They were the notorious crime family who held a fearsome grip on Manchester's underworld for almost two decades.
Damien, Dessie and Dominic Noonan spent years ruthlessly building their empire across the city. The gangster brothers - who grew up in Whalley Range in a family of 14 siblings whose first names all began with the letter D - first made their mark specialising in armed robbery.
But with Dessie and Damien regulars on the doors of some of the city centre's most popular nightclubs, including the Hacienda, the pair soon realised that drugs were a far more lucrative way of making their fortune.
Join our WhatsApp Top Stories and Breaking News group by clicking this link
With Damien at the helm and Dessie as the enforcer and hit man, the brothers took over clubland's doors. During the Hacienda's heyday, the Noonans were said to be making £50,000 a night from the club alone.
But with rival gangs prepared to do whatever it took to get a slice of the pie, defending their turf often came at a cost. The Noonans became 'synonymous with violence', according to one former GMP officer, and were rumoured to be linked to more than two dozen murders.
Their burgeoning empire was nearly brought down after the murder of 'White Tony' Johnson, the leader of the Cheetham Hill Gang, who was gunned down in the car park of the Penny Black pub in 1991.
Dessie went on trial for his murder. The first trial collapsed amid rumours of jury tampering and at the second Dessie was acquitted.
It was not until more than a decade later that the Noonans' reign of terror finally came to an end.
First, Damien was killed in a motorbike accident while on holiday in the Dominican Republic in July 2003. Then in March 2005, Dessie was stabbed to death by crack dealer 'Yardie Derek' McDuffus at a house on Chorlton's Merseybank estate.
That left Dominic at the helm of the family. But he would later be jailed for 11 years in 2018 after being found guilty of 13 historical sex offences against four young boys aged as young as 10.
Yet despite the brothers' reign coming to an end, the Noonans' destructive legacy continued to haunt Manchester in the years that followed.
The nephew whose death sparked nationwide riots
When Mark Duggan was shot dead by police in London on August 4 2011, it triggered remarkable scenes across the country.
In the days that followed, rioters took to the streets of many of the UK's largest cities. In Manchester and Salford, mobs of looters caused millions of pounds worth of damage and loss to shops.
One of the suspected ringleaders of the disorder in the city centre was Dominic Noonan, a man who had his own personal connections to Duggan.
Duggan was the nephew of Dominic's brother, the late Desmond Noonan. His mother was originally from Manchester and, at the age of 12, Duggan was sent to live in the city with his aunt for several years after his behaviour in secondary school deteriorated.
Duggan is said to have had regular contact with his uncle Dessie before the crime boss was stabbed to death.
The Metropolitan Police said Duggan, 29, was a member of a feared gang, Tottenham Man Dem, and had been linked to gun crime and drug dealing. He was shot dead by armed officers attempting to arrest him on suspicion of planning an attack, the Met said.
Duggan’s family denied that he was a violent gangster or that he was in possession of a gun at the time. Protests at Tottenham police station two days after Duggan's death were the spark for rioting and looting that spread across the capital before fanning out to other cities.
In the aftermath of Manchester's riots, Dominic Noonan was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to violent disorder after being caught on camera talking to a looter carrying a flat-screen TV on Oldham Street at the height of the mayhem.
He was recalled to prison on a previous firearms sentence for breaching the terms of his licence, but never charged with offences relating to the rioting.
The nephew who carried out a senseless murder that shocked the nation
Just months after the riots, another member of the wider Noonan clan hit the headlines.
In the early hours of Boxing Day 2011, student Anuj Bidve was walking along Ordsall Lane in Salford with friends when he was shot dead without warning. His cold-blooded killer Kiaran Stapleton smirked and laughed after shooting the 23-year-old – and then got a tattoo commemorating the crime.
Stapleton, a member of the wider Noonan family, was one of nine children raised in Ordsall. His aunt, Mandy Burgess, was the widow of Damien Noonan.
From an early age, Stapleton, a father-of-one, had been prone to sudden rages that would explode in violence. He was referred to a child psychologist aged 11, expelled from school three years later, and his education had finished completely by the time he was 15.
By the age of 17, he was working for his uncle as a builder but would fly into a rage whenever he messed up at work. He also worked as an office junior for Salford council, and at a call centre before settling down to a £250 a week factory job at Trafford Park.
