The Altar Boy: Paddy Moloney

By Jamie Boyle

Tales from the estates of Middlesbrough over the last fifty years...

These are the memoirs of Paddy Moloney's very colourful life. From a two up two down in Cannon Street to Grovehill and the luxury of an inside lav!

Going from a "quiet lad" at St Joseph's to his first spell in borstal. This is a brutally honest account of Paddy's journey from an Altar boy to a Criminal, spanning four decades including his dealings with some of Middlesbrough's notorious characters to the big guns from further afield.

This book pulls you in from the very first chapter. The good, the bad, the frightening, from elation to grief and every emotion inbetween.

"Every Saint has a past, every Sinner has a future"

• Language: English
• Publisher: WarCryPress UK
• Release date: Feb 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9781912543304

Book preview

THE ALTAR BOY

PATRICK MOLONEY

I dedicate this book to my wonderful Wife Debbie who has stood by me through everything. To say I’ve put her through some shit is an understatement. She has been my rock and my strength and I couldn’t have lasted without her.

THANKS

A heartfelt thank you to my children Leroy, Rhys, Curtis, Brooke and Leah for putting up with some of the shite I’ve sent your way. They have all been there for me and have never once thrown anything in my face like they could have done. They’ve had to go to school and hear Your dad’s in the papers again.

Also, thank you to Jamie Boyle and his wife Shirley for bringing this book to the surface. Thank you also to Warcry Publishing for publishing this book.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD by Brian Cockerill                  1

INTRODUCTION by Jamie Boyle                  3

THE EARLY YEARS                              8

ST. THOMAS’                                    12

MAKING MISTAKES/MONEY                  23

FIRST BORSTAL                              30

FREEDOM... SHORT LIVED                        35

START OF THE SPEAKEASY PART 1            41

SPEAKEASY PART 2 - HURTING/ AND             46

BEING HURT

SPEAKEASY/GASKINS NIGHTCLUB            51

SPEAKEASY/MANDYS NIGHTCLUB            55

THEY CALLED HIM THE DUFF                  59

WHO WANTS TO BE A DOORMAN                  66

FROM LITTLE STEPS TO BIG STEPS            73

SOUTH BANK RIFF-RAFF                        79

YOU’RE NO GOOD                              82

WAR WITH THE MURRAY’S                        89

BACK TO PALLY AND OFF TO JAIL            93

BACK HOME… FOR A BIT                        98

DON’T MIX BUSINESS WITH PLEASURE            102

THE DOOR COMES OFF                        105

A FILTHY BUSINESS                              109

SUN & GRAFT                              112

MY MATE THE DEVIL                        115

HELL ON IN THE FAMILY                        120

COSTA DEL SOL                              124

LIVING THE HIGH LIFE                        129

BEING AT IT AND FATHERHOOD AGAIN            134

SOAP BARS AND THE IRA                        141

THE DEVILS DANDRUFF                        148

NAUGHTY GRAFT                              158

A BAD PENNY                              164

THE MURDERS                              168

GOODBYE VAL                              174

THE MIDDLEBECK                              181

THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM                  190

GAME OVER                                    195

PRISON                                    207

AFTERWORD - A few words from Debbie             221

FOREWORD

By Brian Cockerill

I’ve known Paddy since the early 1990s when I was knocking about with Lee Duffy. Paddy was always somebody who seemed to be everywhere on the scene in Teesside. Although I never did much work with him I’ve always liked Paddy and found him to be a proper decent bloke who you could trust. That was extremely unusual considering the line of work he was in but he was very straight.

I would say the roughest time in Middlesbrough looking back was from around 1990 to 1995 which was littered with an incredible amount of shootings and stabbings. At that time, to be in Paddy’s world and get out of it alive, he had to be doing something right.

As I don’t drink I wouldn’t often go to pubs but we had a mutual friend, Liam Henry, so I’d often pop into Paddy’s pub The Halfpenny and I always enjoyed his company. Even when Paddy was doing what he was doing and I was earning my nickname of being The Taxman for obvious reasons, Paddy was someone I would look right past because of the level of respect I had for him and that I thought he was a decent bloke. I couldn’t have even entertained the thought of taxing Paddy if I tried because I liked him that much.

Paddy was no Pablo Escobar but he was what you called a good grafter in that game. If he ever had anything in that world he got it by rolling his sleeves up and doing it the proper and honest way, if there is such a thing in that world.

I think its common knowledge with Paddy that, although better late than never, he’s finally gotten out of that awful business and fair play to him.

It hasn’t all been plain sailing though because it cost Paddy a lot which he knows more than anyone.

There’s a saying which goes, insanity is waking up and doing the same thing over and over again so I’m just so pleased that Paddy is no longer doing his insanity routine.

