically, because no-one would hear Corbally’s screams.
What happened next if un-verified, but the details have been recounted by underworld sources who were either close-by or were told those present. Judge reportedly beat 45-year-old Corbally with an iron bar as he lay on the ground bound and begging for mercy. He then used a variety of implements, including pliers that were used to pull out his teeth.
A criminal source told Williams that “Jock always prided himself on his pearly white teeth… that would have been a bonus for him (the Psycho)” After working himself up into a frenzy during the beating, Judge subjected Corbally to a “six-hour torture session,” after which he died shortly after 3:00am, when his body could take no more.
Judge and Dwyer, who had helped by holding down Corbally during the beating, placed the body into the car and then drove to an unknown location and there dumped the tortured and decapitated remains of William “Jock” Corbally into a pre-arranged makeshift grave. When word of the murder leaked, Judge reportedly enjoyed the notoriety, believing that it would put fear into his enemies.
“It also means that even if the guards found out, which they did, that no one was going to give evidence against him. Anyway, the evidence is thin without a body and he is the only one who knows where it is,” said the underworld source. By early April 1996, the Garda searched farmland near Baldonnel.
This was after a tip led police to the area, where it was said Corbally’s brutalized remains were buried. However, no trace was found. One detective said of Judge’s involvement, “We know he did it and it is only a matter of time before we get him. In the long term it might be in his best interests that we get him before one of his own kind do.”
The second murder attributed to PJ Judge is the April 3, 1993 slaying of 54-year-old Michael Godfrey. In 1991, Judge set-up a money-counterfeiting scam, of which Godfrey was a key player. That year Godfrey was arrested in possession of forged Irish £20 notes, and was sentenced to 30 months imprisonment in England.
In his book ‘Badfellas’, Paul Williams writes that after his release Godfrey became involved in drug importation with Judge. “Godfrey … set up a front company in an industrial unit in Glasnevin, The plan was to import large quantities of cannabis for Judge, who was anxious to cut out the middlemen in the business.”
“In February 1993, they travelled to Belgium where they agreed to buy 30 kilos of hash from a Dutch dealer for £30,000 … When the first consignment arrived in 12 March, Judge refused to take it because it was not the cannabis he sampled in Holland … and ordered Godfrey to get the money back.”
“Instead Godfrey sold the hash to John Gilligan’s lieutenant, Peter ‘Fatso’ Mitchell, for almost double its price. Judge heard about the deal and flew into a rage.” At around midnight on April 3, 1993, two masked men called at Godfrey’s flat on the North Circular Road. A neighbour told police about the encounter.
The two men reportedly “… told Michael: ‘You know you owe somebody a lot of money’. He seemed to know what they were talking about and asked them to be reasonable about it. He said: ‘We can sort it out”. The last time Godfrey was seen alive was when he drove off with the two men in his blue Renault car.
The following morning, at 11:30am, the body of Michael Godfrey was “found under a hedge in a field near Scribblestown Lane, Blanchardstown. He had been beaten and then shot twice in the head.” In July 1993, the .32 revolver gun that was used in the murder had been found buried in a field in Dunsink, Finglas.
That summer a number of men and women were arrested in Tallaght, Clondalkin and Finglas and taken in for questioning. Ultimately, 26-year-old Derek Casserly was charged with the murder and false imprisonment of Godfrey, and he pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 1996. At the later trial, it was determined that although Casserly was an “active participant,” in the abduction and murder, it was not known if he fired the fatal shots.
It is strongly suspected that PJ Judge ordered the killing of Godfrey, as a message against anyone who might try to double-cross him. In September 1995, 41-year-old Michael Brady was shot dead on Dublin’s quays. Judge was investigated over the killing, and Garda sources said it was “speculation” to link him to that killing at this stage.
Brady had served a seven year sentence for the manslaughter of his wife, who was the sister of Judge’s associate Martin “Marlo” Hyland. Upon his release, it is believe Hyland and Judge planned his murder. Brady was shot dead as he stopped his car outside his apartment gates in Ellis Street, central Dublin.
By the time of his death, PJ Judge had become enraged by an exposé written by Paul Williams about Judge’s sexuality and his plot to have Williams killed. Around this same time police seized £70,000 which they believed were the proceeds from his drug dealing. Meanwhile, in the aftermath of Corbally’s murder, there was increased Garda attention.
