A ketamine-sniffing assassin who shot a man in the street has been linked to the deaths of friends and enemies in a separate feud, it's been revealed.
Rueben Murphy killed a man in a Liverpool street last summer from an electric bike, as reported by the Liverpool Echo. The 26-year-old denied shooting Patrick Boyle, also 26, twice in the chest and told a court that at the time Mr Boyle was gunned down he was in a back garden "off me head on ket".
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Murphy, who appeared before Liverpool Crown Court, was convicted of murder by a jury on May 9 despite telling the court: "I might have sold drugs in the past, but I'm not a killer."
Prosecutors said Rueben Murphy was the gunman on an electric bike who showed his victim "no mercy", after arguing with an associate of Mr Boyle's earlier that day. Prosecutors also argued Murphy's friend Ben Doyle was "complicit" in the killing and helped plan the attack. Doyle, 24, claimed the murder was committed by a mystery man, who he refused to name because he feared "retribution" and wasn't a "snitch".
When giving evidence at Liverpool Crown Court, Murphy complained Ian Unsworth, QC, prosecuting, was talking to him "like a piece of s***" and was "bang out of order" for accusing him of lying to the jury. But during the seven-week trial, jurors heard forensic and CCTV evidence implicating both Murphy and Doyle.
The jury found both men guilty of murder, possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life, and possessing ammunition with intent to endanger life. Both defendants got up and left the dock as the verdicts were read out to the court.
After the convictions of both Murphy and Doyle for murder, details could be released about Murphy's past crimes which revealed this was not the first murder trial at Liverpool Crown Court in which his name featured.
In December 2019, Dylan Westall, then 29, and Michael Roberts, then 25, were jailed for life over the cowardly shooting of 17-year-old James Meadows. James, aka Froggy, was shot in the head while riding on the back of a motorbike in Lyme Cross Road, Huyton on October 8, 2017. James was also "good friends" with Murphy having grown up in the same area. Prosecutors said Westall and Murphy were rivals and James became an innocent casualty of their feud.
Prosecutors said James was gunned down by two men in a stolen black Mercedes as part of a dispute that "spiralled out of control". That dispute wasn't said to involve James, but did allegedly involve Murphy.
That feud reportedly started with a row between Westall and Murphy's sister, Marnie Murphy, at a house party in Huyton, in the early hours of October 1, 2017. Later that day, two men pitched up outside the Murphy's family home in Barkbeth Road. Around 14 hours after the party Marnie made a panicked 999 call about a gunman outside their address. She said: "Yeah can I have police please. Police there's a man outside me house with a gun. There's a man outside. There’s a man outside."
Marnie and her mum Elaine Murphy told police they were in their front garden when two men, one wearing a helmet, appeared on a scrambler bike. Elaine said the passenger, who wasn't wearing a helmet, approached her with a gun in his hand and started shouting, so she threw a brick at him.
She said the man on the bike rode off and the gunman fled, but both she and her daughter told police they didn't have any idea who the men were, or what caused the incident. Both women said they weren't willing to attend court or have further contact with police.
At the time, Rueben, then 22, was serving a five-year sentence at Stoke Heath jail, after being caught with a loaded gun in April 2015. At the age of just 19 he had been cycling around Huyton with an 8mm Bruni semi-automatic pistol loaded with 10 bullets in the pocket of his North Face jacket, which police found when they stormed his address.
But Nigel Power, QC, who prosecuted the trial against Westall and Roberts, said a prison phone call involving Murphy, his mum and his sister at around 2pm on October 1 revealed what really happened at the party. In the explosive phone call, Murphy described Westall as a "rat" and Marnie revealed how she had overheard Westall threatening to "pan his face in".
Marnie said she knew Murphy and Westall had "a bit of s***" between them and that she confronted Westall and "had murder with him", before "he tried to knock me out".
Mr Power alleged it was Westall and Roberts who had later shown up in Barkbeth Road.
Elaine and Marnie were summoned to court to answer questions over these events, which were said to be key to the killing. But they refused to give this "critical evidence" and instead fled to Spain in the spring of 2019. Jurors were simply told they couldn't be traced.
Westall and Roberts were acquitted of murder, but convicted of manslaughter, after a retrial in October 2019. The jury's verdicts meant prosecutors failed to prove the prosecution's alleged motive for a murder, or that James was deliberately shot by the killers.
Westall was jailed for life with a minimum of 22 years. Roberts was sentenced to life to serve a minimum of 12 years.
Elaine, then 44, and Marnie, then 27, only returned to the UK after the verdicts, when they were arrested at John Lennon Airport and held overnight in police custody. They spent two nights on remand at HMP Styal and later admitted contempt of court.
Their lawyer, Michael O'Brien, said they were "unwilling victims" and "unwilling witnesses". Mr O'Brien said the mum and daughter had made statements to the police, but left the country out of "deep seated fear".
Judge Andrew Menary, QC, told the mother and daughter it was a "deliberate and flagrant" contempt of court to avoid being compelled to give "critical evidence". However, taking into account the time they had spent in custody and accepting their apologies, he spared them both jail, as Marnie sobbed in the dock.
Back to the murder of Patrick Boyle, a dad-of-two shot dead by Murphy in a Huyton cul-de-sac, where prosecutors said the facts of the case clearly pointed "to a background of some kind". He said whatever this was, it meant Murphy and Doyle "felt it necessary to obtain a loaded firearm, transport it along public streets and carry out a lethal attack upon Patrick Boyle".
The QC said Lyme Grove in Huyton where Doyle lived - just around the corner from where James Meadows was killed - was "a hub for the launch of the fatal attack". He drew the jury's attention to an altercation in that street earlier that day.
Murphy said he used to go to the rear garden of an "empty house" next door to Doyle's home to smoke cannabis and sniff ketamine. But he said he argued with Frazer Brown, an associate of Mr Boyle, in the road at around 12.40pm.
Murphy said this was because Mr Brown owed him money over an old cannabis debt and "took the p***" out of him when he went to prison. Murphy said Mr Brown chased him with a fence panel, before Doyle came out and told Mr Brown to "f*** off".
Rueben Murphy and Doyle made arrangements to get a loaded gun and a blue and white Sur-Ron electric bike. That bike, now partially disguised "in black bin bags", left the rear garden gate of a property two houses down from Doyle's home at 5.40pm, just 16 minutes before Mr Boyle was shot dead.
After the attack, CCTV showed the masked shooter speed over on his bike to Barkbeth Road, where Murphy said he had been living while his mum had again returned to Spain.
There, the killer disappeared off camera for around eight minutes. When he reemerged, he was no longer wearing a pair of black gloves and the bike was no longer disguised, before it headed back to Lyme Grove.
Police found a pair of gloves on top of a kitchen cupboard at Murphy's home on July 6. The left glove revealed gunshot residue (GSR), which matched GSR inside two cartridge cases found at the scene of the shooting.
Inside the glove produced a mixed DNA profile, said to relate to four people, including Murphy. He told the jury he "definitely" didn't wear any gloves on July 1, because "it was sunny".
The jury, unsurprisingly, didn't believe a word of his lies, or the excuses offered up by Doyle about a mystery killer who he wouldn't name out of fear of "retribution". After 10 hours of deliberation, jurors unanimously found both Murphy and Doyle guilty of murder, possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life, and possessing ammunition with intent to endanger life.
The two killers stormed out of the dock as soon as the verdicts on the murder charge were returned. They will be back in court on June 17 to be sentenced, when they face life sentences in the region of 30 years.
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