How a pair of flip-flops was used as a calling card in a grisly Irish underworld murder

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By Chris Summers 13 August 2025

In January 2020, 17-year-old Keane Mulready-Woods (pictured) was lured to a house, stabbed to death and then dismembered, with his remains being dumped in various places.

It was a crime which shocked the Republic of Ireland and suggested the country’s underworld had reached new levels of depravity.

Today, in my second Reader’s Choice article, I am doing a deep dive into the “Drogheda feud”, as suggested by subscriber Jonathan Phelan.

So – I can hear your brains ticking over – how does a pair of flip-flops fit into this story?

Well, in December 2019 a key player in the whole story, Dublin-born criminal Robbie Lawlor, 35, was released from prison.

As he came out of a gym in late December, wearing a black coat, he was approached by around 10 youths, including Keane Mulready-Woods.

They filmed him as they surrounded him and starting throwing punches at him, with one young thug shouting: “This is only the start of it, Robbie! This is only the start!”

Lawlor put his gym bag in order that he could defend himself, and in the melee it was stolen by the gang.

Later one of the youths posed on social media wearing Lawlor’s gym clothes, and even his flip-flops (for our American readers – flip-flops are what the British and Irish call thongs).

It was all a bit of a lark at the time and both videos soon went viral.

But barely a fortnight later, on 12 January 2020, the laughing and joking stopped and the story turned dark. Very dark.

Keane Mulready-Woods was lured to a house in Rathmullan Park, in the town of Drogheda, north of Dublin.

Once inside the house he was attacked and stabbed to death by Lawlor, possibly accompanied by some associates.

Keane, who was on bail and the subject of nightly curfews, was reported missing by his mother, Elizabeth Woods, when he failed to appear the following day.

But his body had already been dismembered and over the next few days, body parts would begin turning up in various parts of Dublin.

Keane’s arms and legs turned up first, in a sports bag dumped in Coolock, in north Dublin.

Inside the bag someone had left…a pair of flip-flops.

It was a horrific calling card, and the Garda Siochana were in no doubt Lawlor (pictured below) was the man responsible for the teenager’s death.

Two days later Keane’s head and feet were discovered in the boot of a car, which had been set on fire in Dublin’s north inner city.

The torso would eventually turn up in Rathmullan Park.

Keane’s mother would later describe his death as “one of the most brutal, traumatic murders in the history of Ireland.”

It was the biggest shock Ireland had suffered, at the hands of the underworld, since crime reporter Veronica Guerin was assassinated in 1996, a murder which was turned into a movie with Cate Blanchett blaming the fearless journalist.

After Keane’s murder, Ireland’s Taioseach, or Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar visited Drogheda and said: “I want to express my revulsion and condemnation of the very serious crime that has taken place here and also to assure the people of Drogheda that the government is 100 per cent behind them and that we are going to get these people behind bars.”

“I want to say to people across Ireland and here in Drogheda that crime doesn’t pay, we will get these people behind bars and make this town safe again,” said Varadkar, who would step down after the election in June 2020, only to return to the post in December 2022.

At the funeral, the presiding priest at the Holy Family Church, Father Phil Gaffney said of the killers: “They took it upon themselves to be judge and jury and executioner. What arrogance. What appalling wickedness and real evil.”

Father Gaffney also said Keane had been naive and had fallen in with the wrong crowd.

“I hope his death will be a warning to other young lads, who are unfortunately being groomed by criminals with the promise of money and gifts which will inevitably end in tragedy and death,” he added.

But what led up to Keane’s murder, and what happened afterwards?

To tell the story properly I will have to give you a bit of context.

Drogheda (pronounced Dro-huh-huh) was founded in 1412, and its greatest claim to fame – prior to Keane’s murder – was the Battle of the Boyne, which was fought a few miles west of the city in July 1690.

The Protestant King William of Orange – nicknamed King Billy in Ulster – defeated King James II, ending Catholic hopes of regaining the English throne, but also condemning Ireland’s Catholics to 230 years of subjugation.

