The rise and fall of Dominic Noonan, the paedophile gangster who once ruled Manchester's underworld

For years Dominic Noonan traded on his gangland reputation, confident his notoriety would help conceal his dark secret. But his infamy wasn't enough to stop the rumours swirling around Manchester's criminal underworld.

Police, fellow villains and even, it was said, members of his own family had long suspected Noonan was a predatory sex offender with a predilection for young boys. But his sickening crimes had never been proved in a court of law.

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That was until May 2018 when the gangster's past finally caught up with him. The then 53-year-old was found guilty of 13 historical sex offences against four young boys aged as young as 10.

Already serving an 11 year sentence for arson, blackmail and perverting the course of justice, Noonan was given a separate 11 year sentence, which meant he would spend the majority of his adult life behind bars. Noonan was back in the headlines recently when a former detective alleged police watched as a boy walked into a house with a suspected paedophile under surveillance.

Former GMP detective Rick Mortimer told an employment tribunal that the man was believed to be 'dangerous', and abusing youngsters after 'getting them drunk', but alleged that when he suggested that police intervene to protect the boy, his superior officer said 'what we can't see, we don't know about'.

The target of the surveillance operation wasn't named at the hearing but it is understood to be Noonan. Born to Irish parents and raised in Whalley Range, as one of 14 siblings whose first names all began with the letter D, supposedly for Dublin, Noonan rose to notoriety alongside his brothers Damien and Dessie by