I wish Paddy nothing but the best for the future. It’s good for anyone like Paddy who’s lived in that circle of drugs, violence and crime to step out of it for good. Paddy was in that bubble where he was blind. I’m just so pleased he’s seen the light now

Being a drug dealer is a horrible business and he is too much of a good bloke for that shit. To be honest that’s why I found taxing drug dealers as easy as I did because most of them were pieces of shit, not like Paddy at all.

At times I used to tax drug dealers large amounts but then you were stuck with the things like fifty grands worth of heroin because you couldn’t put it in the bin. Although one time I put three grands worth of smack down the bog. That’s the stuff that really ruins society and kills people.

In Paddy’s defence, and I know this maybe a small one, but he always kept away from the really bad drugs like smack and crack which showed he had some morals.

My message to Paddy now is just keep doing what you’re doing and keep being straight like I am. We’re both doing the right thing. I’ve been just like Paddy and it’s taken us a lifetime to admit we’ve being doing wrong things and that we both needed to run the opposite way as fast as we could. I hope this book can guide others away from what mine and Paddy’s lifestyle was all about.

All my best wishes go to Paddy and his family.

Brian Cockerill

INTRODUCTION

By Jamie Boyle

I first heard of Paddy Moloney in the early 1990s. Mainly down to the large family he came from who are mostly based around the council estates of East Middlesbrough. I knew a couple of Paddy’s family members from an old boxing gym I went to called The Old Vic ABC which was located next door to The Old Vic pub on Ormesby Road. I myself grew up in Berwick Hills and even though I’ve never been a criminal I’ve always known what Paddy Moloney was, he was essentially a drug dealer! I’m going to be pretty brutal here and say all drug dealers are the lowest of the low, they totally ruin society especially in Middlesbrough. When you see all of those girls stood on the street corners of Union Street, I can promise you the reasons behind them being there is because of crack cocaine and heroin 100%. In Paddy’s defence he never got involved with either of those no matter how much money he was offered and I know personally it was a lot from my chats with Paddy.

To be honest there was a time when I wouldn’t have even put my name to this book because of the business Paddy was in but as I’ve got to know Paddy over the last six months I’ve been able to look beyond that because of the kind of person he is, to meet him you wouldn’t believe that he was involved in that scene. The biggest thing that appealed to me about being involved with this book was the generation that Paddy was from i.e. Middlesbrough through the 1980s.

I’m in double figures now with my books, that has happened in less than three years and being behind the Lee Duffy books and the documentary that era fascinates me. That era in Middlesbrough from around 1982 to when Lee Duffy came on the scene until around 1993 after the Duffy murder trial always gets spoken of as being, like the Wild Wild West.

Middlesbrough today is 190 years old but I think Paddy’s generation was arguably the toughest of the town’s history. It was full of your Davey Allo’s, Ducko’s, Lee Duffy’s, John McPartland’s and John McCormick’s etc etc… To survive that time in Middlesbrough doing the things Paddy was doing is no small feat, it was a very dangerous time to be in his line of work and I’d say he’s packed it all in at the right time. For a start, there are too many cameras to get away with doing the things an active criminal did back then. These days if you carry a gun, even without a bullet, then it is five years before a ball’s even been kicked.

The fact of the matter is Paddy Moloney was a bad un, he knew what game he was in, but although he was a drug dealer he was still a good un if that’s not too much of a contradiction. Anyone that knows Paddy will know what I mean.

I’ve spent hours talking to Paddy and he knows what he’s done and today Paddy, who is 62 years old now, is genuinely and deeply embarrassed at the way he led his life but hindsight is a wonderful thing isn’t it. When I say this I think of the play writer George Bernard Shaw’s quote of, youth is wasted on the young and in Paddy’s case this is most certainly the case.

When you read this book then I hope what you’ll take from it is that the life Paddy led was far from glamorous like some of today’s young lads think it is. Also, that there’s nothing ‘cool’ about spending the best years of your life, like Paddy Moloney did, in a 10 X 8-foot cell.

When I’ve spoken to Paddy, the level of genuine remorse he has jumped out at me in abundance, he has many regrets. I know a lot of people in the game Paddy was in from Middlesbrough and none are like him in that respect, they seem to detach themselves from it.

I’ve really got to know Paddy in 2019 and oddly enough I’ve found out that we are distantly related as we are both related to the legendary Middlesbrough hard man Jacky Parsons (my mother is Carol Parsons). I like Paddy and I find him to be an extremely genuine guy.

One saving grace that he’s been blessed with in life is his wonderful better half Debbie Moloney. If this book is the tip of the iceberg of what Paddy really got up to then I dread to think of what poor Debbie has had to put up with and I think Paddy will agree with me when I say that he has been lucky to have had the lovely Debbie stand by him through the decades considering the stresses she must have endured. The saying that behind every great man is a great woman springs to mind, something that stands true with me also.

