The
Shankill Butchers is the name given to an
Ulster loyalistUlster loyalism is an ideology that is opposed to a united Ireland. It can mean either support for upholding Northern Ireland's status as a constituent part of the United Kingdom , support for Northern Ireland independence, or support for loyalist paramilitaries...
gang, many of whom were members of the
Ulster Volunteer ForceThe Ulster Volunteer Force is a loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. It was formed in late 1965 or early 1966 and named after the Ulster Volunteer Force of 1913. The group's volunteers undertook an armed campaign of almost thirty years during The Troubles...
(UVF). The gang conducted
paramilitaryA paramilitary is a force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state's formal armed forces....
activities during the 1970s in
BelfastBelfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...
,
Northern IrelandNorthern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
. It was most notorious for its late-night
kidnappingIn criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority...
,
tortureTorture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
and murder (by throat slashing) of random
CatholicIrish Catholic is a term used to describe people who are both Roman Catholic and Irish .Note: the term is not used to describe a variant of Catholicism. More particularly, it is not a separate creed or sect in the sense that "Anglo-Catholic", "Old Catholic", "Eastern Orthodox Catholic" might be...
civilians. The Shankill Butchers killed at least 30 people (including a significant number of
ProtestantsProtestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
) in
sectarianSectarianism, according to one definition, is bigotry, discrimination or hatred arising from attaching importance to perceived differences between subdivisions within a group, such as between different denominations of a religion, class, regional or factions of a political movement.The ideological...
attacks, paramilitary feuds, personal grudges and bombing raids. Despite extensive police resources channelled towards their capture, a wall of silence created by a mixture of fear and respect in the Shankill community, provided few leads that could be followed.
Most of the gang were eventually caught and, in February 1979, received the longest combined prison sentences in
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
legal history. However, gang leader
Lenny MurphyHugh Leonard Thompson Murphy, who commonly went by the name Lenny , was an Ulster loyalist from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Murphy was a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force and leader of the infamous Shankill Butchers a gang which became notorious for its torture and murder of Catholic men...
and his two chief "lieutenants" escaped prosecution. He was killed in November 1982 by the
Provisional IRAThe Provisional Irish Republican Army is an Irish republican paramilitary organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a socialist republic within a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion...
, likely acting with loyalist paramilitaries who perceived him as a threat.
According to
Conor Cruise O'BrienConor Cruise O'Brien often nicknamed "The Cruiser", was an Irish politician, writer, historian and academic. Although his opinion on the role of Britain in Northern Ireland changed over the course of the 1970s and 1980s, he always acknowledge values of, as he saw, the two irreconcilable traditions...
, the Butchers brought a new, frightening level of paramilitary violence to a country already hardened by death and destruction. The judge who oversaw the 1979 trial described their crimes as "a lasting monument to blind sectarian bigotry".
Background
Much of what is known about the Butchers came first from
Martin Dillon'sMartin Dillon is an author and journalist from Northern Ireland. He worked for eighteen years at the BBC and has written a number of plays and novels, but he is best known for his non-fiction books about the Troubles....
The Shankill Butchers: A Case Study of Mass Murder (1989 and 1998). In compiling this detailed work, Dillon was given unlimited access to the case files of the
Royal Ulster ConstabularyThe Royal Ulster Constabulary was the name of the police force in Northern Ireland from 1922 to 2000. Following the awarding of the George Cross in 2000, it was subsequently known as the Royal Ulster Constabulary GC. It was founded on 1 June 1922 out of the Royal Irish Constabulary...
(now the
Police Service of Northern IrelandThe Police Service of Northern Ireland is the police force that serves Northern Ireland. It is the successor to the Royal Ulster Constabulary which, in turn, was the successor to the Royal Irish Constabulary in Northern Ireland....
), which eventually caught the gang. Eventually Dillon had to leave Northern Ireland for his safety, an indication that his writing and the people he referred to but couldn't name, accurately represented at least some of the gang's activities.
The commander of the Shankill Butchers gang was Lenny Murphy. At school he was known as a bully and would threaten other boys with a knife or with retribution from his two older brothers. Soon after leaving school at 16, he joined the UVF. Murphy often attended the trials of people accused of paramilitary crimes, to become well acquainted with the laws of evidence and police procedure.
