linguistic:voice_change, structural:scholar_edition, structural:expansion, stylistic:style_transfer, information:filtering
Conspiracy and collusion

Numerous questions remain about the events surrounding the death of Collins because the only witnesses to his death were the members of the Free State Army convoy and the anti-Treaty ambushers. As no two stories match and participant statements from both sides are contradictory and inconsistent, unanswered questions linger about what happened that day.

The man generally believed to have fired the fatal shot at Béal na Bláth, Denis "Sonny" O'Neill, was a former officer from the Royal Irish Constabulary who served as a sniper in the British Army during the First World War. O'Neill had joined the IRA in 1918 and had met Collins on more than one occasion. However, when the Irish Civil War started in June 1922, O'Neill joined the Anti-Treaty IRA.

O'Neill remains a mysterious figure because of the contradictions in his biography: such as serving in the British Army but then joining the IRA. He provided them with information concerning the Igoe Gang that worked for the British Army Intelligence Centre. In the 1940s, twenty years after Collins' death, the Irish State granted O'Neill a captain's military pension.