Crime Immemorial

Wright, a thirty-four-year-old father of two, was sitting in a car outside the KFC at Stonedale Retail Park in Croxteth on December 8th, 2006, when he was shot three times in the head. The killing was later described in court as a deliberate execution. Liverpool underworld figure David Hibbs-Turner was eventually convicted of arranging Wright’s murder, while Ryan’s brother, Philip Woolley, was convicted of participating as either the gunman or the gunman’s assistant.

Ryan Woolley had also been arrested during the Wright investigation. However, when the prosecution later presented its case concerning Ryan’s own death, the senior prosecutor acknowledged that there had been no reliable evidence connecting Ryan personally to Wright’s murder.

Nonetheless, investigators believed that people associated with Wright considered Ryan a legitimate target. According to the Crown’s case, those responsible were not interested in whether there was enough evidence to prosecute him through the courts. They had chosen retaliation instead. Prosecutors alleged that a contract worth approximately £30,000 was placed on Ryan’s head.

Ryan’s mother, Kim Woolley, questioned the assumption that her younger son had necessarily been killed because of Philip. She said that the family did not know why Ryan had been in Wavertree that night because he did not normally associate with people in that neighborhood. Philip had reportedly spoken to Ryan that evening and urged him to return to his own part of Liverpool. Kim maintained that the supposed connection to Wright’s murder remained only one possible explanation.

During the day of August 11th, Ryan had been drinking on or around Wavertree High Street with two men. Both would later be accused of taking part in the plot to kill him.

The group continued drinking into the evening. At approximately nine forty-five p.m., one of the men reportedly said he needed to return home because he was subject to a police curfew. According to the account given at trial, that man did not want to risk being seen outside after the curfew and therefore asked Ryan to collect the pizzas they had ordered.

The prosecution alleged that the request was not an innocent convenience. It claimed that Ryan was deliberately sent to the restaurant so that his movements could be predicted and a gunman could be placed in position.

The alleged shooter was said to have waited in a gated alleyway near Taunton Street, just off Picton Road. The location offered concealment and a route away from the busy commercial area. The gunman would have needed only a brief warning that Ryan was approaching.

The first bullet struck Ryan from behind, passing through his neck. Another entered his chin. Three further shots were fired into his body, striking his face and chest. The pattern of the wounds suggested that the killer had continued firing after Ryan was already incapable of escaping or defending himself.

Ryan died at the scene. The attack had all the outward characteristics of a targeted execution: advance knowledge of the victim’s location, a concealed gunman, repeated close-range shots and an immediate escape. Nothing appeared to have been stolen, and there was no suggestion that the killing resulted from a spontaneous argument or street robbery.

Detectives came to believe that the two men who had spent the day with Ryan had helped arrange the shooting. The prosecution’s eventual case was that one or both had ensured Ryan would visit the takeaway alone and that the gunman had been contacted while Ryan was away collecting the food. A third man was accused of being the shooter. All three denied murder.

The case depended heavily on the evidence of a man described in contemporary reports as a thief and drug dealer. He became the prosecution’s principal witness and claimed to possess inside information about the alleged plot. His criminal background, relationships with people in the case and the circumstances under which he provided information inevitably gave the defense substantial material with which to challenge his credibility.

There were also serious problems with the physical and circumstantial evidence. The available CCTV established Ryan’s final movements but apparently did not clearly identify his killer. No publicly reported forensic evidence conclusively placed the alleged gunman at the shooting scene. The prosecution therefore sought to build the case by combining witness accounts, the defendants’ alleged associations and the supposed sequence of communications and movements surrounding the pizza order.

The murder remained under investigation for more than a year before the three defendants were brought to trial. Proceedings began at Liverpool Crown Court in April 2009. The prosecution told the jury that Ryan had been the victim of a “gangland killing” and that the £30,000 bounty had been offered because of the perceived connection between the Woolley family and Michael Wright’s murder.

After approximately two weeks of prosecution evidence, defense lawyers submitted that there was no case for the defendants to answer. Mr. Justice Pitchford agreed that the case against the alleged gunman was inadequate. He concluded that there was “practically no” evidence establishing that the man accused of firing the shots had actually been the shooter.

That finding fatally weakened the cases against the other two defendants. The prosecution’s theory was that they had participated in a common plan by sending Ryan to the restaurant and summoning the gunman. But without sufficient evidence identifying the third defendant as that gunman, the alleged conspiracy could not safely be placed before the jury in the form presented by the Crown.

The judge prepared to stop the trial, but the Crown Prosecution Service challenged his decision at the Court of Appeal. The appeal was dismissed. The higher court directed that all three men should be acquitted. In June 2009, the trial jury was discharged without being asked to return verdicts, and the defendants formally left court cleared of Ryan Woolley’s murder.

Ryan’s slaying occurred during an especially grim period in Liverpool’s history of firearm violence. Eleven days later, on August 22, eleven-year-old Rhys Jones was fatally shot while walking home from football practice in Croxteth. Rhys was an innocent bystander struck by a teenager firing at members of a rival gang. That case attracted national attention and eventually produced several convictions, including the conviction of gunman Sean Mercer.

The cases were not connected, but their proximity intensified public fears about the availability of firearms and the willingness of criminal groups to use them in residential and commercial areas. Ryan’s killing, however, never received the same enduring national attention as the murder of Rhys Jones. It remained largely a Liverpool story: another apparent underworld execution surrounded by silence, unreliable witnesses and evidence that could not survive the scrutiny of a criminal trial.

Following the collapse of the 2009 prosecution, Merseyside Police said the murder investigation would remain open and appealed to anyone with information to come forward.

The most recent substantial public update located on the case came in August 2025, on the eighteenth anniversary of Ryan’s death. Howard Rubbery, head of Merseyside Police’s Serious Crime Review Unit, said the murder was regularly reviewed and that detectives would investigate any new information or viable lead.

The crime has remained unsolved for nearly two decades as of this writing.