On 28 September 1972 Murphy (aged 20) shot and killed William Edward "Ted" Pavis (32) at the latter's home in East Belfast. Pavis was a Protestant whom the UVF believed was selling weapons to the
Provisional Irish Republican ArmyThe Provisional Irish Republican Army is an Irish republican paramilitary organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a socialist republic within a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion...
(IRA). Murphy and an accomplice, Mervyn Connor, were arrested shortly afterwards and held on remand in Belfast's Crumlin Road prison. After a visit by police to Connor, fellow inmates suspected that he might cut a deal with the authorities with regard to the Pavis killing. On 22 April 1973, Connor died by ingesting a large dose of
cyanideA cyanide is a chemical compound that contains the cyano group, -C≡N, which consists of a carbon atom triple-bonded to a nitrogen atom. Cyanides most commonly refer to salts of the anion CN−. Most cyanides are highly toxic....
. Before he died he wrote a confession to the Pavis murder under Murphy's duress. However, Murphy was brought to trial for the Pavis murder in June 1973. The court heard evidence from two witnesses who had seen Murphy pull the trigger and had later picked him out of an identification parade. The jury, however, acquitted him due in part to Murphy's disruption of the line-up. Murphy's freedom was short-lived: he was re-arrested immediately for a number of escape attempts and imprisoned, then interned, for three years.
Formation
In May 1975, Murphy was released from prison, where he had been married to Margaret Gillespie and during which period a daughter had been born to the couple. He spent much of his time frequenting
pubsA public house, informally known as a pub, is a drinking establishment fundamental to the culture of Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. There are approximately 53,500 public houses in the United Kingdom. This number has been declining every year, so that nearly half of the smaller...
on the Shankill Road and assembling a paramilitary team that would enable him to act with some freedom at a remove from the UVF leadership (Brigade Staff). Murphy's inner circle consisted of two people whom Dillon was unable to name for legal reasons but whom he called Murphy's "personal friends". These were a "Mr A" and
John MurphyJohn Alexander Thompson Murphy was a loyalist from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was one of the three leading men in the "Shankill Butchers", an Ulster Volunteer Force murder gang.-Early life:...
, one of Lenny's brothers (referred to as "Mr B"). Further down the chain of command were Lenny Murphy's "sergeants" William Moore and
Bobby "Basher" BatesRobert William Bates was an Ulster loyalist from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force and the infamous Shankill Butchers gang, led by Lenny Murphy....
, a UVF man and former prisoner. Moore, formerly a worker in a meat-processing factory, had stolen several large knives and meat-cleavers from his old workplace, tools that would later be used in more murders. Another prominent figure was Sam McAllister, who used his physical presence to intimidate others.
On 2 October 1975, the gang raided a drinks premises in nearby Millfield. On finding that its four employees (two females and two males) were Catholics, Murphy shot three of them dead and ordered an accomplice to kill the fourth. By now Murphy was using the upper floor of the Brown Bear pub, at the corner of Mountjoy Street and the Shankill Road near his home, as an occasional meeting-place for his unit.
Cut-throat killings
On 24–25 November 1975, Murphy adopted the method that gained the Butchers infamy far beyond Belfast. Using the city's sectarian geography (which remains to this day) to identify likely targets, Murphy roamed the areas nearest the Catholic New Lodge in the hope of finding someone (likely to be Catholic) to abduct. Francis Crossen (34), a Catholic man and father of two, was walking towards the city centre at approximately 12.40 a.m. when four of the Butchers, in Moore's taxi, spotted him. As the taxi pulled alongside Crossen, Murphy jumped out and hit the man with a wheel brace to disorientate him. He was then dragged into the taxi by Benjamin Edwards and Archie Waller, two of Murphy's gang. As the taxi returned to the safety of the nearby Shankill area, Crossen suffered a ferocious beating. It is clear that he was subjected to a high level of violence, including a beer glass being shoved into his head. Murphy repeatedly told Crossen: "I'm going to kill you, you bastard", before the taxi stopped at an entry off Wimbledon Street. Crossen was then dragged into an alleyway and Murphy, brandishing a butcher's knife, cut his throat almost through to the spine. The gang then dispersed. Crossen, whose body was found the next morning (Tuesday) by an elderly woman, had become the first of three Catholics to be killed by Murphy in this "horrific and brutal manner". "Slaughter in back alley" was the headline in the city's major afternoon newspaper that day. A relative of Crossen said that his family was unable to open his coffin at his
wakeA wake is a ceremony associated with death. Traditionally, a wake takes place in the house of the deceased, with the body present; however, modern wakes are often performed at a funeral home. In the United States and Canada it is synonymous with a viewing...
because the body was so badly mutilated.
