TWO men who snuck from Dublin to New York as young kids have said they were just “having the craic.”
Keith Byrne and Noel Murray made headlines around the world when they left their homes in Darndale and ended up in New York city.
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Keith was just 10 at the time, while Noel was 13, and they had developed a love for ‘bunking’ and going around Ireland on public transport.
Noel recalled: “Me and Keith used to travel the length and breadth of Ireland on buses and trains and coaches.
“We’d head off and go missing for the day and nobody knows where we are…
“We’d end up in Kerry, we’d end up in Galway, we’d end up in Donegal.”
But it was one particular trip in 1985 that became the stuff of legend.
Keith’s mother told him to not go far as the dinner was nearly ready.
But instead they got on the DART to Dun Laoghaire, where they spotted the Sealink ferry bound for Holyhead in Wales.
No-one seemed to notice the two kids and they found themselves in the UK and following a crowd who were heading for a train to London.
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The pair met a man on the train who allowed them to stay in his home in London with him and his girlfriend for the night, and never called the police.
Noel said: “I don’t know what we wanted to do, we just wanted to get out of Dublin and we just ended up in London.”
The next morning, the pair made their way to Heathrow Airport to get food, having spent time robbing food in Dublin Airport in the past.
They planned to sneak onto a flight home, trying to get through security, and when they were asked for tickets, they claimed their mothers had them behind them.
Eventually it worked but after asking several passengers for the Dublin flight, they found one man who told them they were in the queue for a flight to America.
Keith said: “We looked at each other and thought, ‘the A-Team. B.A. Maybe we can see B.A.’”
And next thing they knew they were on the Air India plane headed for New York, their first ever flight.
GREAT ADVENTURE
Noel recalled: “Me and Keith sat on a seat in the middle of the airplane. Nobody came over to us. There was a load of seats left over. We were going to hide in the toilet but we said no.”
Keith said they never really thought much about what they were doing.
“This was all a great adventure to us. There was no time for fear or worry or anxiousness or anything like that. This was all just exciting…
“I think as soon as we got on the runway and we looked out the window, it got a bit more real. We’re really doing this.”
No-one on the flight seemed to notice the boys were alone and they were even fed by the air staff throughout the journey, as well as watching a James Bond film.
And when they fell asleep, they woke up to find they were in JFK airport in New York.
Keith said: “We had no idea what was in front of us, what we were going to do next. What happens when we come out of this airport and we’re in a different strange company, what do we do then?”
While one passport official stopped them and asked them to wait for their parents, when he looked away, the boys made a break for it and were soon outside the building.
CAUGHT BY COPS
But there was one man who noticed something was wrong, Port Authority Police Department officer Kenneth White, who told RTE documentary, Nothing to Declare: “Something just didn’t seem right to me and I stopped them and I asked them where they were going.”
The boys asked for directions to ‘the centre of town’ where they claimed they were meeting their parents, before coming clean and saying they were on their own.
Kenneth’s supervisor Carl Harrison was then called and said: “I had no idea what this was leading to.
“The youngest one kept thinking that he could fool us by saying, ‘me ma,’ trying to give the impression that his parents were somewhere behind them and they had just walked ahead.”
Kenneth added: “As soon as I heard the brogue, I thought these kids didn’t just come from the Bronx.”
The boys were taken to the precinct and fed ‘sodas and chips’ by cops, who were fascinated by their story.
Eventually they managed to get in contact with Coolock police, who had the job of informing their parents where they were.
Noel laughed: “The guard said we’re in New York, my mam thought he said ‘York Street.’”
QUIZZED BY AIRLINE OFFICIALS
And their adventure continued to get better, when officers told them where they would be staying.
Keith recalled: “They decided for some strange reason to put us in a 5 star hotel, in a private suite… I’d seen a few, what I thought were fancy hotels in Ireland, but this was on totally another level altogether. They brought us up into this huge massive penthouse suite with a big room which would have been bigger than my house.”
But despite having fun with the police staying there, who took them on tours, bought them t-shirts and souvenirs, airline staff were furious and they were hauled in for questioning.
Just a couple of weeks previous, another Air India flight had been blown up of the coast of Cork, killing all 329 people onboard.
The boys were quizzed for hours by people believing they were terrorists and Noel said they were told “if we didn’t tell the truth they were going to put us into a children’s home.”
Kevin added: “They didn’t care that we were two young kids having the craic or messing about. They were seeing the serious side of this, so then we kind of started realising, ok this is serious. We better help these people.”
He said they started to “seriously regret” the trip and added: “We were tired, we wanted to go home, we wanted our mammies.”
DRUG BATTLE
Once it was established that they were telling the truth, they were sent on an Aer Lingus flight home, where they were greeted by cameras and reporters wanting to hear their story.
They were soon split up after returning home, with Kevin returning to a boarding school in Clonmel, and Noel, after facing court for outstanding warrants, ending up in a children’s home in Finglas.
After an adventure-filled start to his teenage years, he admitted life got much tougher after that but he is now on the right path.
“I ended up on drugs. I was a drug addict for 30 odd years, committing crime and spending 30 years in and out of jails and taking drugs.”
Noel added that he has lost some family members to drugs.
“Seven of them are dead, they’re all in the graveyard now from taking drugs, so I just want to stop taking them. I have stopped taking them, I just going to have to stay stopped. I can’t go back living like that, it’s not a life.”
He told the documentary he has been clean for over 17 months and he is now in a day programme and living in a recovery house.
He laughed: “Maybe someday I’d go back. I’d love to go back but I’ll pay on the plane this time.”
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- Nothing to Declare airs on RTE One, Tuesday at 10.35pm.
