The feud began in 2000 when a drugs seizure led to a split in a gang of young criminals in their late teens and early twenties, most of whom had grown up together and went to the same school.
[1] Martin "Marlo" Hyland, a major organised crime figure from North Dublin also supplied guns to one of the feuding factions.
Declan Gavin, 20, a senior member of the gang was released after two days of questioning without being charged because he wasn't actually in the room with the drugs when Gardaí entered.
He was stabbed to death outside an Abrakebabra fast food restaurant in Crumlin by a masked man who escaped in a getaway car driven by an accomplice.
[1] Shay O'Byrne, 27, was shot dead in front of his girlfriend (Brian Rattigan's sister) by a masked gunman outside their home in Tallaght in March 2009.
[10] In July 2009, Anthony Cannon, 26, from Robert Street in the south inner city, was shot several times in the head in front of women and children at St. Mary's Avenue in Ballyfermot, west Dublin.
Cannon, who was a senior member of the Rattigan gang, was wearing a bullet proof vest when he died and was a suspect in over a dozen serious incidents linked to the feud in the year before his death.
[13] With the killing of Cannon and Rattigan's murder conviction, it had been hoped by those in the local community that the feud would end, with Thompson's rivals appearing to have more or less admitted defeat.
[14] Gerard Eglington, 27, was shot dead in front of his 11-year-old step-daughter and infant son in Portarlington, County Laois, on 24 September 2012 after a gunman entered his home.
The next day Declan O'Reilly, 34, who had survived a previous attempt on his life, was shot dead in front of his young son as they walked along South Circular Road in Dublin.
Young criminals, many of them teenagers, consider Thompson and Rattigan "yesterday's men" and have been fighting their own war for control of the drug scene in the area.