Shankill Butchers

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The Shankill Butchers was a loyalist gang that was part of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). It conducted paramilitary activities in Belfast, Northern Ireland during the 1970s. It was most notorious for its late-night abduction, torture and murder (by throat slashing) of random Catholic civilians. The Shankill Butchers killed at least 30 people (including a significant number of Protestants) in sectarian attacks, paramilitary feuds, personal grudges and bombing raids. Despite extensive police resources being channelled towards the capture of those responsible, a wall of silence, created by a mixture of fear and respect in the Shankill community, provided few leads that could be followed.

According to Conor Cruise O'Brien, the Butchers, led by Lenny Murphy, brought a new, frightening level of paramilitary violence to a country already hardened by death and destruction.^[1] While the majority of the gang were eventually caught and received the longest combined prison sentences in British legal history, Murphy and his two chief lieutenants escaped prosecution. He was later killed in November 1982 by the Provisional IRA, likely acting with loyalist paramilitaries who perceived him as a threat.

Contents 1 Timeline 1.1 Background 1.2 Cut-throat killings 1.3 Capture and imprisonment 1.4 Murphy's release and death 2 Other activities 3 Aftermath 4 References 5 Sources 6 See also

[edit] Timeline

[edit] Background

Much of what is known about the Butchers comes from Martin Dillon's The Shankill Butchers: a case study of mass murder (1989 and 1998). In compiling this encyclopaedic work, Dillon was given unlimited access to the case files of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (now the Police Service of Northern Ireland), which eventually caught the gang. Eventually Dillon had to leave Northern Ireland for his personal safety, an indication that what he wrote, 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. In preparation, Murphy regularly attended the trials of paramilitaries accused of serious crimes, in order to become well acquainted with the laws of evidence and police procedure.

On 28 September 1972, Murphy, aged 20, was involved in the murder of William Pavis, a Protestant suspected of selling arms to the IRA. Murphy and an accomplice, Mervyn Connor, were arrested shortly afterwards and held on remand in Belfast's Crumlin Road prison awaiting trial. After a visit by police to Connor, fellow inmates suspected that he might cut a deal with the authorities with regard to the Pavis affair. Soon after, in April 1973, Connor died by ingesting poison. Before he died he wrote a confession to that murder, but Murphy was brought to trial in June 1973. The court heard evidence from two eyewitnesses that saw Murphy pull the trigger, and who later picked him out of an identification parade. However the jury 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 for three years.^[2]

In May 1975, Murphy was released from prison. He had been married in prison and had a daughter, but spent most of his time hanging around pubs on the Shankill Road and assembling a paramilitary team that would enable him to act with some autonomy from the UVF leadership. His inner circle consisted of two people whom Dillon calls Murphy's "personal friends". These were an unnamed person (referred to by Dillon as "Mr A") and John Murphy, one of Murphy's brothers (referred to as "Mr B"). Further down the chain of command were Lenny Murphy's "sergeants" William Moore and Robert "Basher" Bates.^[3] 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.

In October 1975, the gang raided a drinks premises in nearby Millfield. On finding out its four employees were Catholics, Murphy shot three of them dead and ordered an accomplice to kill the fourth. By now, for his unit's headquarters Murphy was using the upper floor of the Brown Bear bar situated at the corner of Mountjoy St and close to his home near the top of the Shankill Road.

[edit] 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 decided to roam the areas closest to the Catholic New Lodge in the hope of finding someone, likely to be a Catholic, to abduct. Francis Crossen (34), a Catholic man and father of two, was walking towards the city centre just after midnight 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 before he was dragged into the taxi by Benjamin Edwards and Archie Waller, two of Murphy's gang. As the vehicle 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 said words like: "I'm going to kill you, you bastard", before the taxi stopped at an entry off Wimbledon St. Crossen was then dragged into the alleyway and Murphy, brandishing a butcher's knife, cut his throat almost through to the spine. The gang then dispersed. Francis Crossen, whose body was discovered the next morning (Tue.) by an elderly woman, had become the first of three Catholics to be killed by Murphy in this "horrific and brutal manner".^[4] "Slaughter in back alley" was the headline in the city's major afternoon newspaper on the following day.^[5] A relative of Crossen's states that his family was unable to open his coffin at his wake because the body was so badly mutilated.^[6]

