Michael Terrence Riley is accused of the double murder in Fuengirola in May
Jonathan Blackburn and Annette Belcher
18:13, 30 Nov 2025Updated 18:14, 30 Nov 2025
Michael Terrence Riley, 45, is accused of two counts of murder
A man accused of murdering two Scottish gangsters has been pictured for the first time. Michael Terrence Riley, 45, is accused of shooting Glasgow crime bosses Ross Monaghan and Eddie Lyons Jnr dead at a bar in Fuengirola, Spain, in May.
Riley, who is awaiting trial in Spain for the alleged killings, has been pictured for the first time by the Liverpool Echo. He is accused of entering Monaghan’s Bar in Fuengirola on May 31, where Lyons Jnr, 46, and Monaghan, 43, had been watching the Champions League final.
It has been alleged that Riley, of Manley Road in Huyton, Merseyside, shot the pair, who are both members of the Lyons crime clan. It is also alleged he fled the country before being arrested in Liverpool two weeks later, on June 13.
Chief Superintendent Pedro Agudo Novo, the Spanish police chief investigating the crime, said Riley was about to flee his Liverpool bolthole for a “paradise island tax haven” with no extradition treaty on the same day he was arrested.
Riley initially fought extradition to Spain after his arrest, with his representative Renata Pinter telling Westminster Magistrates’ Court in September that Riley “suffers from depression and anxiety” and would be in “fear of his life from other gang members” if detained in a Spanish prison.
Eddie Lyons Jnr (left) and Ross Monaghan were shot dead in Spain in May 2025(Image: Mike Gibbons)
She told the hearing she would advance submissions on behalf of her client based on Article 3 of the Human Rights Act, which “prohibits everyone from being subjected to torture, or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” However, in a shock U-turn at the same court on October 7, Riley gave up his fight against being sent to Spain and consented to his extradition.
The killings of Monaghan and Lyons Jnr came as a turf war raged across Scotland, with addresses shot at and businesses and homes firebombed in both Glasgow and Edinburgh since March. As of November, Police Scotland have made 62 arrests as part of the investigation into the trouble. The force continues to state that it has no information linking the Fuengirola shootings to the gangland violence.
Monaghan and Lyons Jnr were both high-ranking members of the Lyons crime clan, which has been locked in a deadly feud with the rival Daniel clan for almost two decades as they vie for control of Glasgow’s drug trade.
In 2006, Michael Lyons, 21, was shot dead in a brazen attack at a garage in north Glasgow owned by the Lyons family. The attack was said to have been ordered by Daniel enforcer Kevin “Gerbil” Carroll.
In 2010, Carroll was shot dead in front of horrified lunchtime shoppers outside an Asda supermarket in the city. Monaghan was acquitted of the murder. In 2017, Monaghan was shot in the shoulder outside a Glasgow primary school. He fled to Spain days after the bungled hit.
Following Riley’s arrest in June, Chief Superintendent Agudo Novo, who heads up the provincial Judicial Police unit in Malaga, said: “I want to highlight the high level of professionalism of [the killer]. Not only did he walk up to the table where the victims were sitting and kill the first man before continuing with his mission when his gun jammed.
“It’s not normal for a criminal to react the way he did in the face of this unexpected problem and resolve the situation to continue and pursue his second victim inside the bar and kill him. His escape was also a very professional one. It was clear he had previously studied all the cameras in the area and undertaken some other investigative procedures I can’t go into at this stage.”