A few days later, on 30 November 1975, an internal feud led to the deaths of two members of a rival UVF company on the Shankill and that of Archibald Waller, who had been involved in the Crossen murder. On 14 October of that year, Waller had killed a Stewart Robinson in a punishment shooting that went wrong. With the sanction of the UVF Brigade Staff, he in turn was gunned down by one of Robinson's comrades in the UVF team based in the "Windsor Bar", a quarter of a mile from the Brown Bear pub. Enraged, Murphy had the gunman, former loyalist prisoner Noel "Nogi" Shaw, brought before a
kangaroo courtA kangaroo court is "a mock court in which the principles of law and justice are disregarded or perverted".The outcome of a trial by kangaroo court is essentially determined in advance, usually for the purpose of ensuring conviction, either by going through the motions of manipulated procedure or...
in the Lawnbrook Club, one of his Shankill drinking-dens. After a pistol whipping, Murphy shot him in front of his whole unit of about twenty men and then returned to finish his drink at the bar. John Murphy and William Moore put Shaw's body in a laundry basket and Moore dumped it half a mile away from the murder scene.
Murphy's other cut-throat victims were Joseph Quinn (55) and Francis Rice (24). Both were abducted late at night, at the weekend, in the same area as Crossen. Quinn was murdered in the Glencairn district of the Upper Shankill in the early hours of 7 February 1976 and Rice a few streets from Murphy's home at about 1.30 a.m. on 22 February 1976, after a butcher's knife had been collected from a loyalist club. Quinn's body was not found until mid-evening, after a phone call to a Belfast newspaper, while Rice's was found about six hours after his death. Murphy's main accomplices on both occasions were Moore and Bates, while Edwards was party to the killing of Quinn and another man and two women, whom Dillon did not name, were accessories to the murder of Rice.
By this time the expression "the Butchers" had appeared in media coverage of these killings and many Catholics lived in fear of the gang. Inspector Jimmy Nesbitt, chief of the Murder Squad in Tennent Street RUC base and the man charged with tracking down the Butchers, was in no doubt that the murders of Crossen, Quinn and Rice were the work of the same people. Other than that he had little information, although a lead was provided by the woman who found Rice's body. The previous night she had heard voices in the entry where the body was later found and what she thought might have been a local taxi (those in Belfast being ex-London type black cabs). This had led to William Moore's taxi being examined for evidence, as were all other Shankill taxis, however the Butchers had cleaned the vehicle thoroughly and nothing incriminating was found. Under Murphy's orders, Moore destroyed the taxi and bought a yellow Ford Cortina, which was to be used in subsequent murders.
Early on 11 March 1976, Murphy attempted to kill a Catholic woman in a
drive-by shootingA drive-by shooting is a form of hit-and-run tactic, a personal attack carried out by an individual or individuals from a moving or momentarily stopped vehicle without use of headlights to avoid being noticed. It often results in bystanders being shot instead of, or as well as, the intended target...
; arrested later that day, he was put on remand on an attempted murder charge. In a subsequent plea-bargain, Murphy pleaded guilty to a firearms charge and was sentenced to twelve years' imprisonment on 11 October 1977. Shortly after Murphy's arrest, he began to receive visits from "Mr A" and "Mr B". He told "Mr A" that the cut-throat murders should continue in due course, partly to divert suspicion from himself.
Another Catholic man who fell victim to the gang was Cornelius Neeson (49), attacked with a hatchet by Moore and McAllister on the Cliftonville Road late on 1 August 1976. He died a few hours later. A brother of Mr Neeson's, speaking in 1994, declared: "I saw the state of my brother's body after he was butchered on the street. I said, 'That is not my brother'. Even our mother would not have recognised him".
