Dominic Noonan - The Life and Crimes of a Gangster and Predatory Sex Offender

For decades, Dominic Noonan was suspected of being a predatory sex offender by the police, the public, fellow villains and even, it is said, members of his own family. He just didn’t have any criminal convictions for a sex offence to confirm the folklore - until now

By John Scheerhout

Gangster Dominic Noonan has been found guilty of 13 historical sex offences against four young boys aged as young as ten and jailed for eleven years.

The 53-year-old had denied all charges against him in a month-long trial, but was convicted unanimously by the jury.

He is already serving an 11-year sentence for arson, blackmail and perverting the course of justice, passed in 2015. The latest sentence will start after he has finished serving that.

Here, John Scheerhout looks at how he revelled in his criminal reputation - and used it to prey on youths for sex:

For decades, Dominic Noonan was suspected of being a predatory sex offender by the police, the public, fellow villains and even, it is said, members of his own family.

He just didn’t have any criminal convictions for a sex offence to confirm the folklore - until now.

Today Noonan - one of the most notorious underworld figures of the last 30 years in the city - was convicted of sex offences against four boys.

Over the years he has revelled in a ‘gangster’ reputation. Whether he is still a major criminal player in the city is up for question, but his notoriety has been enough to influence some young men and manipulate others.

He groomed and molested boys after plying them with drink, according to the prosecution in his Manchester Crown Court trial.

His first victim was aged just 10 when Noonan, who was six years older, took him from a care home and indecently assaulted him twice, ordering the boy not to tell anyone.

The second victim said he was 16 or 17 when he first met Noonan outside a pizzeria. He told how Noonan threatened him, accusing him of having called him ‘gay’, before he was beaten by a gang of teens with hockey sticks. He then indecently assaulted the boy on a few occasions, once in a disused shop.

A custody image of Domenyk Lattlay-Fottfoy, previously known as Dominic Noonan, released

after he was jailed for historical sex offences (Image: GMP)

A third victim said he was in his early teens in the 2000s when he met Noonan, who molested him on 20 or more occasions. He described how he would spend time driving around with Noonan and other young lads. He would be taken to parties where there was drink and drugs. Noonan would ply them with drink, but not get drunk himself. His victim described being ‘brainwashed’ into thinking the abuse was normal.

The fourth victim was aged in his mid-teens when he met Noonan in the 2000s, agreeing to renovate a pub for him. This victim was said to be completely under Noonan’s spell.

At the conclusion of his trial at Manchester Crown Court, Noonan was convicted of eight counts of indecent assault, one of attempted rape, two of inciting a child into sexual activity, one of sexual assault and one of engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child.

His reputation among fellow criminals is now in tatters.

One of 14 siblings, all of whose first names begin with a D, Noonan became the spokesperson for the family following death of his brother Damian, aged 37, in a motorbike accident in the Dominican Republic in 2004, followed by the murder of his brother Dessie in 2005.

Dessie and Damian had worked on the door of the Hacienda in the 1980s and were then said to control the supply of drugs at the nightclub.

When they died, Dominic Noonan became the boss, or at least he gave the appearance of being the head of the family.

Not your usual crime boss

A cunning, intelligent individual, he admitted to being ‘thoroughly dishonest’ during his trial. He has trumpeted that he is anti-racist and has made much of being able to speak Urdu although, actually, he only knows a few phrases. And he is gay.

He isn’t your usual crime boss.

Over the years, Greater Manchester Police have found little difficulty in obtaining evidence to lock him up for everything from possessing a gun to arson and blackmail.

He has spent most of his adult life behind bars.

But proving he was a predatory sex offender was another matter.

In 2010, a rape charge was dropped. Shortly after he was released from a long prison sentence on licence, he was accused of raping a woman in a hotel room after celebrating his birthday but prosecutors dropped the case.

In 2013, he was cleared of child rape charges after the court heard his accuser had a history of making false complaints. He had been accused of molesting the boy of 15 in a flat in Bloom Street in Manchester city centre.

in 2016, he was found not guilty of engaging in a sex act in front of a minor, although he was convicted of perverting the course of justice by offering £5,000 to the boy’s family to get the charge dropped. The prosecution alleged that the boy covered his face with a poster as a ‘vulnerable’ adult man was intimidated into performing a sex act on Noonan in a bedroom, he was also convicted of arson and blackmail connected to a row over an ice cream van, and jailed for eleven years.

So, while police have tried many times, it is only now that Noonan has been brought to justice for sex offences.

Noonan first came to national prominence in 2005 when his brother Dessie was stabbed to death on the Merseybank estate in Chorlton , just days before a Channel 5 documentary about the brothers was aired.

Dessie Noonan

Drug dealer Derek McDuffus, known as Yardie Derek, had refused to sell drugs to Dessie, a notorious gangland enforcer who was addicted to crack cocaine.

GMP failed in a bid to stop the Donal MacIntyre documentary, in which Dessie Noonan boasted of being behind 27 killings and Dominic said he was gay.

The Noonan family first rose to notoriety after the murder of ‘White Tony’ Johnson, the leader of the Cheetham Hill Gang, who was gunned down in 1991. Desmond was charged but acquitted after a re-trial.

After the murder of Dessie, Dominic Noonan became the public face of the Noonan family and the scourge of GMP.

In 2005, he was jailed for nine-and-a-half years after a revolver and ammunition were found under the bonnet of his Jaguar when police stopped him in the north east. He was described by the judge who jailed him then as ‘a very dangerous man.’

He was freed on licence in 2010 and claimed to have found God (he ostentatiously kissed the Bible when swearing the oath during his trial) but he continued to be a menace as far as the police were concerned. He started a number of dubious businesses and even had a crack at stand-up comedy. He took great delight in winding up the police, even setting up a company called GMP (Greater Manchester Postal).

