Man instructed by criminal when driving with Keane Mulready-Woods' head and feet in boot

Eoin Reynolds

A father-of-two with 86 previous convictions was acting under the instructions of "highly volatile and dangerous" criminal Robbie Lawlor when he drove a car with the head and feet of teenager Keane Mulready-Woods in the boot before setting it on fire, a court has heard.

Michael Hourigan SC, for 32-year-old Glen Bride, on Monday told the three-judge Special Criminal Court that his client wants to apologise for his role in the aftermath of the murder and dismemberment of the 17-year-old.

While Bride was not involved in the murder, Mr Hourigan said his client knows that his actions added enormously to the grief of the victim's family.

Before sentencing Bride, Mr Hourigan asked the court to consider his client's guilty plea and history of alcohol and drug use which began in his teens.

Mr Hourigan said Bride's youth had been "beset with difficulties" and when he drove the car with the teen's remains in the boot, he was acting under the instructions of Lawlor, a "highly volatile and dangerous individual".

Bride, formerly of Mount Olive Park, Kilbarrick, Dublin 5, previously pleaded guilty to assisting in the movement and disposal of the murdered teenager's body parts which had been stowed in the boot of a stolen Volvo V40 and left in a residential area in north Dublin.

Keane Mulready-Woods was last seen alive in Drogheda on January 12th, 2020. The following day, some of the teenager's body parts were found in a sports bag in the Moatview area of Coolock in Dublin.

On January 15th, further remains were found in a burning car that Bride had moved to a laneway in Drumcondra. Members of Dublin Fire Brigade discovered the remains in a sports bag in the boot.

The teen's torso was discovered 14 months later, on March 11th, 2020, hidden in an overgrown ravine during a search of waste-ground at Rathmullan Park in Drogheda, near where the teenager was murdered.

Det Sgt Enda O'Sullivan on Monday told John Byrne SC, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, that gardaí are satisfied that Keane was murdered by Robbie Lawlor, a notorious criminal linked to several violent deaths and who himself was shot dead in Belfast in April 2020.

Sgt O'Sullivan said that when Keane Mulready-Woods' mother, Elizabeth Mulready, reported her son missing at Drogheda Garda Station on January 13th, 2020, gardaí had just received a tip-off that the youngster had been murdered.

At 10pm that night, two walkers discovered a black Puma sports bag at Moatview Gardens in north Dublin and inside were human arms and legs, later identified through DNA analysis to belong to Keane.

Through analysis of CCTV and mobile phones, gardaí established that Paul Crosby (30) and Gerard Cruise (55) brought Keane to Ged McKenna's home in Rathmullan Park, Drogheda after 6pm on January 12th, 2020.

The last sighting of Keane was on CCTV showing him speaking with others, including Paul Crosby, outside McKenna's home at 6.48pm. Lawlor murdered him a short time later inside the house before his body was dismembered and placed into bags.

Det Sgt O'Sullivan said Glen Bride was not involved in the murder, nor was he aware that it was taking place. However, he did drive with another man and Robbie Lawlor from Drogheda to Dublin in the immediate aftermath of the murder.

A plan had been put in place to remove Keane's remains from the house in Rathmullan Park using a van but the van failed to start. Instead they used a stolen Volvo V40 which was linked to Bride by CCTV from two garages in Dublin where he had fueled up on dates in December 2019 but drove off without paying.

Part of the background to the murder, the detective said, was an ongoing feud between criminal organisations in Drogheda and the 2019 murder of Richie Carberry, who was married to Robbie Lawlor's sister. Richie Carberry's brother, Stephen Carberry, is also due to be sentenced for his role in removing Keane's body parts from Drogheda to Dublin.

Stephen Carberry drove the Volvo V40 from Drogheda to Dublin with Keane's remains in the boot. He left one of the bags at Moatview Gardens before parking the car in the Donnycarney area of north Dublin.

On January 14th, Carberry brought Bride to Donnycarney and showed him where the car was parked. Shortly after midnight that night, Carberry and Bride took a taxi to Donnycarney and Bride got into the Volvo and drove to a secluded area where he set it on fire.

Dublin Fire Brigade put out the blaze and discovered the remains in the boot.

Det Sgt O'Sullivan said Bride has 86 previous convictions including for causing serious harm, attempted robbery, carrying a firearm, criminal damage, drug possession and theft.

Ms Justice Karen O'Connor, sitting with Judge Sarah Berkeley and Judge Paula Murphy, will sentence Bride on March 9.

Carberry (48) of Sandymount Avenue, Dublin 4 previously pleaded guilty to charge that on a date between January 13th, 2020, and January 15th, 2020, both dates inclusive, within the State, knowing or believing another person to be guilty of the murder of Keane Mulready-Woods or some other arrestable offence, did without reasonable excuse, an act with intent to impede the apprehension or prosecution of that other person. He will also be sentenced on March 9th.

In February 2023, the Special Criminal Court jailed Drogheda criminal Paul Crosby (30), last of Rathmullan Park, for ten years for facilitating the "disgraceful and inhuman" murder of the teenager. The DPP accepted that Crosby did not know Keane was to be murdered when he delivered him to Robbie Lawlor.

Crosby's co-accused Gerard Cruise was considered by the court to be at a lower level and received a sentence of seven-and-a-half years with the final six months suspended for two years.

Cruise (51) with addresses in Drogheda and Lower Sherrard St, Dublin 1, had pleaded guilty to a charge that, with knowledge of the existence of a criminal organisation, he facilitated the murder of Keane Mulready-Woods at Rathmullan Park, Drogheda, Co Louth, between the dates of January 11th and 13th, 2020, contrary to Section 72 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006.

Ged McKenna was sentenced to four years in prison for the offence of assisting an offender for his role in attempting to clean up the crime scene following the murder at his home in Rathmullan Park.

In a victim impact statement written by Keane's mother Elizabeth and read at both Carberry's and Bride's sentencing hearings, she said nothing could ever prepare a parent for losing a child, but the way her 17-year-old son had been taken and what was done to him after his death had left a level of trauma that she will carry for the rest of her life.

Ms Mulready said instead of being allowed dignity in death, her son’s body was “cut up, scattered, and treated as if he was nothing”.

She added: “As if he was not someone’s son. As if he did not matter. The cruelty and inhumanity of disposing of my child’s body in pieces is something no parent should ever have to face.” She said knowing that parts of her son were left in different places around the country was a “constant and unbearable torment”.

She said not a day goes by that she isn’t “haunted” by images and thoughts of what was done to Keane.

“I relive it when I wake up, and it follows me when I try to sleep,” she said. “This is not grief that fades with time. It is trauma that lives inside me.”

She said her family has been “destroyed” by what happened and Keane’s siblings lost their brother “in the most brutal way imaginable”.

What hurts even more was that after her son was killed, “choices were made”, to further “disrespect him and to further harm us”, Ms Mulready added.

She said Keane deserved “dignity” and “respect” and deserved to be treated like “a human being, not as something to be discarded”.

“I speak today for my son because he no longer has a voice,” Ms Mulready said, asking the court to consider the “lifelong impact” this has had on her and her family and the “unimaginable cruelty” of what was done when deciding on a sentence.

In his Victim Impact Statement, which was also read to the court today, Keane’s father, Barry Woods questioned why “fully grown men with families of their own” would “take a 17-year-old boy” and dump his body parts as they did.

“We had to have his funeral with only half his body parts in his coffin. Horrible,” he said.

Mr Woods said he was still “haunted” by this “savage murder” and still has nightmares about what happened.