Later that year "Mr A" informed Moore, now the Butchers'
de facto commander, of Murphy's orders to resume the throat-slashings. Three more Catholic men from North Belfast were subsequently kidnapped, tortured and hacked to death in the same way as before. The victims were: Stephen McCann (21), a Queen's University student murdered on 30 October 1976; Joseph Morrissey (52), killed on 3 February 1977; and Francis Cassidy (43), a dock-worker who died on 30 March 1977. Moore proved himself an able deputy to Murphy, committing the throat-cuttings himself and encouraging the gang to use extreme violence on the victims beforehand. In particular, Morrissey was attacked with a hatchet wielded by Arthur McClay, whom Moore had brought to prominence after Murphy had been jailed. The three victims were dumped in various parts of the greater Shankill area. The other gang members involved in one or more of these cut-throat murders were Sam McAllister, John Townsley, David Bell and Norman Waugh. "Mr A" played a prominent part in the planning of Moore's activities.
Capture and imprisonment
Late on Tuesday, 10 May 1977, Gerard McLaverty, a young Belfast man whose family had recently left the city, was walking down the Cliftonville Road. Two members of the Butchers approached him and, posing as policemen, forced him into a car where two of their comrades were seated. The gang, who had spent the day drinking, drove McLaverty to a disused doctor's surgery on the corner of Emerson Street and the Shankill Road where he was beaten with sticks. He was then stabbed, had his wrists slashed a number of times by Moore and McAllister, using a smallish knife, then dumped in a back entry. Uncharacteristically, he had been left for dead by the gang but survived until early morning when a woman heard his cries for help and called the police. In compliance with previous orders, news of the assault was given to Inspector Nesbitt. At first he did not attribute particular significance to this message, as the Butchers had left no one alive before; but on discovering the nature of the assault and the use of a knife, he came up with an idea that was to permanently change the course of his inquiries. Taking advantage of the aftermath of a loyalist paramilitary strike and local elections, Nesbitt had a sufficiently well recovered McLaverty disguised and driven by police around the Shankill area on Wednesday 18 May to see if he could spot the men who had abducted or attacked him. Within a short time McAllister and Edwards were identified, and Nesbitt had a breakthrough that enabled him to widen his net. The next morning a large arrest operation swept into action and many of McAllister's associates, including Moore, were taken into custody. At first under intense interrogation, the suspects admitted only to their involvement in the McLaverty abduction but Nesbitt, seizing on McAllister's references to the size of a knife used on McLaverty, had his team of detectives press the case and eventually most of the gang admitted their part in the activities of the Butchers. Further arrests followed and the overall picture became clearer.
The salient point emerging was that Lenny Murphy, the commander of the unit, was the driving force behind the cut-throat murders and other criminal activities. A number of the Butchers implicated him and his close associates "Mr A" and "Mr B" (John Murphy) in numerous paramilitary activities but later retracted these claims for fear of retribution from the UVF Brigade Staff. Lenny Murphy, in prison, and Messrs "A" and "B" were interviewed several times in connection with the Butchers' inquiry but revealed nothing during interviews. Without corroborative or forensic evidence, the state prosecution service decided that they would not face charges.
The rest of the Butchers came to trial during 1978 and early 1979. On 20 February 1979, eleven men were convicted of a total of 19 murders, and the 42 life sentences handed out were the most ever in a single trial in British criminal history. Moore pleaded guilty to 11 counts of murder and Bates to 10. The trial judge, Lord Justice O'Donnell, said that he did not wish to be cast as "public avenger" but felt obliged to sentence the pair of them to life imprisonment with no chance of release. However, Bates was freed two years after the paramilitary ceasefires of 1994 and Moore released under the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Martin Dillon's own investigations suggest that a number of other individuals (whom he was unable to name for legal reasons) escaped prosecution for participation in the crimes of the Butchers and that the gang were responsible for a total of at least 30 murders. In summing-up, Lord O'Donnell stated that their crimes, "a catalogue of horror", were "a lasting monument to blind sectarian bigotry". After the trial, Jimmy Nesbitt's comment was: "The big fish got away", a reference to Murphy (referred to in court as "Mr X" or the "Master Butcher") and to Messrs "A" and "B".