Many years ago I was chatting to Middlesbrough legend Gram Seed. Gram had a really naughty past running with ‘The Middlesbrough Frontline’ then he became Middlesbrough’s most notorious street beggar/tramp. In 1996 Gram slipped into a coma and his mother even had the last rites read out but a miracle happened and he survived. Today in 2020 Gram has spent the last 24 years helping people with his Christian church Sowing Seeds Ministries. The reason I’m using Gram as an example is two reasons, firstly, he told me when he wrote his book ‘One Step Beyond’ that it was the best thing he ever did because he could put his past in a box and put it away for good. He found it therapeutic like Elton John when he wrote a letter to cocaine saying goodbye and secondly he hoped that people could learn from his mistakes. This is also the case for Paddy, he can move forward and only be involved in positive things from now on.

Paddy knows they’ll be trolls out there saying he’s just a fucking scumbag and the reality is that he can’t change that because it was the truth. I must admit that when I read in The Gazette in 2015 that the then 58-year-old Paddy had been arrested for drugs, even my thoughts were, ‘how many fucking chances do you need Patrick Moloney?’

Paddy knows that there won’t be any more chances of redemption after this so it is up to him to grab it with both hands. From this day on he can enjoy his family, enjoy time with his grandchildren, spend time with his amazing wife Debbie and keep away from arseholes.

Tomorrow is not promised to anybody and something I heard from the former Liverpool crime lord Delroy Showers when we were chatting springs to mind, he said, I’ve had the millions, the Bentley, the women and it’s all gone but I’m a richer man now because I’m a good person.

For anyone who thinks Paddy hasn’t paid his debt to society then I can assure you that the years he spent away were no fun at all.

I hope, as Paddy does, that this book is a message to the younger generation of Teesside’s to say that the dark path that a life of crime leads you down is no path to walk, it will steal your life one way or another.

I wish you and your family nothing but health and happiness for the future my friend.

Jamie.

DRUGS ARE A BET WITH THE MIND.

JIM MORRISON

Chapter 1

THE EARLY YEARS

‘These are my memoirs of my very colourful life.’

My very first memory is of a place called Cannon Street. I'm on our sofa, with our greyhound and I’m around 5 or 6 years old. Front door open, back door open. Mam's in the kitchen cooking the Sunday dinner, smells great. Bisto advert always reminds me of this particular day. I hear a commotion outside, it’s getting louder. It’s my Dad’s voice, he bursts into our little front room, pulls lots of money out of his pockets and puts it onto the table, excited was an understatement. Dads won the young bird race, it’s quite a few quid. Everyone in the house is happy, including Mam too. The young bird race is pigeons. Pigeons were very popular. Probably the reason I remember this day is because it’s a good memory. You tend to remember the good ones. Memories that is.

My Dad was from Irish descent. Me, my Dad, and Grandad are all called Patrick Moloney. My Grandad was from Mitchells Town Southern Ireland. He came over here, married my Nana Lizzie. They had five kids, two boys, my Dad and Uncle Billy and three girls Lyla, Doreen and Eileen. I cannot remember my Grandad, he went back to Ireland and left Nana Lizzie to bring the kids up on her own. It’s rumoured that he then went to Australia and had a whole new family.

My Mam Jean was a Cannon Street girl. Her Mam Evelyn, my Nana, also had another daughter, my Aunty Kathleen. Their Dad, my Grandad, Albert, we called him Pop, he was crippled at work, from the waist down. He ended up in a wheelchair.

Our house in Cannon street was on Tomlinson Street. It was a two up and two down there was no bathroom, the bath was a tin bath on a nail in our back yard. The toilet was also outside in a corner of our backyard, I guess times were hard. Not just for us, for most families in those days.

My mam was a housewife, pinny, headscarf and ten woodbines, think Hilda Ogden from Coronation Street and you get the picture. She never went over the doorstep.

Dad was a Stevedore, posh name for a Docker and in those days it was a poorly paid job, but very physical. I don’t really remember much more about Cannon Street.

In my later years, it seemed everyone’s families came from Cannon Street. I suppose every town and city had its own Cannon Street.