This caused friction between Judge and Hyland’s gang, and the IRA, who saw their own criminal activity coming under increased police scrutiny. Members of the IRA are reported to have sought a meeting with Hyland, during which they encouraged him to take out Judge since he was seen as a liability.
Around this same time, Judge had a meeting with Delaney concerning the disappearance of a shipment of 40,000 ecstasy tablets. Delaney held a series of frantic meetings with other top criminals to find out who stole the drugs, including Judge, who reportedly told him that their mutual associate Mark Dwyer had recently approached him trying to sell a large quantity of ecstasy.
On December 7, 1996, Judge was shot and killed in what many suspected was an IRA hit. There was, however, rumours that Hyland ordered the killing in retaliation. The Irish Times reported that Gardaí suspected Judge had beaten Hyland’s sister Ellen in the two weeks prior to his death, and were investigating this as a line of inquiry.
On 14 December 1996, just several days after Judge’s murder, Mark Dwyer was abducted by a Dublin drug gang for his involvement in the disappearance of the shipment of 40,000 ecstasy tablets. Taken to a house in Naas, County Kildare, where he was tied to a chair and subjected to hours of a judge later described as “unspeakable savagery”.
Masked men allegedly acting under orders from Delaney beat 23-year-old Dwyer carried out a prolonged, systematic beating lasting several hours. His attackers used iron bars with exposed nails to repeatedly strike him, in an effort to force him to reveal what happened to the missing 40,000 ecstasy tablets.
A primary witness at Delaney’s later trial, Adrienne McGuinness, broke down in tears on the witness stand as she testified that she was inside Delaney’s home in Naas during the interrogation and had to turn her stereo speakers up to full volume to try to drown out Dwyer’s agonizing screams.
Mark Dwyer was eventually driven to a desolate field in Scribblestown, and shot. Delaney’s suspicions of Dwyer were formed from his conversation with Judge, comments which led to the torture killing of his associate several days after his own murder. Delaney would later be convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the crime.
The murder of PJ Judge remains officially unsolved, however, given that Hyland took over his drug empire after his assassination, it is suspected his involvement as the mastermind behind the killing was, in part, both professional and personal. Other theories were put forward that Hyland killed Judge to prevent his own death.
According to sources, Hyland own Judge roughly £130,000 after one of his drug shipments was seized by police. “Marlo knew all too well how dangerous Judge was. PJ kept saying to him not to worry about the money but Marlo knew that that meant nothing… Judge could just turn around in a second and blow him away,” said the source.
In January 1997, it was reported that seven men had been arrested in connection with the murder of PJ Judge. The men, from the Finglas and Cabra area, were questioned and later released without charge. To date, no-one has been charged for the gangland killing of Peter Joseph Judge.
Hyland went on to operate one of the largest drug gangs in Ireland, which was involved in the importation of large shipments of cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy and heroin as well as VAT fraud, car theft, armed robbery, extortion and the supply of firearms. For a decade after Judge’s death, Hyland operated as the dominant figure in Dublin’s organized criminal world.
Following his death, it was revealed that PJ Judge had actively worked as an informer, “grassing” on fellow criminals in exchange for money. However, this arrangement ended after he was arrested following a shootout. In contemporary Dublin, Judge is remembered for the nickname bestowed upon him by the press that originated from the many brutal crimes he committed during his time as one of Ireland’s most infamous gangland drug barons.
Wineville Chicken Coop Murders Discover the chilling true story behind the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders, a series of gruesome abductions and killings of young boys that shook 1920s California and exposed deep corruption within the LAPD.
Jeanette Kempton In early 1989, Jeanette Kempton went missing from Brixton, London. Several weeks later, her body was found over 100 miles away.
Investor Murders In September 1982, eight crew members of a fishing boat were shot dead by an unknown killer in what became known as the Investor Murders.
Nancy Guthrie Kidnapping The Nancy Guthrie Kidnapping occurred on February 1, 2026, when the 84-year-old mother of US News anchor Savannah Guthrie vanished.
Atlas Vampire Case The unsolved murder of a Swedish prostitute has become known as the Atlas Vampire case, because the killer drank the victims blood.
Ian Watkins As the lead singer of Welsh rock band the Lostprophets, Ian Watkins had legions of fans, but few could know he was a prolific child abuser.
