Declan was born to Alice Darmody on August 8th, 1981. His father at the time was marked as unknown. Alice, the only daughter of a prominent Irish gang boss, moved into her brother Red’s house for the first year of Declan’s life. She married Flynn Killeen in 1982 and moved out with Dec after the wedding to start fresh with her young family.

Growing up on the ground floor of a triple decker with his ma, stepfather, and two younger siblings, Dec was a beautiful baby and a red-blooded hellraiser. Born into a family of professional criminals, he was constantly mocked for being too pretty to hit and overcompensated early on by fist fighting every chance he got. He was frequently in and out of trouble with his brother and cousins, terrorizing classmates, shoplifting, and ditching school. His delinquency ramped when his mother was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer in February of 1993.

As Alice’s condition worsened and the medical bills began to pile up, Dec turned to his Uncle Red for work. Red, the new head of the South Boston gang by then, was quick to adopt his nephew into the family business. Legally, the Darmodys run one of the largest private trucking and warehousing companies in Boston. Off the books, they dominate the Boston Irish crime scene and commit the lion’s share of container robberies and smuggling in and out of the city by maintaining their iron grip on the docks and dockworker unions. Red, recognizing his nephew’s potential and hunger back in ‘93, footed Dec a variety of jobs despite his young age, starting with pick-ups, drop-offs, keeping watch, and quickly escalating him into collections.

Alice passed away in May of 1994. After her death, Dec’s father finally made contact. The news that Edmond Fuller, a sitting senator of Massachusetts, was his biological father sent Dec into a fury. The Fullers, a prominent and moneyed Boston family, had amassed most of their wealth via real estate with the Darmody gang’s scare tactics and their political power via the Darmodys’ union support. Fuller had had a long-standing affair with Alice in the ‘70s and had broke it off after the news of her pregnancy. Declan, being the child of an illicit affair, had never been acknowledged by his father and buried under years of extortion money.

Fuller offered to help Dec financially, to move him out of South Boston, adopt him into a well-off family, give him a legitimate future and a new life. Declan rejected the offer. Even at the age of twelve, he recognized a hand-out for what it was, and had too much pride to accept anything from the man who had abandoned his mother. The relationship with his father never improved and, under the watchful eye of his uncle, Dec chose to learn the Darmody trade of smuggling, heisting, and racketeering.

As he got older and more involved in the family business, Dec began to act out with increasing violence. The pranks he used to pull with his cousins and the neighborhood boys soon graduated to felonies. He served a short stint in juvie for breaking and entering in 1996, and was collared again for armed robbery and assault in 1997 when his father pulled a few strings with the judge to give Dec a choice: military academy or back to juvie. Dec chose to enlist in New Bedford and ultimately finished his schooling there, graduating in 1999.

Dec enlisted in the Marines immediately after graduation and, to the surprise of everyone, thrived. Though the structure grated on him and he was often reprimanded for insubordination, Dec quickly discovered he had a knack for sanctioned violence. He completed scout sniper training by the age of 20 and became one of the most successful marksman in his battalion’s history. He ended his career with 95 confirmed kills during his six year tenure, and was discharged in 2005 at the rank of Sergeant.

Returning home to Boston from Afghanistan, it didn’t take long for Dec to fall back into the Darmody life of crime. Red’s favorite earner, Dec helped expand the family business in the arms trade and quickly capitalized on the new American demands of illegal steel and timber, moving away from the historical, high-risk bank heists and armored truck robberies that used to be the family’s bread and butter. Dec also began laundering money through property development during the housing bust in 2008 and Red, quickly seeing the pay-off, began to realize the future of the family was with his nephew and not his sons.

Dec has served two bids in prison. The first, the only one the city of Boston could make stick, was a minor drug charge in 2007. The second in 2014 was for armed robbery. The mistake that forced the Darmody boys into a shoot-out with the cops was on Dec’s brother. Eamon, struggling with his opioid addiction, had mistakenly logged the security timers and blown the getaway. Dec wound up taking the hit for his brother to keep Eamon alive and free so he could care for his newborn daughter. Unfortunately, despite Dec’s attempt, Eamon fatally overdosed a year after Dec was incarcerated in 2015.

Released in March of 2018, Dec is on parole until September and has moved into a new house in Jamaica Plain with his girlfriend. He is back to working with his family and has recently become a partner in the Darmody Trucking Company.