Gang land: How suburban town became epicentre for evil gangs who murder women and children in cold blood with machine guns and pump out drugs from Kinahan cartel

Britain was horrified by the senseless murders of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel and council worker Ashley Dale - both caught up in evil gangland executions.

But while the whole nation mourned two innocent lives cut short, their killers could be traced back to the hellish underworld of one Merseyside town.

Huyton, just eight miles outside of Liverpool, is infested with gangs and is the epicentre of the region's drugs economy.

Although in the borough of Knowsley, crime gangs from Huyton consider neighbouring Liverpool postcodes such as Dovecot, Knotty Ash and West Derby as part of their turf.

The gangster killers responsible for Ashley's murder were just the latest manifestation of a criminality in the town that dates back to the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Crews like the Huyton Mafia and the Hillsiders have murdered rivals and victims in cold blood and pumped the streets full of drugs thanks to links with global drugs barons, including the notorious Kinahan Cartel.

Ashley, 28, was running for her life when gunman James Witham opened fire with a Skorpion sub-machine gun. 

Police later found her dying in the backyard of her home in Old Swan, Liverpool.

Witham was a 'foot soldier' in an organised crime group headed up by drug boss Niall Barry.

Barry and associate Sean Zeisz sent Witham and Joseph Peers to the house to kill Ashley's partner Lee Harrison and leave no witnesses.

Liverpool Crown Court heard Harrison was was said to be affiliated to Huyton gang the Hillsiders, named after the Hillside estate in the town, and one of Merseyside's most dangerous and volatile street crews.

Members of the Hillsiders had stole cocaine worth around £40,000 from Barry, which sparked the botched revenge hit resulting in Ashley's tragic death.

Olivia's murder also has its roots firmly in Huyton's seething gangland.

Child killer Thomas Cashman was a feared enforcer for a firm rooted in Merseyside's drug war – the Huyton Mafia.

The gang are so notorious that police and the National Crime Agency, Britain's version of the FBI, have been at war with them for the last decade.

The Huyton Mafia work with the powerful Kinahans, the Irish-based drugs gang now on the run from the US government in Dubai.

Schoolgirl Olivia died after Cashman tried to murder underworld rival Joseph Nee in the doorway of her Liverpool home.

A bullet from his gun passed through the hand of Olivia's mum and into the youngster.

But Ashley Dale was the first woman to be shot dead by criminals in Liverpool since Lucy Hargreaves in 2005.

Lucy was sleeping on a sofa in her Walton home when a gang burst in. She was shot dead, before the house was set on fire.

Her partner was forced to jump from a first floor window with his daughter.

A murder trial heard how Lucy's partner was linked to crime and an underworld dispute in the Huyton area.

Two men were acquitted of murder although police are still want to speak to wanted man Kevin Parle about the incident.

Huyton, east of Liverpool, has long been the beating heart of the Merseyside's drug economy.

An association of criminals from Stockbridge Village, Dovecot and Croxteth Park formed the Huyton Mafia, which imported wholesale quantities of drugs into the UK.

The men who controlled the firm could turn associates into millionaires by cutting them into drug deals.

Their secret was the staggering mark up between the wholesale price paid in Europe and street price at which the drugs were sold to customers.

The higher ups cut the deals with international contacts in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Marbella.

Cocaine would then be divided up and sold to leading figures in Liverpool, who then dispersed it to street gangs and street dealers.

The cocaine, snorted by everyone from students to solicitors, fuelled a decade of partying in Liverpool.

This was the period when super-clubs like Cream and Garlands emerged where footballers and pop stars rubbed shoulders with low-level gangsters.

But the crime bosses who controlled the firm knew that they had to be feared or others would muscle in.

They began to employ enforcers, who were tasked with ensuring other criminals did not fall behind with their payments within the drug economy.

This was a nightmare world where there were no rules.

Courts began hearing of incidents where individuals were tortured with hot irons and machetes in their own homes by deranged individuals demanding money or drugs. 

One crime family, linked to the boxing community, specialised in enforcement. Sometimes victims were sprayed in the face with CS gas and then stabbed.

Others were set on fire as they begged for mercy.

In one incident a young mum was scalped by an enforcer in her own home near Aintree racecourse.

The millenium brought in a new era, when Liverpool's traditional criminal code was flushed down the toilet and replaced with brutality and sadism.

Records show that 2001 was one of the bloodiest year in the Liverpool's history since the formation of Merseyside Police in 1974, with 30 homicides over a 12 month period.

While in 2009 the city was rocked by a new wave of violence when a Huyton crime gang unleashed a wave of hand-grenade attacks.

On a summer's night a grenade was left by accident outside Liverpool FC legend Kenny Dalglish's Birkdale home after a gangland mission to blow up a neighbour's house had to be aborted.

Mr Dalglish was not involved in any way to the dispute.

In more recent years Huyton saw a new generation of criminals emerge.

Dylan Westall and Reuben Murphy, both rising stars in the underworld, later clashed at a house party in Huyton.

This led to a feud culminating in the death of James Meadows, who was shot in the head while on the back of a motorbike. James, just 17, was targeted on account of his friendship with Murphy.

After the shooting, Westall, while wanted by police, embarked on a horrific crime spree.

He threatened the Meadows family with a gun at Knowsley cemetery and was involved in two street shootings.

He was eventually arrested when armed police stormed a house where a man was being tortured.

Westall and Mark Roberts were later jailed after being found guilty of manslaughter and conspiracy to possess firearms with intent to endanger life.

Westall was jailed for life with a minimum of 22 years for manslaughter and the gun conspiracy.

Roberts was handed a life sentence with a minimum of 12 years.

In the summer of 2021 dad-of-two Patrick Boyle was shot dead by a masked gunman on an electric bike in Huyton.

Murphy, 26, and Ben Doyle, 24, were both found guilty of murder, possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life and possessing ammunition with intent to endanger life.

The trial heard that Murphy spent his days cruising the streets of Huyton armed with a 9mm handgun.

That year violence erupted in Huyton, with shootings in the Knowsley Heights, Shelley Close, Huyton House Road, Woolfall Crescent and Reeds Road areas of the town.

Locals say that drugs gangs are at the heart of the violence plaguing the town.  

One man told MailOnline: 'The drug game is interesting because you can't see it. You can't tell. 

'As far as I am concerned the neighbourhood I grew up in is now controlled by drug gangs.

'I view everyone there now as a drug dealer.

'They are either selling drugs, storing drugs or dabbling in dirty money. There's only one game in town and it's not football.'