A new RTE documentary lifts the lid on the encounter after a booze- and drug-fuelled night that ended with the tycoon threatening to jump from the 17th floor of a hotel. The cop who talked Ben Dunne off a ledge during a cocaine bender in a Florida hotel said he formed an unbreakable bond with the retail tycoon.

Stan Spanich responded to what he described as a fairly routine Orange County police call while he was on duty on February 20, 1992. Dispatch said a man was threatening suicide by diving off the 17th floor of the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress Hotel, two miles from Disneyworld. But in a new documentary on the extraordinary life and times of Ben Dunne, Spanich lifts the lid on an encounter that was anything but routine.

Larger-than-life businessman Mr Dunne made headlines around the world after he was handcuffed, hogtied and charged with cocaine trafficking. A booze- and drug-fuelled night with a young escort ended with a wild-eyed Dunne, barefoot and topless, out on a ledge at six in the morning. In spite of the risks to his own safety that night, former Orange County Deputy Sheriff Mr Spanich said he regarded Mr Dunne as his friend.

Becoming emotional in the RTE documentary, he revealed: “I’ve seen a lot of people in distress and he was bad. He needed help.” Mr Spanich said he often looks back on the events of that night and thinks about the man he formed a bond with on a hotel balcony. Welling up with tears, he said: “Out of the blue, I wonder how Ben’s doing, I just called him Ben. You know he was my secret friend, that he didn’t know who I was, right?”

The infamous Florida incident dominates the RTE feature, which explores all aspects of Mr Dunne’s life, including his kidnapping at the hands of the Provisional IRA, the bitter family rift, and the tribunals. Denise Wojcik, who was a 22-year-old escort at the time, tells of meeting a “very talkative” Mr Dunne in his hotel room. She said: “I’d never met him before so I didn’t know if he was normally like that or... I was wondering, you know, was he doing, you know, coke.”

The pair went down to the hotel bar, where they snorted lines of cocaine through $100 bills before going back to the hotel room. Denise said: “We talked a lot about sex, you know what my likes were, what his likes were. We got the bath running and somehow we were doing coke off the side of the tub.” She recounted how Mr Dunne became agitated when he could not open the safe in the room, even though he had the combination written down.

Denise said: “Up until then he was pretty normal, you know as normal as you can be when you’re high as a kite. I finally realised he was about to freak out so I went into the bathroom and put my clothes on. I was waiting for the elevator and he comes screaming by, he had just pants on, no shoes and no shirt.”

Mr Spanich spent 40 minutes trying to coax 6ft 4in Mr Dunne back into his room, number 1708. He recalled: “He was a big man, looking at him it was fear, it was terror. That I haven’t seen, it was just like, he was frothing at the mouth. I got nervous because he was a big man and when we started talking all of a sudden he got agitated again. He says ‘I’m just gonna jump and I’m gonna take you with me’ and I’m like ‘Look you don’t want to do that, I’ve got kids, I’ve got young kids.’ He says, ‘I’ll give you $100,000 to get me out of this.’ I said, ‘I don’t want your money, I’m just here to help you.’”

Mr Spanich relives the tense exchange in which Mr Dunne revealed he’d been kidnapped in the past. The now retired cop said: “I told him my name was Stan and maybe a couple of minutes later, he said ‘My name is Ben.’ I said, ‘Ben, we’re going to help you, no one’s gonna hurt you.’ He’s like, I think he says, ‘I’ve been kidnapped before.’ Then I was like, ‘Whoa, he’s just told me that’... ‘Okay, well, I guarantee you this isn’t gonna happen to you, you’re gonna be okay. I said, ‘Ben come on, why don’t you come on down here and you know we’ll get you some help?’ And he started, then he stopped again and said no, that is when the other guys came and they took him down.”

Mr Dunne, who was 42 at the time, was unceremoniously tied to a pole by his hands and feet and marched out of the hotel by police officers. He spent 48 hours in custody before his release and flight home. The charges were later reduced to cocaine possession, carrying a $5,000 fine.