He was recalled to prison almost immediately after being accused of going berserk at a woman motorist who beeped at him as he crossed a Gorton road.

He is said to have tapped the car with a copy of the Manchester Evening News, which featured a story about his release, and shouted: “Do you know who I am?”

I'm surprised he didn't say, "I'm walking here; I'm walking here!"

Noonan, the riots, and prison

He was recalled to prison again in 2011, suspected of being a ringleader during that summer’s riots in Manchester. He was captured on video talking to a looter who was carrying a large flat-screen TV on Oldham Street at the height of the riot.

He must have known it was asking for trouble to be seen in the middle of the riots, a man who was out of jail on licence, who could be recalled to prison for the slightest whiff of a misdemeanour. But he enjoyed playing cat and mouse with the law.

Prison authorities struggled to cope with him. Some prison governors just didn’t want him. They knew he would either cause trouble or incite others into causing trouble.

At one stage he was housed in the ‘special intervention unit’, for troublesome prisoners, at Strangeways, together with Kiaran ‘Psycho’ Stapleton, a member of the wider Noonan family who murdered student Anuj Bidve in Salford, and Clifton Jeter. who committed a gruesome knife murder in Brighton before attacking two guards at the Manchester prison .

While out of prison on licence in the summer of 2014, Noonan brought Manchester city centre to a standstill by climbing the city’s Big Wheel in protest at the latest efforts to recall him.

Domenyk Noonan climbs the Manchester Big Wheel in Piccadilly Gardens

More than 1,000 spectators gathered to watch the drama, which infuriated civic and police leaders. He spent six hours about 100ft from the ground. Roads were closed, buses were diverted and businesses had to shut, losing an estimated £10,000 in trade.

The paedophile emerges

He had supporters and a reputation but it didn’t stop some watchers calling him ‘nonce’.

Noun. nonce (plural nonces) (Britain, slang, pejorative) A sex offender, especially one who is guilty of sexual offences against children.

When he eventually climbed down, police charged him with causing public nuisance - but it was later thrown out by the judge who said the wrong charge had been laid and that he suspected it had only been done because this offence carried a stiffer sentence than the alternative, aggravated trespass. It demonstrated that police and prosecutors were at pains to hammer Noonan if they could.

It was around this time that one of Noonan’s friends, his right-hand-man for many years, saw what others had seen for a long time: that Noonan may be a predatory sex offender.

Having grown up in the same street in Whalley Range as Noonan, this man went on to become part of Noonan’s criminal network.

He watched Noonan surround himself with boys and young men. This entourage of teens turned up in force for court appearances and this man began to feel uncomfortable with what he was seeing, even telling an M.E.N. reporter as much on one occasion. The man, a father himself, confronted Noonan, and they fell out.

Describing a series of incidents which concerned him, the man told the M.E.N: “I remember this lad. He was 13. Noonan was waiting for him to come home from school. The lad sat on his knee and was told to call him Uncle Dom. He gave this other lad a fiver. He gave 50p pieces to some other lads. He bought them cornets (of ice cream).

“I remember another lad was 14 and Dom said to call him dad and he would be kissing him. I told him he shouldn’t be doing that. He was just out of prison and I told him he shouldn’t be doing that. It just wasn’t right.”

He went on: “He always wanted to get lads on their own. Back in the day, he would go off with lads but it wasn’t young lads then. We didn’t know what he was doing. It was hidden. He would always make excuses. There were always reasons. I remember once he left with a lad to get his coat. They came back 20 minutes later without the coat. Alright, this lad was old enough (to be having sex) and he didn’t seem distressed, but these things just stuck in my mind.

“I thought he was taking the p***. He tried to turn it into a joke. I told him I was serious and he shouldn’t be doing these things. I felt uncomfortable.

“Dom never had a best mate. I wouldn’t have put him down as a best mate either. His friends would fall in and fall out. Nobody would be with him long enough. Even his own brothers didn’t want him on the doors with them because they thought he was an embarrassment. They knew he preferred young lads. They knew that but just told him to keep away. They were embarassed. When Noonan changed his name to Lattlay-Fottfoy, they didn’t want him to carry on using the Noonan name.

“It started being a joke, him hanging around these lads. He would put them in these Asda George suits for £25 each. He dressed them up. A lot of these lads weren’t frightened of him and told him they didn’t want to be in these suits.”

He admitted Noonan had intimidated and bullied people - but always with ‘three or four other lads’, adding that he believed that the police had ‘over-estimated’ him.

“I defended him even when he was up the big wheel”, he went on. “I nearly got into three fights that day. They were calling him nonce. I defended him. I really didn’t know. I thought ‘why? they don’t know’. I didn’t know. I really didn’t know otherwise I would have shouted a few things up that big wheel myself.”

When he changed his mind, he said he told his children never to be on their own with Noonan.

“I told him about that and he went mad over that one,” he said.

“When things started falling into place, I thought ‘this isn’t just persecution’. I just felt very uncomfortable, him kissing lads who were 13 and 14. It was very, very uncomfortable. It was staring me in the face.”

He added: “He deserves everything he gets.”

Noonan Convicted & sentenced

Gangster Dominic Noonan was found guilty of 13 historical sex offences against four young boys aged as young as 10 and jailed for 11 years.

The 53-year-old had denied all charges against him in a month-long trial, but was convicted unanimously by the jury.

He groomed and molested boys after plying them with drink, according to the prosecution in his Manchester Crown Court trial.

His first victim was aged just 10 when Noonan, who was six years older, took him from a care home and indecently assaulted him twice, ordering the boy not to tell anyone.