Desmond Noonan
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Desmond "Dessie" Noonan' (1959-March 19, 2005) was a British organized crime figure in Manchester who acted as a political fixer for the Noonan crime family. He and his younger brother, Dominic Noonan, were suspected by police to be responsible for at least 25 unsolved murders during their 20 year reign in Manchester's underworld.
Mainly because of the very dangerous contacts Desmond Noonan had made during his reign as 'Britains No. 1 Crime Boss' his family were at the end of the 1990's known as 'one of the most notorious crime families in British history'.
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[edit] Early life
Born in Moss Side Manchester, England, Noonan emerged from utter poverty and into the criminal scene with his brothers Damian and Dominic Noonan. His criminal career began as a doorman in the early 1980's; his reputation as a fighter and his overall appearance gave him massive credibility on the club doors of Manchester.
Desmond then started to put his own men on the doors and by the late 1980's 80% of Manchesters nightlife security-wise was controlled by Desmond Noonan and the rest of the Noonan family. Around this time Dominic Noonan was jailed for 15 years for his part in an armed robbery at a bank in Cheetham, Manchester. During his imprisonment, still in control of the crime family, Damian and Derek Noonan were forging links with other notable Manchester gangs including The Cheetham Hill Crew and Salford.
The Noonan family tended to have nothing to do with the notorious Moss - Side gangs, although Desmond was part of a group of men who provided the black gangs with guns and other weapons. After involving himself in Manchesters nightlife, Desmond started to get involved with other criminal circles outside of Manchester, including the I.R.A and A.F.A (anti facist action). He later on went to other cities to forge strong links with London,Newcastle and Liverpudlian gangs.
[edit] Rise of the Noonans
Control of organized crime in the city fell to Desmond and his brothers following the 1991 gangland murder of rival leader of the Cheetham Hill Gang, Anthony "White Tony" Johnson, whose murder he was charged with and later acquitted of. Over the next several years, he would face a number of convictions in connection to witness intimidation and jury tampering resulting in key witnesses refusing to testify against himself and other members of the Noonan family.
By the mid 1990's Desmond Noonan was known as a notorious enforcer feared and respected by all who knew him, he was known as a very dangerous and violent man and had many links with a wide range of Britains underworld, apparently making himself (untouchable).
In 1995, four years later, Noonan was convicted with violently attacking on twin brothers, during which he was reportedly described by the court as psychotic, and sentenced to 33 months imprisonment. The twin brothers later turned out to be London gangland figures who were apparently trying to get involved in Manchester's ever booming drugs and guns trade.
By the end of the 1990's the Noonan family had been linked to 25 gangland murders, dozens of robberies and had a stranglehold on most of the nightclub security in many of the major cities across Great Britain, they had also made over 8 million pounds in bank robberies and security alone.
Desmond Noonan also began to venture into the nightlife of many other cities to gain more wealth, power and respect for the family. He and his brothers Damian and Derek started to acquire business interests in nightclubs in places like Liverpool,London and Newcastle.
The fact that Dessie had the audacity to try and do business in other cities with other gangland figures gave him a lot of credibility and respect and soon he was becoming involved with a number of notable crime bosses including the likes of, the Liverpool drugs baron Curtis Warren, London gangster and friend of the Krays, Dave Courtney and head of Newcastles most powerful crime family Paddy Conroy. Having friends like these only made the Noonan family stronger.
Dessie would not stop there, he got together with many more I.R.A figures including Paddy Logan a very violent man also part of the I.R.A and infamously bit off the earlobe of an Ulster Loyalist at a press conference, he was later shot dead at his Withington home July,1999. Dessie was also thought to be behind the I.R.A bomb that blew up Manchester City Centre in 1996, though he was never implicated in it there are many people that still think he used his knowledge of Manchester to help the terrorists.
The strength and power of the family, in particular Dessie allowed him to be a prime mover and peacemaker in the Manchester gang truces which for a short space of time brought the war in Moss Side to a head, other Gangland figures participating in this truce were Paul Massey, Damian Noonan, Paul Flannery and apparently Jimmy 'The weed' Donnelly who was a powerful figure in the QSG another Manchester gang.
[edit] Later years
Desmond Noonan later became an alcoholic and Dominic Noonan on his release from prison in 2002 became head of the Noonan crime family. After the death of Damian Noonan in 2003, Desmond Noonan took to drugs and lost all his credibility as a crime boss.
After last being seen of the night of March 18 drinking at The Parkside pub in Wythenshawe at around 11:30 am, Sandra Noonan received a phone call from her husband early Saturday morning who told her he had been stabbed and asked her to pick him up in the suburb of Chorlton. By the time she had arrived, Noonan was laying unconscious on Merseybank Avenue. Sandra Noonan then called for an ambulance, he died of his wounds before arriving at Manchester Royal Infirmary.
Held on April 22, his funeral in south Manchester was reportedly attended by over 5,000 local residents with a kilted pipe band playing as his body arrived in a horse-drawn hearse at Chorlton church. His younger brother Damian Noonan had died 2 years earlier in a motorbike accident whilst on holiday in the Dominican Republic. His funeral was one of the biggest gangland has ever seen, with over 18,000 attending the service and burial of another one of the Noonan family.
Derek "Yardie Derek" McDuffus, a local drug dealer, would be charged on June 15 after appearing at Preston Crown Court and eventually convicted of his murder (receiving life imprisonment, he has since been placed in solitary confinement for his protection against retribution from the Noonan family [1]). It is suspected by authorities that Noonan, who had supposedly become a drug addict during the last months of his life, had been strong arming local drug dealers into giving him narcotics and had left the pub intoxicated in search of a drug dealer in which Chorlton Detective Inspector Shaun Donnellan believes became involved in an altercation with McDuffus who stabbed Noonan and threw him out of his residence where he bled to death in the street.
Noonan died only four days before the broadcast of journalist Donal MacIntyre's documentary MacIntyre's Underworld, The Trials of Mr. Lattlay Fottfoy featuring he and his brother.