Murphy's release and death
His sentence for the firearms conviction complete, Lenny Murphy was released from prison on 16 July 1982. One day later, his killing spree resumed when he beat-to-death a local Protestant man with a learning disability in the Loyalist Club in Rumford Street. His body was dumped in a back alley over a mile away. Murphy then began to assemble a new gang.
On 29 August 1982, Murphy killed Jim Galway (33), a part-time
Ulster Defence RegimentThe Ulster Defence Regiment was an infantry regiment of the British Army which became operational in 1970, formed on similar lines to other British reserve forces but with the operational role of defence of life or property in Northern Ireland against armed attack or sabotage...
(UDR) soldier from the Lower Shankill area who had been passing information to the UVF and was involved with its
BallymenaBallymena is a large town in County Antrim, Northern Ireland and the seat of Ballymena Borough Council. Ballymena had a population of 28,717 people in the 2001 Census....
units. When suspicions of being an informer fell upon Galway, Murphy decided to kill him. Galway was shot in the head at a building site in the village of
BroughshaneBroughshane is a village within the Borough of Ballymena in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It is northeast of Ballymena and north of Antrim, on the A42 road. It had a population of 2,364 at the 2001 Census....
near Ballymena and buried on the spot. His decayed body was not found until November 1983; he had not been seen since leaving for a short holiday at the end of August 1982. The location of the body was pointed-out by someone in custody for other charges in 1983.
On 5 September, Murphy killed a former UVF prisoner, Brian Smyth (30), in a dispute over money owed for a car. Murphy poisoned the man in a Shankill club before shooting him from the rear of a passing motorcycle as he sat in a car driven by Murphy's friend and leading Red Hand Commando member Sam "Mambo" Carroll.
Early on Friday 22 October, UDR soldier Thomas Cochrane was kidnapped by the IRA. The next evening, although he had been warned by the UVF Brigade Staff against abducting anyone, Murphy kidnapped a Catholic, ostensibly to demand Cochrane's release in exchange for the Catholic hostage. He hijacked a black taxi, which one of his men drove to the Falls Road. Joseph Donegan, a middle-aged Catholic man on his way home, hailed the vehicle and got in. Murphy immediately attacked the man as the taxi was driven back to the safety of the Shankill. At a house owned by Murphy in Brookmount Street, Donegan was tortured sadistically by Murphy, who pulled out all but three of his teeth with pliers. Murphy's associate, Thomas Stewart, then battered Donegan to death with a shovel. "Mr A" was party to these events. Murphy then telephoned a prominent Catholic politician, Cormac Boomer, to demand that Cochrane be set free. Murphy ordered that Donegan's body be removed from his house but the plan was disturbed by passers-by and the victim had to be dumped in an entry behind the house. After its discovery on the morning of Monday 25 October, Murphy and two others were arrested; but without evidence that Murphy had been party to this crime it was not possible to charge him. Cochrane's body was found a week later.
Murphy was assassinated by a
Provisional IRAThe Provisional Irish Republican Army is an Irish republican paramilitary organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a socialist republic within a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion...
hit squad early in the evening of Tuesday 16 November 1982 outside the back of his girlfriend's house in the Glencairn estate (where four of the Butchers' cut-throat victims had been dumped). No sooner had he parked his car than two gunmen emerged from a van that had been following him and fired a hail of more than twenty bullets into Murphy, killing him instantly. After several days' speculation as to those responsible for the shooting, the IRA issued a statement claiming responsibility for what it termed Murphy's "execution";
"Lenny Murphy (master butcher) has been responsible for the horrific murders of over 20 innocent Nationalists in the Belfast area and a number of Protestants. The IRA has been aware for some time that since his release recently from prison, Murphy was attempting to re-establish a similar murder gang to that which he led in the mid-1970s and, in fact, he was responsible for a number of the recent sectarian murders in the Belfast area. The IRA takes this opportunity to restate its policy of non sectarian attacks, while retaining its right to take unequivocal action against those who direct or motivate sectarian slaughter against the Nationalist population".
The location of the murder, in a loyalist stronghold, and the timing of the shooting to coincide with Murphy's movements suggest that the IRA received help from UVF members who deemed Murphy "out of control" or, equally plausibly, that information had been given by an enemy of Murphy's. Dillon suggests that
Jim CraigJames Pratt "Jim" Craig was a Northern Irish loyalist, who served as a fund-raiser for the Ulster Defence Association and sat on its Inner Council. He also ran a large protection racket from west Belfast's Shankill Road area, where he lived...