Ben Dunne's Legacy

While Mr Dunne pulled off what many regarded as a PR master stroke by publicly apologising for the Florida incident, he was kicked off the board of Dunnes Stores and his sister Margaret Heffernan took over the reins. He later admitted he’d been a “secret user” in the grips of a cocaine addiction from the late 1980s to 1994 – two years after his ill-fated Florida binge.

Archive footage of Mr Dunne in countless TV interviews over the years features in the documentary. In a conversation with Pat Kenny on The Late Late Show, as he was launching his chain of gyms, he mused: “If you take my CV – fired from Dunnes Stores, a drug addict, under psychiatric care, opening a health club. I mean, it took some guts.”

Mr Dunne died suddenly while on holidays in Dubai in November 2023. A flawed yet likeable character, he left a huge legacy. Even media figures who covered the McCracken and Moriarty tribunals and other Dunne-related scandals reveal a secret admiration for him.

Joe Duffy reveals: “I was aware he was very generous anonymously to people who were in difficulty, Ben Dunne was never found wanting. His largesse went way beyond Charlie Haughey, went way beyond Michael Lowry, but that largesse was never acknowledged.” Irish Times columnist Justine McCarthy admits: “You could say Ben Dunne did this country something of a service. His falling out with his siblings lifted the lid on a whole lot of secrets in this country.”

The Shocking Details

The former supermarket tycoon was in the US on a golf trip with friends in February 1992 when the incident occurred. He was staying at the Hyatt Grand Cypress Hotel and hired local escort, Denise Wojcik, then 22, from an agency.

They drank champagne and snorted cocaine together, with a new RTE documentary into his life recalling how they even did the drug in the bath together. Dunne used his K Club membership card to slice up the coke. The problems arose when he couldn’t open his safe in the hotel and became paranoid.

He told security to call the police and he stood on the balcony threatening to jump. Stan Spanich was a deputy sheriff with the Orange County Police at the time and got called out about a ‘possible suicide,’ with a ‘man on the ledge’ of the hotel. When he arrived, it was a chaotic scene.

Stan recalled: “He was a big man. Looking at him, it was fear, it was terror that I haven’t seen. He was frothing at the mouth.” He told Ben they could help but were told not to come any closer or he would jump.

He continued: “I got nervous, because he was a big man and when we started talking, all of a sudden he got agitated again and said, ‘I’m just going to jump, I’m going to take you with me.’ And I’m like, ‘You don’t want to do that, I’ve got kids, I’ve got young kids.’ He said, ‘I’ll give you $100,000 to get me out of this.’”

Stan said he told him he didn’t want his money and just wanted to help him. He managed to get Ben talking, who admitted he had been kidnapped before. He talked Ben off the ledge in time to get other officers to pin him down. But as he was in such a state of agitation and was lashing out, they ended up hogtying him to get him out of the hotel.

More Than a Cocaine Bender

The RTE documentary looks at the rollercoaster of Dunne’s life, from taking over the family supermarket, to being kidnapped by the IRA while on the way to Newry to open a new store. He was held for six days in 1981 by the group, who eventually were paid a ransom to free him. Former Minister Alan Dukes said the Government had told the family not to pay a fee and they were intercepted a number of times trying to pay off the kidnappers.

He said: “The Provisional IRA was regarded as a very serious threat to the State. There had been a standing policy of the Government that no ransom will be paid in any case.” He added: “We wanted to avoid a killing as an outcome. I’d have to say that the blood on the hands would be on the hands of the kidnappers first.”

The show also looks at Dunne’s controversial payments to politicians like Charlie Huaghey and Michael Lowry and the tribunals held into these payments, as well as his family feud over the supermarket, and his rise as a businessman again. RTE presenter Joe Duffy appears in the documentary having interviewed Dunne several times and held him to account on his Liveline show. And he said the business mogul, who died last year while on holiday in Dubai, always managed to win the public over.

Joe said: “The perception of Ben Dunne by the ordinary decent people was much better than the perception by the media bubble. His legacy I hope is around the Dunnes Stores name and the impact that company has in Ireland which is generally good.”

Extraordinary Life: The Ben Dunne Story is on RTE One on Monday September 30 at 9.35pm, and on the RTE Player.