The Shankill Butchers

by Martin Dillon

  Nesbitt was no ordinary policeman. He was in charge of a murder squad in an area which had always been riddled with crime, even before the present Troubles; but from 1969 onwards C Division was on the front line of two warring communities and more sectarian killer gangs than any other district in Northern Ireland. The responsibilities of the Division extended over a fifteen-mile-square area with a population of 150,000. The most important element in those statistics is that the majority of the violence occurred in an area of three square miles which contained every paramilitary group in the Province. Additionally, C Division represented a geography that was constantly changing due to continuing sectarian violence. Apart from the obvious dividing line between Republican and Loyalist strongholds, there were many roads and streets which were changing gradually and subtly and this was recognized and exploited by the paramilitaries. One of the major obstacles faced by Nesbitt and his team was lack of resources. By 1975 they were dealing not just with day-to-day murders and attempted murders but also a backlog of cases from 1970 onwards. By the beginning of 1975 there were 117 unsolved murders and in 1975 alone there were 34 murders and 153 attempted murders. Overall, in C Division, there were 2,911 crimes to be dealt with that year. Despite the overwhelming difficulties generated by this crime wave, the success rate of Nesbitt’s team was almost a fifty per cent detection rate for murders that year and over thirty per cent in respect of attempted murders.

  When criticism was levelled at the police, and in particular at C Division, some commentators forgot the relevant parallels which could have been made with police forces elsewhere in the United Kingdom. A reasonable comparison would be the police hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, and the manpower made available to the West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and Lancashire police forces. Between 1975 and 1980, using computers, which C Division in Belfast did not possess, the police in the Ripper enquiry interviewed 250,000 people, wrote 23,000 statements, visited 26,000 homes and checked 175,000 vehicles. The following warning was placed on 6,000 hoardings: ‘The man next to you may have killed twelve women’. Newsagents were asked to distribute two million copies of a brochure giving details about the murders and reproducing what were then thought to be samples of the Ripper’s handwriting. In 1977 there were 304 full-time detectives working on the case. At one stage fifty detectives were assigned the task of tracing a £5 note which was found at the scene of one of the murders. Five thousand men were interviewed, including Sutcliffe. Special telephone lines were installed to encourage the public to assist the police in the hunt for the Ripper and as a result almost 900,000 calls were received. The overall enquiry cost £3 million.

  By comparison the Tennent Street murder squad operation was limited to ten men and did not have the budget, public support or manpower to match even remotely the Yorkshire enquiry. But in the person of Jimmy Nesbitt the RUC had a man who was not simply dedicated to his job but was undoubtedly the most professional detective in Northern Ireland. He dreamed of being a detective when he was very young, and says, ‘I read everything about detective work that I could get my hands on. I was fascinated with the details about murder cases and I followed accounts of every trial in the newspapers.’ There was nothing in his family history that would have encouraged or prepared him for life as a policeman. He was born on 29 September 1934 to James and Ellen Nesbitt, a couple in their late twenties who had one other child, three-year-old Maureen. James Nesbitt senior was a hardworking electrician and both he and his wife were regarded by neighbours as a friendly and respectable couple. The family home was a neat terraced house on Belfast’s Cavehill Road which was, at that time, regarded as a middle-class neighbourhood. The Cavehill Road is within North Belfast and ironically a short distance from the area where the young Jimmy Nesbitt would later be involved in tracking down the Butchers.

  In 1939 James and Ellen sent their son to the Model Primary School on the Ballysillan Road not far from their home. He remained there until 1946 when he transferred to Belfast Technical High School were he excelled as a dedicated and intelligent pupil. His parents shared the hope that he would go to university but it was not to be. At the age of sixteen Jimmy decided that he preferred to find a job and an exciting lifestyle. He says of that decision: ‘I simply wanted to get out into the world and make something of myself. I was itching to do something interesting.’ His first job promised a great deal. He was employed as a representative for a linen company and offered the prospect of international travel to sell the company’s products. He says: ‘It didn’t really turn out as I intended. I was employed as a trainee sales representative and promised everything but after seven years I decided that I had to move on and the career with the prospect of realizing my need for an exciting challenge was that of a policeman which had always fascinated me, anyway.’