, a leading
Ulster Defence AssociationThe Ulster Defence Association is the largest although not the deadliest loyalist paramilitary and vigilante group in Northern Ireland. It was formed in September 1971 and undertook a campaign of almost twenty-four years during "The Troubles"...
(UDA) godfather whose protection rackets had made him rich and feared in equal measure, fitted the bill. He was known to have clashed with Murphy on the latter's release from prison earlier that year and may have wanted him out of the picture. In support of this theory, Craig was later executed by his UDA colleagues for "treason", an inquiry having found some evidence of his part in the murder of other top loyalists by the IRA.
Murphy's family denied that he had a violent nature or was involved with the Butchers: "My Lenny could not have killed a fly", said his mother Joyce. She also accused the police of continual harassment of her son since his recent release from prison and said that he was planning to leave the country as soon as his divorce came through. The UVF gave Murphy a paramilitary funeral attended by thousands of loyalists and several unionist politicians, at which Mr A and John Murphy played prominent roles. On his gravestone in Carnmoney cemetery were inscribed the words: "Here lies a soldier". Murphy's headstone was smashed in 1989 and had to be replaced.
Other activities
Moore, Bates and McAllister shot and wounded a member of the Windsor Bar UVF unit a few hours after the murder of Noel Shaw in November 1975. Murphy and Moore shot dead Edward McQuaid, a Catholic man, on the Cliftonville Road on 10 January 1976. On 9 February 1976, Murphy and three of his gang shot and killed two Protestant men, Archibald Hanna and Raymond Carlisle, wrongly believing that they were Catholics on their way to work across the Shankill. Bates was involved in a gun attack on a bar in Smithfield, not far from the Shankill, that killed several people, both Catholics and Protestants, on 5 June 1976. Other Protestants who met their deaths at the hands of the gang included two UDA men. The first was Thomas Easton, who made the mistake of becoming involved in an argument with McAllister, and died after being hit by falling beer-barrels on 21 December 1976. McAllister's guilty plea to a manslaughter charge was accepted by the Crown. The second was James Moorehead, a former police reservist, beaten to death by McAllister, Bates and Moore in the toilets of the Windsor Bar on 29 January 1977. McAllister received a minor punishment shooting for the murder of Easton. Members of the gang also carried out a bombing mission on the Falls Road that killed a Catholic boy of ten years on 10 April 1977. Murphy's brother John was heavily involved in the latter incident, along with "Mr A". Several of the Butchers, including John Murphy, were questioned about a serious assault in April 1977 in Union Street, near Belfast city centre, on a man they believed wrongly was a Catholic. John Murphy received three years imprisonment for his part in this incident.
Aftermath
Several sources indicate that
Mid-Ulster UVF'sUVF Mid-Ulster Brigade formed part of the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force in Northern Ireland. The brigade was established in Lurgan, County Armagh in 1972 by its first commander Billy Hanna. The unit operated mainly around the Lurgan and Portadown areas. Subsequent leaders of the...
brigadier,
Robin "The Jackal" JacksonRobert John "Robin" Jackson, known as the Jackal was a Northern Irish loyalist who held the rank of brigadier in the Ulster Volunteer Force during the period of violent religious and political conflict in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles.From his home in the small village of Donaghcloney,...
from
DonaghcloneyDonaghcloney or Donacloney is a small village and townland in County Down, Northern Ireland. It lies on the River Lagan between Lurgan, Dromore and Banbridge. In the 2001 Census it had a population of 972.-Linen industry:...
(now deceased) contacted members of the gang in the Shankill, "Mr A" in particular, and had them make an attempt on the life of journalist
Jim CampbellJames Tower Campbell is a retired American professional ice hockey player. He played 285 games in the National Hockey League for the Tampa Bay Lightning, Florida Panthers, Chicago Blackhawks, Montreal Canadiens, St...
, northern editor of the
Sunday WorldThe Sunday World is an Irish newspaper published by Sunday Newspapers Limited, a division of Independent News and Media. It is the largest selling "popular" newspaper in the Republic of Ireland and is also sold in Northern Ireland .-Origins:The Sunday World was Ireland's first tabloid newspaper...
newspaper, in May 1984. Campbell, whose investigations put the spotlight on Jackson's activities, was very seriously wounded but survived.
