End of the crime ‘king’ linked to four murders
Gang boss laid to rest in town cemetery
IT was no ordinary funeral. Three top of the range Lamborghinis led the cortege to Rochdale crematorium.
Behind a large circle of friends and family, many of whom had travelled from across the Irish Sea, carried flowers spelling out the words ‘legend’ and ‘king’.
Other floral tributes included a golden handgun and a black pistol with silver bullets.
On March 6 last year, notorious Irish mob boss Cornelius Price was laid to rest in Rochdale.
Price, a suspect in at least four murders, died a fortnight earlier after he contracted a brain disease in October 2021 - his final escape from the Irish Gardai.
It’s thought he’d fled to the UK, where he had family links in Rochdale and Manchester, sometime in 2020 after a gangland feud in Drogheda, County Louth, had grown increasingly violent.
Price began his rise through the ranks of Ireland’s underworld in the early to mid 2000s.
But following the murder of suspected dealer Paul Reay, 26, who was shot dead through a car window as he made his way to court to face charges over a major cocaine seizure, a new generation of young Irish criminals saw an opportunity to step into the big leagues.
Ruthless Cornelius Price who was known as ‘Nailyboy’ and ‘Ned’, was one of those who moved
into the void left by Reay’s assassination.
He’s said to have formed an alliance with a Traveller hardman, in partnership with whom he would take control of the north east Ireland drugs trade.
But their criminal activities soon caught the eye of the Gardai.
The Irish Sun reports that in 2010, Price came to the attention of investigators, so moved to a fortified compound in Gormanston, County Meath.
From there he continued to direct operations, using the isolated area to store drugs in ditches and a nearby quarry.
On September 25, 2014, Price’s former associate, dad-of-two Benny Whitehouse was gunned down in north Dublin, just moments after dropping off his six-year-old daughter at school.
Whitehouse’s girlfriend was shot in the leg as she sat by him in a car.
The former friends had been involved in a violent feud over the supply of drugs in Louth and North
County Dublin.
Whitehouse and another man were reported to have attacked Price with a bat on Chapel Street in Balbriggan in November 2013.
Price’s gang was suspected of being behind the brutal slaying.
Then on April 14, 2015, Willie Maughan, 34 and Ana Varslavane, 21, who was pregnant with their child, went missing after last being seen at Price’s compound.
Irish police think Price ordered their killing because he feared Maughan may have known something about the murder of Benny Whitehouse the previous year.
The tragic couple’s remains have never been found.
But the violence didn’t stop there.
In 2018 another feud broke out between Price’s gang and a rival mob headed by gangster Robbie Lawlor in Drogheda, as they fought for control of the town’s drugs trade.
Over 200 people would eventually be sucked into the violence, which included four murders, assaults, kidnappings, petrol bombings and homes being burnt out.
In July 2018 the war escalated after a pal of Price was shot six times at his home in Drogheda.
Lawlor was later named in court as the shooter.
Then in November 2019 suspected drugs trafficker Richie Carberry, 39, was gunned down outside his Co Meath home.
Following Carberry’s murder Lawlor, who was also believed to be behind the gruesome murder of teenager Cian Mulreadywoods during the Drogheda feud, fled to a safe house in Belfast.
But on April 4, 2020 he himself was shot dead after being lured to his front door in what was later described in a court as a ‘contract killing’.
Price was again suspected of having ordered the hit.
In a widely circulated video following the murder Price was seen drinking a glass of Captain Morgan’s rum in celebration.
RTE reports that as the authorities tried to keep a lid on the violence, Gardai set up Operation Stratus to target the gangs and more than 150 suspects were pursued.
But with becoming the feud increasingly perilous and with Price also under severe pressure by the Gardai, he fled to the UK.
His compound had been raided several times and he was a target not just of Operation Stratus, but also of the Garda’s National Units and the Criminal Assets Bureau.
But even while in exile Price still couldn’t keep out of trouble.
He was alleged to have taken part in a blackmail plot where two brothers were kidnapped and told they would be shot in the head if a £300,000 ransom was not paid.
The brothers were tied up, blindfolded, fed sleeping tablets, made to wash with Dettol spray and forced to call their relatives for money before armed police rescued them.
One of the victims was found lying on a mattress in the back of a van driven by another Irishman Darren Mcclean.
In May this year Mclean - whose real name is actually Gerard Dundon - was jailed for 10 years for his role in the kidnap and given another five years for unrelated offences.
Price was charged in connection with the kidnapping, but never stood trial.
That was because in 2021 he was diagnosed with a brain disease that put him in hospital.
He died, aged 41, in intensive care in Wales on February 19, last year, before being buried in Rochdale.
Speaking after his death Former Garda Assistant Commissioner Michael O’sullivan, who led the operation to bring Price down, described him as ‘without doubt one of the most evil people I have come across’.
“He just shows no mercy to anybody,” he said. “He just thrived on conflict and violence, intimidation, torture, burning houses, dare I say killing people - he was certainly involved in several murders.
“He just had to cause confrontation. He just had to be vicious and violent he was a one man serious crime wave.”