  His fascination led him into the RUC in 1957 as a uniformed constable and his first duty was in the border police station of Swatragh. If it was action he liked, he soon gained experience because the IRA campaign of attacking border police stations was at its height. Jimmy Nesbitt was given the responsibility of guarding the police station at night. On his first night-duty an IRA unit attacked the station and a member of the Special Constabulary standing alongside him was shot. Nesbitt fired back and repulsed the attack. For this display of courage he was given his first commendation in the force. It was awarded for ‘acting in a manner not expected of someone of his rank and in a fashion which showed zeal, ability and intuition expected of a person of higher rank but with similar opportunities’.

  He spent twelve months in the lonely Swatragh outpost and was awarded a second commendation for repelling another IRA attack. These examples of courage and initiative resulted in the young constable being moved away from the stresses of life in a lonely police station in a border battle zone to duty in the town of Coleraine in County Londonderry. The transfer occurred in 1958 and his superiors in Coleraine soon appreciated his attention to detail and allowed him to help with detective work. In this way he ‘got a real taste for it’. However, he was obliged to wait another three years before his aspiration to be a detective was realized. In the years after 1961 Detective Constable Nesbitt worked conscientiously, but he was not simply content to be a detective constable. He had faith in his own abilities to do greater things and anxiously awaited promotion. His superiors encouraged him to return to the uniformed branch of the service because there was little prospect of advancement in CID. Instead, Nesbitt opted to play a waiting game. His commitment to his work was total and he constantly impressed others with his professionalism. In 1967 he married Marion Wilson, who understood his passionate commitment to his job. She appreciated, too, that they would never have an ordinary nine-to-five lifestyle. Within four years he was celebrating promotion to Detective Sergeant, and the birth of his first child. Events in Northern Ireland were changing rapidly and he found himself being transferred to a station in the centre of Belfast. Within two years his exceptional abilities were rewarded with further promotion to Detective Inspector and he was moved to the front line and Charlie Division.

  Several months before his arrival in C Division an assessment was made of his ability which makes interesting reading and illustrates why he was being assigned to one of the most difficult jobs in Belfast: ‘He stimulates interest among his colleagues, often drawing on his personal experiences and marrying theory with practice. He is thoroughly sound and reliable and upholds the best traditions of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. He brings great credit to the Force.’

  He was also bringing to his new post at Tennent Street station experiences of the Northern Ireland conflict which had earned him no fewer than sixteen police commendations. Over several years the number of commendations would reach an amazing sixty-seven; unheard of in any police force in the United Kingdom. The only police officer ever to have received a similar number of commendations was a spy catcher in the Special Branch Division of Scotland Yard, with a total of thirty-two.

  Nesbitt’s arrival i
n Tennent Street in September 1973 was greeted with some suspicion, as might be expected when a senior officer enters a new area. He observed that some of the detectives were engaged in petty bickering which centred on arguments about who should take statements from suspects or interview criminals. Inevitably those men who took the statements from suspects were likely to be credited with success if those statements provided admission of guilt whereas the detectives responsible for the initial investigation were overlooked. Nesbitt, in his quiet way, soon eradicated this problem. He tactfully conveyed to his detective squad that the prime factor in their detective work was to put a terrorist behind bars and that the whole murder squad and not a single individual of C Division received the credit. He was able to instil a camaraderie within the ranks of the six detective sergeants and three detective constables under his command. He encouraged cooperation and the belief that success would derive from teamwork. He stressed the importance of a proper filing system in the squad’s large office and insisted it be kept up to date at all times. It would provide the necessary method of checking and double checking so that nothing could ever be left to chance. He introduced action sheets which could be filled out with accuracy and exactitude and instructed that notebooks were not to be discarded. Files were to be kept on every incident and these would be checked daily by himself and the Station Collator to ensure that every investigative task was carried out satisfactorily and to ascertain whether certain matters required further scrutiny. Nesbitt also possessed a keen sense of humour and this attribute endeared him to his men. It was an invaluable asset in a situation rife with stress, fatigue and constant threat.

