Paul Crosby, 27, and Gerard Cruise, 49, admitted to facilitating the murder by driving 17-year-old Keane Mulready-Woods to a house in Drogheda where he was murdered between January 11 and 13, 2020.
Mulready-Woods' dismembered remains were subsequently discovered in three separate locations in Dublin and Drogheda.
Crosby was sentenced to 10 years in jail at the Special Criminal Court on Friday, while Cruise was given a seven-year sentence. Both men were given a further six-month suspended sentence.
Justice Hunt said the murder of Keane Mulready-Woods was carried out in the context of a Drogheda feud, adding that there was a connection between the assistance Crosby and Cruise provided to the criminal gang and the murder, which was carried out by others.
The court heard that Crosby was more involved than Cruise and received orders from Lawlor before passing them on to others.
Crosby met Mulready-Woods on the day the teenager disappeared, paying his taxi fare and taking him to a car that Cruise drove to a house in Rathmullan Park where the teenager was murdered.
There was no evidence that Crosby or Cruise were present at the time of the murder. Both men apologized for what happened, while Cruise said he did not know Mulready-Woods was going to be murdered.
Detective Inspector Aidan McCabe told the court that the two men also bought a van where bone fragments belonging to Mulready-Woods were later found. McCabe added that Cruise provided bags that were discovered at the crime scene, including one bag that contained a drill.
The court heard that Crosby had more than 40 previous convictions for charges such as fraud, theft, and drug-related offenses, while Cruise had previous convictions for possession of drugs, burglary, and public order offenses.
Delivering the sentence on February 10, Justice Tony Hunt described Mulready-Woods' murder as a "heinous and appalling crime."
Hunt said it was unnatural for any parent to lose a child prematurely, especially when they are murdered. However, he said that "the disgraceful and inhumane way" in which the remains were treated compounded the family's grief.
The court heard that the teenager's body was dismembered with hand and power tools after the murder took place. His arms and legs were subsequently found in a sports bag in a house in Coolock in Dublin, while his head and feet were found in a burnt-out car in Dublin.
The teenager's torso was found more than a year after the murder took place on April 1, 2021, in a sports bag hidden by an overgrown ravine in Drogheda.
Gardaí suspected Mulready-Woods was killed by Robbie Lawlor, a senior criminal gang figure who was involved in a Drogheda gang feud and linked to several other murders. Lawlor was later shot dead in Belfast in April 2020.
Gerard "Ged" McKenna, who owned the house where the murder took place, was jailed for four years last year for assisting in the clean-up of the murder scene.
In a victim impact statement, Mulready-Woods' mother Elizabeth Woods said she was unable to get over or move on from "such an inhumane, violent, and barbaric death".
"You don't get over it. You don't move on, period," Elizabeth Woods said.
She also described her son's murder as "one of the most brutal, traumatic murders in the history of Ireland", adding that she did not want any other family to have to go through it.
Comments