In 2010, Stapleton split from his partner. Soon after the break-up he was also involved in a road rage incident, when he chased down a driver and shunted him, leading to him losing his licence.
It is thought this tipped him over the edge and, at some point, he got hold of a gun that he used to kill Anuj, who was studying micro-electronics at Lancaster University.
There was no reason for the shocking, random attack. Stapleton selected Anuj as his victim because he had 'the biggest head', a trial at Manchester Crown Court heard.
During his trial Stapleton referred to himself as a “psycho” and regularly laughed and grinned in the dock. He denied murder but pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
He claimed that a personality disorder affected his self-control – and that he 'didn’t know what I was doing'. However, a jury convicted Stapleton of murder.
In July 2012, he was sentenced to life in prison. He was ordered to serve a minimum term of 30 years before he is eligible for parole. Following the verdict, Anuj's father Subhash said Stapleton had “openly laughed at the memory of our son” and believed the killer should never be released from prison.
The son who spent lottery winnings on a drug deal
When his mother scooped £1m on the lottery, Desmond James Noonan used his share of the winnings to bankroll a heroin deal. Mandy Burgess, the widow of Damien Noonan and aunt of killer Kiaran Stapleton, won the cash in a EuroMillions draw in 2012.
The win came hours after Desmond was released from an 18 month stretch for carjacking. Within weeks of leaving prison, he splashed out on an Audi Q7 and a house in Worsley with the £340,000 share his mother gave him.
Noonan also invested the winnings in a plot to sell heroin in Wigan. But police had him under surveillance and arrested Noonan and two pals moments after they collected 250g of the drug in Werneth, Oldham.
All three men had travelled from Noonan’s home in a Seat Ibiza before heading back to Salford.
When police swooped, Noonan ran off but was detained by a police dog. His two henchmen were arrested in the car where officers found a black carrier bag containing £15,000 worth of drugs hidden under the front passenger seat.
In September 2013, Noonan was jailed for five years after admitting possessing heroin with intent to supply and possessing 20g of cannabis found at his Old Clough Lane home.
The court heard that the deal was Noonan’s attempt to help out a small-time dealer pal who was in debt to organised criminals in Salford.
The man had faced violent reprisals from the gangsters after raiding their cannabis farm of 90 plants. He ended up in hospital after being attacked with a machete, and was then forced to run a new cannabis farm. His problems deepened when police seized the replacement crop, and he moved to Wigan in a bid to start again.
But his underworld creditors tracked him down and ordered him to repay the debt by supplying heroin for them in his new town.
He then turned to his well-connected pal Noonan to help him out. Noonan agreed to finance a drug deal which would help his friend make some money for himself and reduce his debt quicker.
A judge later concluded that Noonan had earned nearly £186,000 from his life of crime and ordered he pay back £131,361.
The 'TV star' who bragged about part in £250k car-ringing plot
The following year, Dominic's son was also jailed after bragging of his part in a £250,000 car-ringing conspiracy. Stephen Warburton, also known as Bugsy Noonan, had starred in a string of TV documentaries alongside his notorious father.
In May 2014, the-then 19-year-old was locked up for 38 months - after featuring in a totally different type of recording. He was taped boasting of an Audi A6 he had stolen in a call to a pal serving time.
The conversation was listened into by police - and the theft proved to be one of a series targeting Cheshire householders. Warburton was first filmed by documentary filmmaker Donal McIntyre when he was seven-years-old.
The TV shows made the Noonan family nationally notorious. Dominic Noonan had insisted he wanted to steer ‘Bugsy’ away from crime.
But at his Manchester Crown Court sentencing hearing, the judge was told the youngster had been ‘dogged’ by his family’s infamy.
Warburton’s offences sprang from his association with Wythenshawe’s ‘Newall Green Crew’ , who stole cars and keys from homes in Wilmslow, Lymm and Hale between May and August 2013.
Warburton was linked to the thefts of two BMW 3 Series, an Audi A6, a Land Rover Freelander, an Audi A3 and a Skoda, moving the vehicles on to a ‘fence’ in Blackburn.
In the aftermath of one of the raids, Warburton was taped in conversation with a jailed pal who asked him, ‘What you on bro?’. Warburton replied: ‘Nothing bro, hustling. Got an A6 the other night.”
