A brutal Irish gang lord held a knife to my throat as I tried to rescue ‘groomed’ teen from his clutches
As I stood with my back against the wall of a pub, with a knife against my throat, I realised my luck had run out.
The heavily tattooed arm across my chest, crushing it like a concrete block, belonged to the notoriously violent Irish gang leader Griffin* who was rumoured to have killed his own dad in a power struggle.
Moments later, Griffin threw me down on the ground and, as I tried to roll under a car to protect myself I heard two gunshots and waited for the searing impact of the bullets.
I had never been a gang member but, as a journalist and former child protection officer, I got involved in their brutal world six months earlier, after meeting a 16-year-old who was about to perform his first ‘hit’.
Mikey*, who had been groomed into the gang at 14, had escaped a violent, drunken dad and years of neglect by signing up to a life of crime.
Yet he was now being asked to take his loyalty to a whole new violent level.
Mikey’s story – which features in my new book Bleak Alley – was all too familiar to me.
A marginalised teenager from a deprived area with a total absence of hope, he saw only one path to wealth and respect.
Last month, the horrific murder of 17-year-old Keane Mulready-Woods, decapitated and dismembered in Drogheda Co.Louth, brought the brutal Irish drug wars into sharp focus.
Today, two arrests were finally made over the sickening execution, but it is feared his torso may never be found.
Although gang warfare has always been a feature of Irish life, the grooming of younger and younger children as the lowly foot soldiers, delivering drugs and casual violence, is on the increase across the whole country.
Police estimate there are around 125 gangs operating in Ireland and the rise is fuelled by the middle-class use of cocaine, making drug delivery big business in the cities and towns.
All Mikey wanted was a father figure – and he found that in the local gang leader.
Neglected, starved and beaten up by drunken dad
When I heard the news about tragic 17-year-old Keane, my first thought was that could have been Mikey or any of his friends.
I first met Mikey after I’d written a series of articles about violent gangs and he approached me because he wanted to set the record straight.
“The gang saved my life,” he told me. “If it weren’t for them lads, I’d be dead by now.”
Then he told me a story about a child who got lost and found the wrong way home.
Growing up in on a rundown estate in small town in Ireland, his mother suffered from myriad psychiatric problems and his father was an alcoholic.
“She never knew what to do with me, and he’s f***ing evil,” he said.
“When he was drunk, which was most of the time, he used me as a punch-bag. When I was little, all I can remember was being afraid. Hungry and afraid.”
When he was drunk, which was most of the time, he used me as a punch-bag. When I was little, all I can remember was being afraid
Mikey
At school, he was beaten up for being “small and dirty” and, with no support from teachers, he left at 13, walking out at lunchtime and never going back.
On his 14th birthday, four months later, he spent the evening alone on a broken sofa that was the only furniture in the room, watching Made in Chelsea.
“Me Da was out getting drunk and I don’t know where me Ma was. I was cold and I was starving,” he told me.
“I was watching one of them shows about rich people living in London. They were all eating in fancy restaurants and going to cool pubs and wearing gorgeous clothes.
“I was weak from hunger and hadn’t changed my clothes in two weeks. I suddenly thought: what if this is it? What if it never gets any better?
“It was the scariest feeling. I started bawling. I knew then and there that the only person who was going to help me was me.”
‘Death is a fact of life’
Two streets away lived Griffin, leader of the local Black Alley* gang, who wore nice clothes, drove a car and seemed to Mikey to attract respect.
As soon as it was light, the teenager hung around Griffin’s house and, when he emerged at lunchtime, asked him for a job.
Griffin looked him up and down and asked him when he’d last had something to eat.
With that simple question, he cut right through to the heart of the situation – standing before him was a terrified and hungry child, begging for someone to notice.
Everybody else he’d gone to for help – the teachers, social workers, even his parents – completely failed him.
But Griffin took him for lunch and listened to him. It was the laser-sharp, predatory instinct of a groomer – and, by 4pm, Mikey was in the gang.
Death is a fact of life. You want to do this, you have to be prepared that you’ve only got so long before you have to get out
Mikey
Two years on, when we met at his house on the Black Alley estate, he had decked out the living room with brand new furniture, a thick pile carpet, a wide screen TV, various games consoles and a virtual reality headset.
His mum spent most of his time in a bedroom he’d kitted out for her and his dad was long gone – warned off after a beating by gang members protecting Mikey.
Although he never told me what he did for the gang – and it doesn’t pay to ask too many questions in these situations – he was moving against a background of drugs and violence, so I asked him if he worried about the murders of gang members.
“Death is a fact of life,” Mikey shrugged. “You want to do this, you have to be prepared that you’ve only got so long before you have to get out.