When Ireland was divided, in 1921, and the Protestant-dominated north remained within Britain, Drogheda was 30 miles south of the border but it was not heavily involved in The Troubles which broke out in the late 1960s and ended, with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

By the early 21^st century Drogheda – which sits on both sides of the River Boyne – was transformed into a fairly affluent town, where young couples bought homes and commuted into Dublin, or as far away as Belfast.

There were pockets of poverty, in places like the Moneymore estate, but largely the town, in County Louth, was in rude health.

The drug trade was also booming, with young and old buying cocaine and other recreational drugs.

Owen Maguire was the head of a criminal gang, many of whom were Travellers, which controlled the drugs market in County Louth, and neighbouring County Meath.

But then there was some sort of dispute over money, within his gang.

The exact trigger for the dispute is not known, but it is believed to involve money or resentment over money.

Maguire led one group, ably assisted by an individual called Cornelius Price, while the other group were for several years known as the “anti-Maguire” faction.

That was because – until June 2025 – there were legal reasons why the media could not name Keith Boylan, and his brother Josh, who were the leaders of the anti-Maguire faction.

The Boylans – who hailed from Moneymore – were allied with Richie Carberry, and his brother-in-law, Robbie Lawlor.

Various minor incidents took place but then there was an explosion after Owen Maguire was shot and almost killed on 5 July 2018.

The gunman – believed to be Lawlor – shouted “These are from Keith” as he fired several bullets into Maguire, who survived but was left paralysed.

The viciousness of the feud would be shown by the audio of a phone call, which went viral on social media in March 2019.

In the call one of the anti-Maguire gang (later identified as Paul Crosby) rang Maguire and mocked him for being in a wheelchair, and also impugned his sexual prowess in view of his paralysis.

The mocking caller asked Maguire: “Do you want to go for a walk and sort this out?”

A few months later the Drogheda feud claimed its first victim – Keith Branigan, 29, who was shot dead at a caravan park in Clogherhead, where he lived, in August 2019.

His killers are believed to have been acting under orders from Owen Maguire’s faction, although Branagan was not a big fish.

On 4 November 2019 Richie Carberry was shot dead at his home just before midnight. He had been warned several months before, by the Gardai, that his life was in danger.

When he heard of his death, Lawlor – who was in prison – was enraged, and hellbent on revenge.

A former joyrider and petty criminal, Lawlor had developed into a sought-after hitman in the Dublin underworld.

In 2019, Lawlor went on trial, accused of threatening to murder his ex-girlfriend Rachel Kirwan, her boyfriend Derek Mitchell and his mother Fiona, and shooting dead a pet dog called Chopper.

But on 9 December 2019 the Irish Times reported Lawlor had been acquitted, after Ms Kirwan resiled – or abandoned – a statement she had given to the gardai.

In the statement, Ms Kirwan – who had been in a relationship with Lawlor for 12 years and had two children with him – claimed he threatened her new partner, saying he would “blow his head off, blow his ma’s head off and leave him with nothing.”

After the jury at Dublin’s Central Criminal Court found him not guilty of five charges, Lawlor reportedly nodded and mouthed “Thank you” to the jurors.

Why had Ms Kirwan retracted her statement?

Who knows? But considering Lawlor’s terrifying reputation, it is quite possible she did it out of fear of the consequences.

Whatever the case, Lawlor was released from custody and just over a month later he murdered and dismembered Keane Mulready-Woods.

The killing was a step too far for what used to be known in Ireland as the “ordinary decent criminals”.

On 4 April 2020 – shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic struck the UK – Lawlor was lured to Belfast.

As he came out of a house in Etna Drive in the Irish republican Ardoyne area of west Belfast, at 11.50am, he was shot numerous times.

One witness said he saw a man “stumbling out of the garden” in Etna Drive after being shot, and tried to give him CPR.

Another neighbour put a white sheet over the body – before the paramedics arrived – to “give him some dignity.”

Whether they would have done so, had they known at the time who the man was, is debatable.

A VW Scirocco car was later found burnt out nearby.

At the time of his death, Lawlor had 125 criminal convictions, 71 of them for driving offences.

