Davy Conway - psycho killer is now selling heroin
Belinda Harte was shot dead by Conway
Kevin Winters helped set up drug links for Conway
The Loyalist Volunteer Force has hooked up with a leading Catholic crime figure to deal heroin to young people, the Sunday World has learned.
Members of the hardline protestant paramilitary gang are supplying top drugs dealer and convicted psycho-killer Davy Conway.
And as a result of the new association with the LVF, Conway’s home patch of Newry is now awash with the killer drug, which is commonly called ‘dirt’ or ‘brown’.
Career criminal Conway – who served a life sentence for the 1997 murder of his girlfriend Belinda Harte – is also paying protection money to the Real IRA in return for the right to sell drugs around the border.
However, Sunday World inquiries revealed this week that the republican RIRA has been deliberately kept in the dark about the type of drugs Conway’s gang are selling – in collusion with the loyalist LVF.
The lady killer’s business links to republican and loyalist gangs mean he is now playing a very dangerous game, which underworld sources say may well end in violence on the streets of Newry.
Local sources say Conway’s decision to hook up with the LVF can only be explained away by the leading gangster’s personal addiction to the habit-forming drug.
“There is no other explanation for this,” said a Newry-based cross-border smuggler, with inside knowledge of the lucrative Newry drugs trade.
“This is a classic case of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds at the same time.
“Davy Conway is Newry’s top drugs dealer bar none. But no other Catholic dealer in their right mind would do business with the LVF.
The thing is, Davy Conway isn’t in his right mind. In fact he is out of his mind on heroin and that means he is prone to making irrational decisions,” said our source.
And he added: “It could all go pear-shaped very quickly and it might even spark a violent turf war in Newry or an RIRA backlash.”
It is understood Conway struck up a close personal friendship with an LVF leader when they were both serving sentences in Maghaberry Prison.
And on his release Conway travelled to Portadown to meet other LVF men who agreed to supply him with heroin on a regular basis.
The Sunday World has also learned Conway uses a close associate known in the drugs trade as ‘Fathead’, to supply the deadly habit-forming drug to eager customers in the Newry, Warrenpoint and Armagh areas.
He also uses two brothers to deal on his behalf in Bessbrook village – just inside south Armagh.
Ironically, Conway’s two Bessbrook drugs dealers live on the same street as the mother of Belinda Harte, the young woman he gunned down 15 years ago.
In 1997 Conway flew into a rage when he arrived home at the Newry flat he shared with Harte, only to find he was locked out.
Harte, who was pregnant at the time with Conway’s child, had gone to visit her mother and rather than wait for her to return home Conway forced entry by busting the lock.
Consumed with anger, Conway – who suffers from a mental problem which means he is prone to violent behaviour when riled – borrowed a loaded shotgun from his close criminal buddy Kevin Winters, who had also fathered a child to Belinda. And when Harte returned to the flat Conway blasted the young woman to death.
Conway’s medical condition means he is 100 times more likely than a normal person to strike out when provoked.
While Conway went down for life, Kevin Winters was also jailed for a year for supplying him with the killer weapon.
Inside Maghaberry, the Newry men established themselves as major drugs dealers. Conway, who pumped iron in the prison gym on a daily basis, supplied the muscle and threats to anyone who failed to pay up. He also starred as a hard man in a movie, based on Macbeth, filmed in the jail.
As Conway built up a drugs supply chain with loyalists inside Maghaberry, Winters left jail with orders to establish a drugs empire in Newry and Warrenpoint.
And when he was eventually released on licence two years ago, Conway took control of a ready-made drugs business.
However, within months he was returned to prison to finish his sentence when he was caught in possession of a small amount of heroin.
Local sources say other drugs dealers operating in Newry are terrified of Conway because of his violent nature and tendency to fly off the handle at the slightest set-back.
Although Davy Conway sees himself as the ‘main muscle’ in his family, one of his brothers is currently serving a jail sentence after he killed a man in a fight over a game of pool in a Warrenpoint Bar.
But as the Sunday World reveals today Davy Conway recently upped the stakes considerably when he agreed to take regular deliveries of heroin from his LVF prison pals based in Portadown.
With the Provisional IRA stood down several years ago, Conway opted to take out an ‘insurance policy’ with the Real IRA which has a threatening and pertinence presence in the border area.
And he has boasted to other criminals that as long as he continues to pay a protection ‘bounty’ to the Real IRA, both he and ‘Fathead’ are free to travel the border towns and villages, safe in the knowledge that they will never be touched.
“Conway and ‘Fathead’ think they are untouchable, because they are paying RIRA,” said a border source.
Conway was born in Belfast, but his family moved to Newry many years ago.
The Conways settled in a flat off Edward Street, near Newry’s old RUC station in the town centre. His father had a number of run-ins with republicans and he was threatened by the IRA on a number of occasions.