On 30 November 1975, a few days after the murder of Crossen, a paramilitary 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 first cut-throat killing. Waller had killed a Stewart Robinson in a punishment shooting that went wrong. With the sanction of the UVF leadership, 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 further down the Shankill from the Brown Bear pub. Enraged, Murphy had the gunman, a former loyalist prisoner Noel "Nogi" Shaw, brought before a kangaroo court in the Lawnbrook Club, one of his drinking-dens.

After a pistol whipping, Murphy shot him in front of his entire unit of around twenty men before returning to finish his drink at the bar. John Murphy and William Moore placed Shaw's body in a laundry basket and Moore dumped it half a mile away from the murder scene.^[7]

Murphy's other cut-throat victims were Joseph Quinn (55) and Francis Rice (24). Both were abducted late at night in the same area as Crossen. Quinn was murdered in the Glencairn district of the upper Shankill on 8 February 1976 and Rice a few streets above Murphy's home on 24 February 1976, after a butcher's knife had been collected from a loyalist club. Their mutilated bodies were discovered early the following morning. 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.^[8]

By this time the expression "The Shankill Butchers" had appeared in media coverage of these killings and many in the Catholic community lived in fear of the gang. Inspector Jimmy Nesbitt, chief of the Murder Squad in Tennent St RUC Station 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 discovered 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 cabs). This had led to William Moore's taxi being examined for clues, in common with all Shankill taxi drivers, but the Butchers had cleaned the vehicle thoroughly and nothing untoward was found.^[9] Murphy, however, ordered Moore to dispose of his taxi, which was destroyed, and he purchased a yellow Ford Cortina which was to be used in subsequent murders.

Early on 11 March 1976, Murphy attempted to murder a Catholic woman in a drive-by shooting; 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. Within a short period of Murphy's arrest, he had begun to receive visits from "Mr B" and "Mr A". He told the latter that the cut-throat murders would continue in due course, in order to divert suspicion from him.

Another Catholic man who had fallen victim to members of the gang was Cornelius Neeson (49), beaten to death with a hatchet by Moore and McAllister on the Cliftonville Road on 1 August 1976. 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".^[10]

Later that year Mr "A" informed Moore, now the Butchers' day-to day commander, of Murphy's orders to resume the throat-slashings. Three more Catholic men from North Belfast were subsequently abducted, 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 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.^[11] Mr "A" played a prominent part in the planning of Moore's activities.

[edit] Capture and imprisonment

Late on Tuesday, 10 May 1977, Gerard McLaverty, a young Belfast man named 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 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 change the course of his inquiries for good. Taking advantage of the aftermath of a loyalist paramilitary strike, 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 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 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 leadership. Lenny Murphy, in prison, and Messrs "A" and "B" were interviewed several times in connection with the Butchers' inquiry but said 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 the remainder of 1977 and 1978. 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, both were eventually 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".^[12]

[edit] Murphy's release and death

His sentence for the firearms conviction complete, Murphy was released from prison on 16 July 1982. One day later, his killing spree continued when a local Protestant man with a learning disability was beaten to death in the Loyalist Club in Rumford Street and his body dumped in a back alley. Murphy then began to assemble a new gang, although less tightly knit than before his imprisonment. On 5 September he killed a former UVF man, 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.

