A remorseless killer who executed a young dad in the street was previously part of an escalating feud which left one of his own friends dead.
Rueben Murphy rode up to 26-year-old Patrick Boyle on an electric bike before shooting him twice in the chest in a Huyton cul-de-sac, shortly before 6pm on July 1, 2021. Murphy planned the attack with his close friend Ben Doyle, 24, who was also convicted of murder.
The pair were jailed for life on Monday, with Murphy receiving a minimum prison term of 31 years and Doyle 27 years. Murphy ranted at the judge, Mr Justice Stephen Morris, calling him a "fat paedophile" and screaming "f*** the system" as he was led to the cells.
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But this shocking and senseless act of evil was not the first murder case dealt with at Liverpool Crown Court in which the name Rueben Murphy was mentioned.
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.
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 reportedly involve Murphy.
The court heard James was "good friends" with Murphy, and his cousin Frankie Murphy - who died after being struck by a car in 2016 - having grown up in the same area. Prosecutors said Westall and Murphy were rivals and James became an innocent casualty of their feud.
The Crown Prosecution Service's case said the catalyst for James' killing was 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, a terrifying incident took place outside the Murphy's family home in Barkbeth Road.
At 6.53pm, 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.
However, phone records showed Marnie and her uncle Gary Murphy jnr had spent the hours beforehand repeatedly calling Westall - a gangland torturer previously identified by Merseyside Police as a "gold status gun nominal". And cell site data suggested Gary Murphy jnr had travelled to Rudgate Road, Whiston, where Westall's partner Samantha McDermott then lived.
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.
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. He said this was revealed in another prison call, recorded four days later on October 5, this time between Elaine and Reuben.
Mr Power said that call showed Westall had a gun taken off him. He suggested it explained why the killers went into hiding over the following week, before allegedly targeting James.
In that chat, Elaine said the "little rat" had "got all his teeth and everything knocked out". She told her son: "Grandad [Gary Murphy snr] he come and tried to shoot your grandad Rueben." Murphy replied: "I know shhhh... f***in hell!"
Elaine added "your grandad knocked him clean out", to which Murphy replied: "Got his thing took off him and everything didn't he?" Elaine answered: "Yeah, I f***in launched bricks at him."
When Westall gave evidence, he said the content of those conversations was "lies". He denied ever going to Barkbeth Road that day.
He told the jury there was only ever "a little argument" between him and Murphy, and no dispute involving him and Murphy or James. He said Marnie fell out with him at the party because she heard him calling her a "coke w****".
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.
Police had managed to speak to Marnie on the phone between the first trial and the second. But they declined to return and before the retrial again gave the message they were not coming back until it was all over.
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.
Unlike in the case of James' shooting, prosecutors did not suggest a specific motive for why Patrick Boyle was murdered.
Mr Unsworth 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".
In the aftermath of the argument, the jury heard a man called James Halewood - a friend of Mr Boyle - rang his ex-girlfriend, Marnie Murphy. She and her brother exchanged texts that afternoon.
In the meantime, 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.
Evidence showed in the wake of the shooting Marnie called her brother, at around 7.45pm. Murphy told the jury she was "going berserk" and told him Mr Halewood had called her.
Murphy said Marnie told him "me and my mate were getting blamed" for the shooting and Mr Halewood was going to phone him. He said he got rid of his SIM card and bought a new one not to cover his tracks, but because he didn't want to speak to Mr Halewood.
The prosecution said there was an obvious reason why he was "getting blamed" for the shooting - he was the gunman. 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 re-emerged, 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.
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