For years Dominic Noonan traded on his gangland reputation, confident his notoriety would help conceal his dark secret. But his infamy wasn't enough to stop the rumours swirling around Manchester's criminal underworld.
Police, fellow villains and even, it was said, members of his own family had long suspected Noonan was a predatory sex offender with a predilection for young boys. But his sickening crimes had never been proved in a court of law.
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That was until May 2018 when the gangster's past finally caught up with him. The then 53-year-old was found guilty of 13 historical sex offences against four young boys aged as young as 10.
Already serving an 11 year sentence for arson, blackmail and perverting the course of justice, Noonan was given a separate 11 year sentence, which meant he would spend the majority of his adult life behind bars. Noonan was back in the headlines recently when a former detective alleged police watched as a boy walked into a house with a suspected paedophile under surveillance.
Former GMP detective Rick Mortimer told an employment tribunal that the man was believed to be 'dangerous', and abusing youngsters after 'getting them drunk', but alleged that when he suggested that police intervene to protect the boy, his superior officer said 'what we can't see, we don't know about'.
The target of the surveillance operation wasn't named at the hearing but it is understood to be Noonan. Born to Irish parents and raised in Whalley Range, as one of 14 siblings whose first names all began with the letter D, supposedly for Dublin, Noonan rose to notoriety alongside his brothers Damien and Dessie by initially specialising in armed robbery.
But as Acid House saw Manchester become one of the clubbing capitals of the world in the late 80s and early 90s, the astute brothers changed tack. Realising there was an easier way to rake in the cash t hey took over the doors of the city's nightclubs, controlling who could sell drugs in them.
A huge imposing presence, Dessie was the enforcer and hitman, while Dominic was the cunning and charismatic entrepreneur. But it was Damien, described by journalist Donal MacIntyre as 'the UN peace keeper in gangland Manchester' who was the level-headed leader of the family.
A canny operator, he cemented loyalties by making donations to different causes in his community. The Hacienda on Whitworth Street would become their golden goose. Running the doors and taking a cut from drugs profits there meant they were making up to £50,000 a night, a 2018 Channel Five documentary about the brothers claimed.
But their burgeoning empire was nearly brought down after the murder of 'White Tony' Johnson, the leader of the Cheetham Hill Gang, who was gunned down in the car park of the Penny Black pub in 1991.
It had been alleged that Johnson was killed after a fall out over how £350,000, the proceeds from a robbery, were divided up. Dessie went on trial for his murder. The first trial collapsed amid rumours of jury tampering and at the second Dessie was acquitted.
With Johnson gone the Noonans' position was strengthened and they expanded their operations to other cities, despite increased police surveillance of their activities. An attempt to take over the doors at the Hacienda by another gang from south Manchester was brutally supressed.
Dominic, who was once sprung from a prison van at traffic lights on the A6 in Pendleton, called at the rival gang's local pub and used a machete to decapitate one of their dogs that was outside. He walked into the pub and placed the head on a pool table - in an unambiguous message to anyone thinking of muscling in on their patch.
But, after making a fortune from robbery, guns, drugs, and ruthless violence the brothers suffered a swift fall. In the space of just eight months the empire which had taken years to build up began to crumble.
In 2004 Damien was killed, aged 37, in a motorcycle accident while on holiday in the Dominican Republic. Then Dessie, by this point an alcoholic crack addict, was stabbed to death by a crack dealer known as Yardie Derek in Chorlton in March 2005.
Dessie's funeral had all the pomp of a gangland 'don' but it was almost a last gasp of their power. Speaking in 2018, Big Fat Gypsy Wedding star Paddy Doherty, a friend of Damien's, said: "The minute (Damien) died they weren't half as powerful as they thought they were. He was the gangster of gangsters in Greater Manchester."
Dominic was hit badly by the deaths. And with his brothers gone he was no longer the force he was.
But for years he was still able to exert influence and still had enough of a reputation to be confident rumours of his sexual abuse would never see the light. By way of sticking two fingers up to the authorities he changed his name to Domenyk Lattlay-Fottfoy.
It stood for 'Love all those that love all you - f*** off those that f*** off you'. In 2005, he was jailed for nine-and-a-half years after a revolver and ammunition were found under the bonnet of his Jaguar when police stopped him in the north east. He was described by the judge who jailed him then as 'a very dangerous man'.
He was freed on licence in 2010 and claimed to have found God (he ostentatiously kissed the Bible when swearing the oath during his trial) but he continued to be a menace as far as the police were concerned. He started a number of dubious businesses and even had a crack at stand-up comedy. He took great delight in winding up the police, even setting up a company called GMP (Greater Manchester Postal).
He was recalled to prison almost immediately after being accused of going berserk at a woman motorist who beeped at him as he crossed a Gorton road. He is said to have tapped the car with a copy of the Manchester Evening News, which featured a story about his release, and shouted 'Do you know who I am?'
In 2011 he was also accused of raping a woman in a hotel room after celebrating his birthday but prosecutors dropped the case. That same year he was recalled to prison, suspected of being a ringleader during that summer's riots in Mancheste r.
At the height of the disorder he was captured on video talking to a looter who was carrying a large flat-screen TV on Oldham Street. For a man out of jail on licence, who could be recalled to prison for the slightest whiff of trouble, it was reckless to say the least.
But he enjoyed playing cat and mouse with the law. Prison authorities struggled to cope with him. Some prison governors just didn’t want him. They knew he would either cause trouble or incite others into causing trouble.
At one stage he was housed in the 'special intervention unit', for troublesome prisoners, at Strangeways, together with Kiaran 'Psycho' Stapleton, a member of the wider Noonan family who murdered student Anuj Bidve in Salford, and Clifton Jeter, who committed a gruesome knife murder in Brighton before attacking two guards at the Manchester prison.
In 2013, he was cleared of child rape charges after the court heard his accuser had a history of making false complaints. He had been accused of molesting the boy of 15 in a flat in Bloom Street in Manchester city centre.
While out of prison on licence in the summer of 2014, Noonan brought Manchester city centre to a standstill by climbing 100ft up the Big Wheel in Piccadilly Gardens in protest at the latest efforts to recall him. As more than 1,000 spectators gathered to watch the six hour long spectacle, roads were closed, buses were diverted and businesses had to shut, losing an estimated £10,000 in trade.
Many cheered him on, but despite his reputation shouts of 'nonce' were also heard from the the crowd, in perhaps the first indication he no longer carried the clout he once did. When he eventually climbed down, police charged him with causing public nuisance - but it was later thrown out by the judge who said the wrong charge had been laid and that he suspected it had only been done because this offence carried a stiffer sentence than the alternative, aggravated trespass.
in 2016, he was found not guilty of engaging in a sex act in front of a minor, although he was convicted of perverting the course of justice by offering £5,000 to the boy’s family to get the charge dropped. The prosecution alleged that the boy covered his face with a poster as a ‘vulnerable’ adult man was intimidated into performing a sex act on Noonan in a bedroom.
But then, finally, Noonan would face justice. For his victims, and even those close to him, it had been a long time coming. Speaking at the time one of his friends, his right-hand-man for many years, told the M.E.N. Noonan deserves 'everything he gets'.
He said: "I remember this lad. He was 13. Noonan was waiting for him to come home from school. The lad sat on his knee and was told to call him Uncle Dom. He gave this other lad a fiver. He gave 50p pieces to some other lads. He bought them cornets (of ice cream).
"I remember another lad was 14 and Dom said to call him dad and he would be kissing him. I told him he shouldn't be doing that. I just felt very uncomfortable, him kissing lads who were 13 and 14. It was staring me in the face."
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