All members of the Butchers gang were released a number of years ago. The first to be freed was John Townsley, who had only been 14 when he became involved with the gang and 16 when arrested. In October 1996, Bates was released; he had reportedly "found religion" behind bars. Bates was shot and killed in the upper Shankill area on 11 June 1997 by a relative of the UDA man he had killed in the Windsor Bar. "Mr B", John Murphy, died in a car accident in Belfast in August 1998. In July 2000, Sam McAllister was injured in an attack during a loyalist feud. William Moore was the final member of the gang to enjoy freedom in August 1998, after more than twenty-one years behind bars. He died on 17 May 2009, after a suspected heart-attack at his home and was given a paramilitary funeral by the UVF. With Moore now deceased, the only senior figure still alive is "Mr A".
In November 2004, the Serious Crime Review Team in Belfast said they were looking into the unsolved death of Rosaleen O'Kane, aged 33 at the time of her death, who was found dead in her home in September 1976. Her family and authorities believe the Shankill Butchers may have been involved in her death.
Gang members
The following were members of the gang and were convicted of various crimes.
- Lenny Murphy
Hugh Leonard Thompson Murphy, who commonly went by the name Lenny , was an Ulster loyalist from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Murphy was a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force and leader of the infamous Shankill Butchers a gang which became notorious for its torture and murder of Catholic men...
(1952–1982)
- John Murphy
John Alexander Thompson Murphy was a loyalist from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was one of the three leading men in the "Shankill Butchers", an Ulster Volunteer Force murder gang.-Early life:...
(1950–1998)
- William Moore (1949–2009)
- Robert Bates
Robert William Bates was an Ulster loyalist from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force and the infamous Shankill Butchers gang, led by Lenny Murphy....
(1948–1997)
- Sam McAllister (1955–)
- Benjamin Edwards (1951–)
- John Townsley (1961–)
- Norman Waugh (1952–)
- Arthur McClay (1953–)
- David Bell (1953–)
- Edward McIlwaine (1953–)
- Edward Leckey
Sources
- "Murdered Man was not the Shankill Butcher, says mother", News Letter, 18 November 1982
- Milestones in Murder. Defining moments in Ulster's terrorist war (Hugh Jordan) (Mainstream Publishing, Edinburgh and London, 2002)
- Political Murder in Northern Ireland Martin Dillon
Martin Dillon is an author and journalist from Northern Ireland. He worked for eighteen years at the BBC and has written a number of plays and novels, but he is best known for his non-fiction books about the Troubles....
and Denis Lehane (Penguin, 1973)
- Loyalists (Peter Taylor) (Bloomsbury, London, 1999)
- The Red Hand (Steve Bruce) (Oxford, 1992) pp 183–91.
- "Murphy's Law: The Story of the Shankill Butchers" (Seamus McGraw), Tru TV
- Butcher Gang Survivor Found Dead (10 March 2008) BBC News:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7288785.stm
- Lost Lives: The stories of the men, women and children who died through the Northern Ireland troubles (David McKittrick et al.), (Mainstream Publishing, 2nd revised edition, 2004).
See also
- Timeline of Ulster Volunteer Force actions
This is a timeline of actions by the Ulster Volunteer Force , a loyalist paramilitary group formed in 1966. It includes actions carried out by the Red Hand Commando , a group integrated into the UVF shortly after their formation in 1972. It also includes attacks claimed by the Protestant Action...
- "Shankill Butcher dies" (UTV Report on the Shankill Butchers, 18 May 2009)
- BBC News report on Rosaleen O'Kane investigation
- Resurrection Man (1994) Eoin McNamee
Eoin McNamee is an Irish writer.He has written two novellas, The Last of Deeds and Love in History , which was shortlisted for the 1989 Irish Times/Aer Lingus Award for Irish Literature; and the novels, Resurrection Man , which detailed the bloodletting of the UVF gang the Shankill Butchers ;...
, ISDN 0312147163 (novel loosely based on the Shankill Butchers, later made into a movie)
- "The Shankill Butchers", a song on the Decemberists' 2006 album "The Crane Wife".