Wherever he went, Desmond Noonan’s fearsome reputation preceded him. In fact the gangland enforcer revelled in it.
Alongside his brothers Damien and Dominic, ‘Dessie’, as he was known to family and friends, headed up the infamous Noonan criminal family. Standing 6ft tall and weighing 20st he was a huge, intimidating presence – and he wasn’t afraid to use violence to get what he wanted.
And nor was he afraid who it knew. Once asked on camera by reporter Donal MacIntyre how many murders police suspected he had committed, Noonan grinned before hinting at a total of 27.
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In the Channel 5 documentary, which was broadcast a couple of days after his death, Noonan also joked about intimidating witnesses. But for those on the receiving end of his threats and bullying, it was anything but a laughing matter.
Having worked as bouncers at the Hacienda during the acid house-era of the late 80s, the Noonans climbed the city’s gangland ranks to control a large part of Manchester’s drug trade. They first came to the wider public’s attention following the shotgun murder of notorious Cheetham Hill-gangster ‘White Tony’ Johnson in a pub car park.
In 1991 Damien and Dessie were put on trial along side three other men for Johnson’s murder. But a jury failed to reach verdicts and a retrial was ordered in 1993 which saw Dessie tried again alongside two other people.
This time one defendant was cleared and the jury failed to reach a verdict on Desmond Noonan and another defendant. So when just two years later Dessie found himself back in the dock in Manchester Crown Court his notoriety meant everyone involved in the case knew who he was and what he was allegedly capable of.
This time the then 36-year-old was accused battering twin brothers in a terrifying attack outside a nightclub in Withington. But despite the strong case against him, Noonan denied the charges.
And that gave prosecutors a big problem – they were going to have to find witnesses brave enough to testify against him.
Peter Wright, prosecuting, described Noonan’s ‘formidable’ criminal record, which included convictions in May 1988 for perverting the course of justice and wounding. One charge involved ‘making threats of violence and death toward prosecution witnesses and relatives in an attempt attempt to stop evidence being given at court’.
Those witnesses were police officers, the court heard. Just a month before the case Noonan was also convicted of conspiring to pervert justice.
“There was every possibility that the defendant and his friends were capable of exacting violent retribution,” a police officer said at the time of Noonan’s propensity to take revenge on those he viewed as having crossed him.
Two young women involved in the Withington case – named only as Witness B and Witness C – were said to be so scared of Noonan they felt physically sick. A Crown Prosecution Service solicitor said he had never seen witnesses so frightened in 17 years in practice.
Before the case began they were seen by a police surgeon, who told the court: “They are both terrified of giving evidence because they don’t want the accused to see their faces.”
But, after the judge decided to allow the women to give their evidence from behind screens which shielded from both Noonan and the public gallery, they both bravely agreed to testify anyway.
In the end, however, the women, both just 23-years-old, were not required to give evidence when Noonan changed his plea and admitted causing violent disorder and GBH. As the case got underway Mr Wright told the court the attack happened after the brothers and a girlfriend known only as Witness A visited Mulberries nightclub in Withington in October, 1994.
Mr Wright said that after a man pushed the girlfriend, one of the twins was thrown out, then hauled around and punched and kicked ‘like a ragdoll’ by a group of men including Noonan. When his brother tried to intervene, he was also knocked to the floor and beaten.
Jailing Noonan for 33 months, Judge Michael Blackburn said: “I come back to the words of two young women when expressing what they saw on the night. They said your actions were those of a ‘psycho’.
“You looked as though you were going to kill.”
Dessie served his time and was released from prison. But within a few years the Noonans’ reign would be over. In July 2003, Damien, a 37-year-old father of three, was killed in a motorbike crash while on holiday in the Dominican Republic.
Just 18 months later Dessie would also be dead. In an grimly ironic twist of fate the gangster, an alcoholic who’d made a fortune from selling drugs, became addicted to crack cocaine.
In March 2005 he was stabbed to death by drug dealer ‘ Yardie Derek’ McDuffus at a house on Chorlton’s Merseybank estate, a couple of miles from the Whalley Range street where he was born.
His death, aged 45, came just days before the Channel Five documentary about the brothers was shown. That left Dominic. But for years he had been harbouring a dark secret which had kept been hidden while his brothers had been alive.
For decades Dominic had been suspected of being a predatory sex offender by the police, fellow villains, and even, it is said, members of his own family. But with his brothers gone he was no longer the force he was.
He would later be jailed for 11 years after being found guilty of 13 historical sex offences against four young boys aged as young as 10. He was released late last year, but in December the Manchester Evening News reported how he had been recalled to prison after deliberately breaching the terms of his licence in protest at the alleged 65 conditions he faces as part of his release from jail.
