Overview
- Police accounts and contemporaneous reporting say the 17-year-old was lured to a house on January 12, 2020, where he was tortured, beheaded and dismembered, with limbs dumped in Moatview and his head, hands and feet later found in a burnt-out car in Dublin.
- Images of severed limbs were posted online carrying a menacing caption that read, “Won’t be robbing a man’s flip-flops again,” in a clear message of intimidation.
- Reporters detail a possible motive rooted in a December 2019 assault that publicly humiliated suspected perpetrator Robbie Lawlor, with Keane believed to have been present and Lawlor also suspecting him in the killing of Richie Carberry.
- Lawlor was shot dead on April 4, 2020, in Ardoyne, north Belfast, with authorities suggesting he was either set up by rivals or killed by a drug dealer acting in self-defense.
- Coverage profiles Lawlor as a career criminal linked to multiple murders who was reported to use female disguises to avoid detection, while noting Keane had been on licence after an intimidation conviction.