We now move on to Grove Hill, a council estate. Mam and Dad got a house there, 10 Easson Street. Mam and Dad must have thought they'd died and gone to heaven. Number 10 had a front garden and a massive back garden, three bedrooms, toilet and bathroom upstairs plus an extra toilet downstairs. It was nice, we had a big common at the back of our back garden. It had four alleyways leading to it. It was surrounded on all four sides by houses. At the bottom of Easson Street was a church which was connected to an infant and junior school. This was St Josephs. My two older sisters Eileen and Pat were in the juniors and I went into the infants. It was a nice school, it was run by Nuns. Sister Mary Baptiste and Sister Mary Hilary. I found them ok, people said they were too strict. My sister Pat said they were evil. She said when she was naughty, they'd lock her in a dark cupboard. I wasn't a naughty kid (at the time) ha-ha, so I never saw any of that.

Easson Street had lots of families with kids. No 2, right next to one of the alleyways, was where Mrs Hall lived with two sons Peter and John. Over the road was a family similar to ours, the Henman family. Boys and girls of similar ages to our family. Couple of doors down, Mrs Green and her son David. Then right next door to the Halfpenny Pub was the Hawkins family. Their Dad was called Sos, they had a houseful of girls. Directly opposite them was Theresa Walsh and her four boys, Danny, Billy, John and Patsy. All the kids in Easson street got on ok. We spent our time playing kerby or on the common building dens. Only the Walsh family kids went to St Josephs with us, the other families went to Marton Grove School. Marton Grove school looked like a prison.

Now our family was growing. Mam had my younger sister our Theresa, then our Billy, not long after followed our Terry who was followed by the baby of our family our Christopher. I don’t know how we would have coped in Tomlinson Street with only two bedrooms. In Easson street we had to top and tail, so imagine the two up two down in Tomlinson Street. Mam had been having a bad time with her pregnancies, each one getting worse, to the point where she nearly died having Christopher.

I was now enjoying school, we had toast for breakfast, toast for supper no pizza shops them days, we had our dinner at school. We were on free school dinners. Our Dad, nine out of ten days would cook our tea. Our Dad was a practicing Catholic, this meant confession on a Friday and Mass on a Sunday. We all went to both, with the exception of our mam. Because of her problems with her pregnancies she got sterilized. The church wouldn't condone this, in around about way, the church barred her, I don’t think she'll have been bothered like. Dad was still a Docker and it was still a poorly paid job. We used to get home visits from the priest at Easter and Christmas. The Priest would bring us food hampers. I thought it was because we were good Catholics, but as I got older I realised it was because we were poor. We never went hungry though, our Mam and Dad always cooked good meals. Pie crust, Mince n Dumplings, Panackelty, and good old egg n chips.

I was getting older now, Eileen and Pat are now at St Thomas’ senior school and I'm now in the Juniors at St Josephs. I was a very quiet kid. In class I sat back and never volunteered, I wasn't the brightest. The English teacher, Miss McLattern, took a shine to me, I would go to her house on a Sunday teatime. I'd have tea with her and her mam. Proper cakes from the shop. Not like our Mams homemade jam tarts. It was Miss McLattern who encouraged me to become an Altar Boy. I actually enjoyed it. I felt important in my nice crisp black n whites. We used to walk in the Corpus Christi every year. I walked with the Altar Boys. Every Catholic School in Middlesbrough walked in the Corpus Christi, it was massive. It was from one end of Middlesbrough, starting at the Cathedral over the border St Hildas, to the top end of Linthorpe road Sacred Heart Church. The streets all the way along the procession would be ten deep, there's a photo of me in one of these processions in my Altar Boy clobber climbing on the railings outside the Cathedral. With me is a couple of Altar boys from St Josephs. Jimmy Watson (solicitor who worked on the Lee Duffy case murder), Harry Hatfield (police prosecutor) and Adrian Stainsby (Police Officer) who I think went on to be a schoolteacher. Life seemed good, until one day when I came home, I heard Miss McLattern, our parish priest, can't remember his name and our Dad talking about me. To keep it short they were discussing me going to some sort of school for boys only to train towards becoming a priest! The church would fund it. I was only a kid, I didn't really understand what they meant, all I know was that I shit myself. I loved being an Altar Boy, but a priest? Oh my God no. They didn't know I’d listened at the door. From that day onwards I started to miss Church. It got to the stage where I stopped going to church altogether and I never served on the Altar again. I got earache off my Dad, but the priest thing was never mentioned again. Deep down I think my Dad was over the moon.

The only other good memories of the juniors were me and Brian Crochet going to the school disco on a Friday teatime in the school dinner hall. It had gym benches all the way around, and our arses never left them, we had no rhythm. I always remember what was number 1 in the charts. Sugar Sugar by the Archers (ha-ha). I'm now 11 years old and St Thomas’ is my next venture and I'm nervous.

Chapter 2

ST. THOMAS’

I'm now 11years old and really nervous about being a fuggy because I'm so settled in St Joseph’s. I had some really good mates at St Joseph’s and we had vowed to stick together at St Thomas'. Mam and Dad had gone to the council for our