These chilling photos show slain Keane Mulready-Woods standing just feet away from the man who would lure the teen to a house where he was savagely murdered.
Mulready-Woods stands just feet away from notorious criminal Paul Crosby outside a Drogheda courthouse.
These exclusive pictures were taken at the height of the town’s bloody feud that has now claimed four lives.
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Despite crossing paths in the underworld, the two paid no attention to one another on this day in June 2019.
But within seven months their fates would be entangled forever.
Crosby would lure the 17-year-old to a house where he would be savagely murdered and mutilated, gardai believe, by the late psycho mobster Robbie Lawlor.
It would be an evil end to a short and misguided spell in the criminal underbelly for a child who had been groomed by warring gangs in Drogheda and ultimately set up for one of the most vicious killings in the State’s history.
Keane, who was 16 when snapped at the court, was before a judge that day for threatening to damage a house, leaving the occupants in fear.
Crosby was in the company of associates of the Anti-Maguire faction of the mob war, who were also before the courts and were also standing just feet from tragic Keane.
Dressed head to toe in designer gear— wearing Kenzo Paris tracksuit bottoms, a North Face jacket, a Helly Hansen baseball cap and Nike runners, the teen, who appeared relaxed and chatting with pals, did not interact with Crosby, who was dressed in a black tracksuit.
Keane was already up to his neck in the criminal world at 15 having been lured into offending by local criminals with the promise of prestige, designer clothes and money.
A drug debt collector for one of the major drug gangs in Drogheda, he was recruited by associates of paralysed gangster Owen Maguire and Cornelius Price — and ended up terrorising and intimidating locals.
He was officially warned by gardai his life was in danger when he received a Garda Information Message on January 5, 2020, and was also suspected of ‘playing both sides of the feuding gangs’ — a suspicion that would ultimately be one of the reasons he was targeted for murder.
It would also explain why he trusted Paul Crosby — a member of the rival gang of associates of Maguire.
Keane — who wore a ballistic vest because of the threat to his life — trusted Crosby enough to meet him after Crosby called him on his mobile in January 2020.
They met outside a shop in the town and Keane got into the car with him and Gerard Cruise before being driven to the house in Rathmullan where he was murdered.
Cruise would later tell gardai the mood in the car was OK and “there was no animosity between Keane and Paul”.
By the time he was only 15, Keane had a reputation for terrorising and intimidating locals, and had been charged with making a threat to damage a house in the town.
In a threatening warning that left the occupants in complete fear, Keane told them he would “burn them alive in their beds” and claimed he “didn’t do it properly last time”.
Hauled before Drogheda District Court, the presiding Judge John Coughlan said he was loath to give Keane bail saying he “did not trust Keane not to burn the house down and burn them alive in their beds”. He later received a suspended sentence.
The following year, Keane smashed the window of the home of the mother of a boy who owed a drug debt before throwing a petrol bomb inside. He also demanded money from an innocent woman and despite handing over the cash to him he stole her cat and killed it.
But it was another twist of fate that would land him in Lawlor’s sights.
In the underworld Keane was suspected — but was never proven — to have been a spotter for the murder of Richie Carberry in November 2019.
Major drug trafficker and father-of-three Carberry was Robbie Lawlor’s friend and brother-in-law. His murder enraged Lawlor — who was in custody at the time facing a trial of attempted murder which he was later acquitted of in December 2019.
Once he was released, Lawlor was ‘hellbent’ on revenge for his brother-in-law’s murder.
But just days after he was freed, Lawlor was confronted and taunted on the streets of Dublin by a gang of youths who stole his gym bag containing a pair of black and white flip flops.
The attack was filmed and posted on social media. Later, an image of a rival gangster wearing the callous thug’s flip flops also emerged to mock and humiliate Lawlor.
It was a message that he would respond to in the most shocking way.
The night after Keane was murdered and dismembered in January 2020, a man found a sports bag containing the victim’s legs along with a pair of black and white flip-flops in Moatview in Coolock.
Crosby, like Keane, grew up in Drogheda and was also lured into crime in his teens.
He initially worked for the Maguire faction in the town as a ‘corner boy’.
However, tensions grew between Crosby (37) and Owen Maguire (39), and they became sworn enemies, splitting into rival gangs which started the deadly feud.
It erupted in July 2018 with a murder attempt on Maguire which left him paralysed in a wheelchair.
As a main protagonist in the height of the feud, Crosby and his associates commenced a sinister campaign against the Maguire mob — in person, on social media and in phone calls — to raise tensions further.
On one occasion Crosby recorded a phone conversation with Maguire jeering, mocking and antagonizing him, calling him a ‘cripple’ and telling him ‘You can’t walk bro.’
On another occasion, witnessed by this reporter, Crosby sauntered into the courtroom at Drogheda District Court and taunted Maguire’s brother Brendan before being swiftly removed from the court by gardai.
Keane’s killer Robbie Lawlor remained on the streets for three months before he was shot dead in April 2020 in Belfast — taking the secrets of his horror murders and crimes to the grave with him.
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