Pair held over the killing and beheading of teenager
Two men understood to be ‘key players’ in Mulready Woods slaying
TWO ‘key players’ in the murder of Keane Mulready Woods have been arrested in their native Drogheda and were still being quizzed by gardaí last night.
One of the men, a 51-year-old suspected of ‘facilitating’ the killing and dismemberment of the 17-year-old, was arrested early yesterday morning.
It’s understood he played a ‘significant role in the logistics’ of the teen’s killing.
Detectives believe they have evidence this suspect ‘tried to clean and cover up’ the ‘murder house’ in the Co. Louth town where the teen was killed in the most brutal of circumstances.
The other suspect arrested is aged in his late 30s and has a serious drug addiction, sources say. It is understood that this man served a lengthy jail sentence for a previous serious stab attack. This individual is suspected of transporting the 17-year-old to the house in Rathmullen Park in Drogheda, where the boy was murdered, dismembered and beheaded.
The 51-year-old suspect is being held at Drogheda Garda station and can be quizzed for up to seven days under anti-gangland legislation.
His younger associate is being questioned at Balbriggan station under the same terms.
Both men are mid-ranking members of the gang behind the shocking murder but ‘key players’ in carrying it out.
The teen went missing in his native Drogheda on the evening of January 12.
He was murdered and dismembered at a house in Rathmullen Park the same night. His limbs were dumped in a sports bag in a
Coolock housing estate the following evening.
The bag was recovered by children in the Moatview estate.
His severed head was later recovered in a burning Volvo car in Ballybough, also in Dublin.
Sources say that the man in his late 30s currently in custody can potentially be linked to the burnt
Increasinly bitter gang war
out Volvo – meaning he was both involved in transporting the teen to where he was killed, as well as potential involvement in dumping his remains in the aftermath of the gruesome killing.
Gardaí sealed off the house in the Rathmullen Park area where the teen was killed within a couple of days of his partial remains being discovered in the capital. Knives and machetes believed to have been used in the brutal murder were recovered in a shed in the back garden of the house days after the killing.
Gardaí also detected blood ‘soaked into the floorboards’ of this residence. DNA testing ‘has linked’ the teen to this house.
Keane Mulready Woods was working for both sides of the Drogheda feud but was more closely aligned to the Owen Maguire-led faction.
He was killed by the anti-Maguire grouping involved in the increasingly bitter gang war, gardaí believe.
The Irish Daily Mail recently revealed that the leaders behind the murder of the Drogheda teen have fled to Spain after failing to appear in court on a separate criminal charge.
The ‘disappearance’ of the two men – related to one another – is directly linked to ‘pressure’ from investigating gardaí over the barbaric murder, as well as threats to their lives from their rivals.
The so-called Drogheda feud kicked off in July 2018, when Traveller crime boss Owen Maguire was shot at his halting site home.
Maguire was shot in the stomach and shoulder and has been left paralysed from the waist down.
Since that shooting, there have been numerous attacks on both sides of the feud, including the shooting of Owen’s older brother, Brendan, who was lucky to survive.
Keith Brannigan was the first man to be shot dead as part of the feud, in August 2019.
The second killing claimed the life of Richard Carberry, a married father-of-two, in November.
Both men were shot dead by associates of Owen Maguire.
One main line of enquiry is that Keane Mulready Woods was killed because his associates were behind the murder of Carberry.