“If you outstay your welcome, you’re going to wind up dead. I knew that when I was fourteen. I was happy to take the risk.”
Told to ‘take out’ rival gang member at 16
Some months after that conversation a frightened and tearful Mikey revealed Griffin had asked him to “step up”.
One of the Black Alley gang members, known as Skelly, had been beaten up by rivals from the *Yellow Alley gang, run by McGann*, in a feud over drug-dealing territories.
In retaliation, Mikey had been told to “take out” McGann’s right-hand man Rio – and the hit was scheduled for the following day.
If he didn’t go through with it, he said, one of his close friends, who Griffin had discovered was gay, would be badly beaten up.
I tried to tell him he had a choice, that he could tell Griffin ‘no’ or run away.
“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” he told me. “Black Alley is where I live. Where I’ve always lived. I have to do this!”
That night, I resolved to stop the war that was destroying the life of this frightened boy.
Knives and gunshots in a pub car park
The next morning I was in a betting shop with McGann holding my wrist and the little finger of my right hand twisted so far back I was certain it would break.
Trying not to cry out in pain, I told him Rio was about to be targeted by the Black Alley gang and appealed to him to stop the bloodshed.
“I’ve heard you care about these kids,” I told him. “This war is over a patch of ground that can’t be much of an earner. Do you want to lose one of your men because of something meaningless?”
“Who says it’s meaningless? Everything has meaning,” he replied.
“Enough for some kid to die?” I said.
McGann listened, and gave me the go ahead to broker a truce with Griffin – and that evening I found myself rolled up in a ball in that pub car park, waiting for a kicking.
As I lay there, I realised that nobody but Griffin and his cronies knew I was there, leaving me in a very dangerous position.
I heard Griffin coming closer, I pulled my knees up to my chest and tried to wedge myself under the nearest vehicle.
That was when I heard the gunshots.
I pulled my knees up to my chest and tried to wedge myself under the nearest vehicle. That was when I heard the gunshots
It took me about ten seconds to understand that I hadn’t been hit, and also that the sound seemed to be emanating from the wrong direction. I opened one eye.
McGann and Griffin were facing each other across the car park and, suddenly, I was forgotten as the two men talked, then disappeared to settle matters over a pint.
The next day, Mikey said he had been told to stand down.
Shortly after that, he was reconciled with his dad and discovered for the first time that he was a survivor of sexual abuse.
Now, after years of drink and drug abuse to blot out the pain of being beaten and raped by priests in a care home as a child, he had been clean for two years and had a good job.
He begged Mikey’s forgiveness and, with counselling, his mum began to get better too.
Finally the family was able to begin the process of piecing themselves back together again and when Mikey had a father figure that he could respect and a proper family, he was able to extricate himself from the gang and get a job.
Brutal gang feuds over centuries
While Mikey is among a growing number of teenagers getting involved in deadly drug wars, gang violence goes back two millennia, to the Celtic clans.
In recent times feuds in Limerick, a long and bloody feud between the Keane-Collopy gang and the McCarthy-Dundon Gang, sparked by the 2000 murder of Eddie Ryan, claimed 20 lives and was blamed for hundreds of shootings, stabbings and bomb attacks.
Kieran Keane, suspected of killing Ryan, was stabbed in the face numerous times and shot in the head in 2003.
Over 100 shootings were linked to the feud and and in 2006 alone, Aidan Kelly, 19, Frankie Ryan, 28, Noel Campion, 35, and Noel Crawford, 40 were all shot dead.
At least 26 people have died in feuds between rival gangs in the last five years with hundreds injured and maimed.
And Keane Mulready-Woods’ murder in January was the result of a gang feud in the small town of Drogheda, Co.Louth.
Everything that was said around that murder mirrored the stories I was telling in Bleak Alley – the grooming, the structure of the gangs, with the older guys at the management level and very young kids doing the running.
These gangs exist because people are funding them by buying the drugs, but the respectable accountants, lawyers and executives, buying cocaine for the weekend, don’t see themselves as being part and parcel of criminality.
We also have government structures that allow a huge gap between the haves and the have nots.
The gang is a response to that and our society has created this.
So when 14-year-old Mikey watches Made in Chelsea he sees the goals that you’re supposed to be achieving in life as nice clothes, a nice car, a job that makes you feel good about yourself, a beautiful girlfriend and respect.
But we’ve created an environment where those opportunities just aren’t there.
Sadly, the casualties of it are people like Keane and Mikey.
Gangs provide them with what they see as respect, but ultimately they are run on fear.
Mikey, with help, has managed to move away from that and change his life. But so many other kids will be caught in that trap, destined for prison or death.
*Names have been changed
Bleak Alley by Shane Dunphy is available exclusively from Audible now