Early on Friday 22 October, a member of the Ulster Defence Regiment, Thomas Cochrane, was kidnapped by the IRA. The next evening, although he had been warned by the UVF leadership against abducting anyone, Murphy decided to abduct a Catholic, ostensibly to demand Cochrane's release in exchange for the Catholic hostage. He hijacked a black taxi, which one of his associates 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 Murphy's house in Brookmount Street, Donegan was tortured sadistically by Murphy, who pulled out all but three of his teeth with pliers and battered him to death with a shovel, assisted by "Mr A". He 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 directly behind the house. After its discovery on the morning of Monday 25 October, Murphy was arrested; but without evidence that he had been party to a crime it was not possible to charge him. Mr Cochrane's body was found a week later.

Murphy was assassinated by a Provo 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".^[13]

Despite the IRA's claim, the location of the murder, in a loyalist stronghold, and the timing of the shooting to coincide with Murphy's movements suggest that assistance was received from members of the UVF who considered Murphy out of control or, equally plausibly, that information had been given by an enemy of Murphy's. Dillon suggests that Jim Craig, a leading Ulster Defence Association (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 discovered some evidence of his part in the murder of other top loyalists by the IRA.^[14]

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.^[15] 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 subsequently gave Murphy a paramilitary funeral, attended by thousands of loyalists and several unionist politicians, at which "Mr A" and John Murphy were prominent mourners. On his gravestone in Carnmoney cemetery were inscribed the words: "Here lies a soldier".^[16] Murphy's headstone was later smashed and had to be replaced.

[edit] 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.^[17] 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 Road. 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.^[18] Other Protestants killed by members 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 was battered to death with a breeze-block on 21 December 1976. The second was James Moorehead, a former police reservist,^[19] 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.^[20] Members of the gang also carried out a bombing mission on the Falls Road that killed a Catholic boy of eight years in 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 St, near Belfast city centre, on a man they believed wrongly was a Catholic. John Murphy received three years inprisonment for his part in this incident.

[edit] Aftermath

Several sources indicate that top loyalist Robin "The Jackal" Jackson from Donaghcloney in co. Down (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 Campbell, northern editor of the Sunday World newspaper, in May 1994. Campbell, whose investigations put the spotlight on Jackson's activities, was very seriously wounded but survived.^[21]

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, "Basher" Bates was released after reportedly "finding religion" behind bars. He 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.^[22] In July 2000, Sam McAllister was injured in an attack during a loyalist feud.^[23] 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.^[24][25] With Moore now deceased, the only senior figure still alive is "Mr A".^[26]

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.^[27]

[edit] References

[edit] Sources

• The Shankill Butchers (1999 - second edition) Martin Dillon, ISDN 0415922313
• "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 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:[6]

[edit] See also

v • d • e Northern Ireland Troubles Chronology – Directory Ireland Battle of the Bogside – August 1969 riots – Falls Curfew – Operation Demetrius – Ballymurphy massacre – McGurk's Bar bombing – Bloody Sunday – Bloody Friday – Claudy bombing – Operation Motorman – Ulster Workers' Council strike – Dublin and Monaghan bombings – Shankill Butchers – Showband killings – Drummuckavall ambush – Reavey/O'Dowd killings – Kingsmill massacre – La Mon restaurant bombing – Warrenpoint ambush – Dunmurry explosion – Hunger Strike – Glasdrumman ambush – Lough Foyle attacks – Droppin Well bombing – Maze Prison escape – Newry mortar attack – Ballygawley barracks – Enniskillen bombing – Milltown Cemetery attack – Corporals killings – Ballygawley bus bomb – Derryard checkpoint – Operation Conservation – Glenanne barracks – Cloghogue checkpoint – South Armagh Snipers – Shankill bombing – Greysteel massacre – Drumcree conflict – Omagh bombing – Holy Cross dispute England Aldershot bombing – Coach bombing – Guildford bombings – Birmingham bombings – Marylebone siege – Hyde and Regents Park bombings – Harrods bombing – Brighton bombing – Deal bombing – Warrington bombings – Bishopsgate bombing – Docklands bombing – Manchester bombing – Ealing bombing

• Ulster Volunteer Force
• "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, ISDN 0312147163 (novel loosely based on the Shankill Butchers, later made into a movie)