In 2022 two Belfast men – Patrick Teer, 48, and 40-year-old Adrian Holland – were charged with his murder. Both deny the charge and are due to face trial this autumn.

Both have been bailed and Holland is reported to have had to move out of a house in Belfast after receiving threats from some of Lawlor’s old friends in Drogheda.

A third man, Jim Fields, from Belfast, was also charged with assisting an offender.

The Sunday World reported, in May 2024, that another man, aged 32 and originally from Sligo, had been arrested in Liverpool, and then released on bail.

There are a number of theories as to who was responsible for the murder of Robbier Lawlor, but Belfast solicitors Madden & Finucane published a statement in June 2023 that said: “According to sources, members of a Limerick-based crime family carried out the attack”.

The solicitors’ firm said three men – Ger Dundon, his 17-year-old nephew Levi Killeen, and a third man, Quincy Bramble, were pictured on CCTV near Lawlor’s safe house around the time of the murder.

The Dundon-McCarthy crime family in Limerick were closely associated with Cornelius Price – Maguire’s right-hand man – and also had family connections with Warren Crossan – son of former Continuity IRA boss Tommy Crossan – who was murdered in Belfast in June 2020.

Madden & Finucane was founded in 1979 and one of the founding partners was Patrick Finucane, a human rights lawyer who often defended IRA suspects, who was assassinated by the loyalist Ulster Defence Association (UDA) in 1989.

On the firm’s website they say: “He was murdered by a pro-British death squad on 12 February 1989. Those directly involved in his murder were working for British Military Intelligence.”

In September 2024 the British government announced a public inquiry into the murder of Patrick Finucane.

But I have wandered off-topic considerably.

Let’s get back to the Drogheda feud.

In November 2018 a man had been kidnapped, stripped, beaten and stabbed in Moneymore, but was rescued by the gardai.

In June 2020 warrants were issued for the arrest of Keith and Josh Boylan in relation to that incident.

They fled abroad, presumably on fake passports.

The Boylans were believed to have gone to South America but last month the Irish Mirror claimed Josh Boylan was in Thailand.

In June 2025 – after eight years of not being able to formally name them – the Irish press were allowed to name the Boylans as the leaders of the anti-Maguire faction for the first time.

It came at a hearing at Dundalk Circuit Criminal Court, where three women – Jade Heeney, 27, and Annie Smith, 28, both from Drogheda, and Marlena Aleksandrowicz, 29, from Santry, Dublin, all pleaded guilty to money laundering charges.

Garda John Walsh named Keith and Josh Boylan in court, and said they were the leaders of the “Boylan Organised Crime Group.”

The court heard Heeney was in a “toxic” relationship with Keith Boylan for four years, Smith was a former girlfriend of Josh, and Aleksandrowicz was a friend of another of Keith’s girlfriends.

On 30 July 2025 all three women were given suspended sentence for their role in money laundering for the Boylan OCG.

The Irish tabloids, like the Scottish papers, love a gangland story but they are also scrupulous about not naming individuals for legal reasons.

In recent months the Irish press have not only been able to name the Boylans for the first time, but they have also been able to identify a Dublin criminal known as Mr Flashy. His name is Glen Ward, and he got his nickname because of his love of designer gear, hence his associates are known as the Gucci Gang.

But let’s get back to Drogheda and find out what happened to all the main players.

Owen Maguire has kept a low profile in recent years while his right-hand man, Cornelius Price, died aged 41 of a rare brain disease, limbic encephalitis, in a hospital in Wales in February 2023.

Price is suspected of being involved in four murders, including the unsolved disappearances of Willie Maughan, 23, and his girlfriend Ana Varslavane, 21, in County Meath in 2015.

With most of the key players either dead, incarcerated or on the run, the Drogheda feud has fizzled out.

But the town remains a hub of criminality.

In March 2025 the Garda Siochana found a gun in Drogheda, and later the same month they found drugs (pictured above) worth almost two million euros.

Thanks to Jonathan Phelan for bringing this story to my attention. If you have a suggestion for a Reader’s Choice please email me at totalcrime70@gmail.com