  It was noticeable to the Divisional Commander that Nesbitt commanded immediate respect from the men under him and this was more attributable to demeanour than to physical presence. At five feet ten inches, always casually dressed, with a thick angular face and a cigarette permanently jammed between his lips, he looked anything but the part. He could more easily have been mistaken for a journalist, with an anxious expression constantly creasing his brows. This description belies his quiet confidence and a toughness which was brought to bear when the situation demanded it. He was not to be trifled with but he was willing to recognize ability and to praise it. He soon made clear his view ‘that there were horses for courses’ and that he would assign men to roles which best suited their talents. When necessary, he would remove men from tasks to which they were ill-suited. The detective sergeants and constables in his midst were all in their early thirties but were battle-hardened, some of them having spent most of their careers in C Division. A facet which impressed those under Nesbitt’s command was his willingness to share success with them. He led by example and took on any task, however menial. This, on occasion, required a twenty-four-hour day. He constantly emphasized the importance of the team and the need for reliance on each other until they became inseparable as a unit.

  When I first met Jimmy Nesbitt during the course of researching this book I was particularly struck by his shyness which I concluded derived from being constantly closeted within a police force which afforded him little opportunity to meet other professionals. He appeared to be a man burdened by the violence around him and exhibited an introverted personality which was offset by his sense of humour. His humour, I deduced, was his way of distancing himself from the horror of the brutality he had witnessed. Northern Ireland has produced a brand of humour which outsiders would define as ‘black’ and Nesbitt’s humour fitted precisely into this category. It could be defined as a mechanism for helping people cope with the terrible tragedy of the Conflict. At our first meeting, he told me a story which reflected this sense of humour:

  There was a guy who lived in the Shankill area and I knew he was a thug who represented a public nuisance. Like clockwork he got drunk every Friday night and fought with anyone who crossed his path. One Friday night in June ’75 he made his usual foray into a Loyalist club off the Shankill Road and by midnight he was predictably drunk and abusive. He sought trouble and ended up fighting with other customers in the club before he returned home battered and bruised.

  Now, this guy lived with his mother and she told me that, the morning after this affray, she made her son breakfast and he duly arrived at the dining table. He began pouring himself a cup of tea when his mother turned to him and said:

  ‘What happened to your ear?’

  ‘What ear?’ he asked.

  ‘Your left ear,’ she added.

  At that point the guy discovers that one of his ears is missing. Someone had bitten if off the previous night.

  Nesbitt assured me of the veracity of this story and pointed out that it illustrated some of the people he was obliged to deal with in C Division.

  Aside from his humour, the sharp, drawn features and the lines which creased his brow bore testimony to a man who lived with considerable stress but possessed the ability to cope with it. I harboured the thought that this man who resembled the archetypal newspaper news-editor required a constant level of stress for fear that if it was not there he would be deprived of the adrenalin and the dynamic for dealing with the difficulties of his job.

  Another characteristic which struck me forcibly on that first meeting and during subsequent meetings was his ability to recall events in great detail. It was, I believe, indicative of a man who constantly filed the significant and the trivial in the event that somewhere, someday it could prove useful or invaluable. The minutae mattered to Nesbitt. He was a man always in control but with a friendliness and generosity that was deceptively disarming. His lifestyle was one of respectability, much like that of his parents. His constant smoking was not matched by heavy drinking. At weekends he shared one or two bottles of wine with his family at mealtimes and that was the extent of his alcohol indulgence. If there was a Presbyterian ethos lurking in his life, like many who are born into the Protestant tradition in Northern Ireland, it was only evident in his work ethic because, aside from that, he was a man with a contemporary image and a defined realism. During my research I met many of the men who worked with him and each of them held him in awe as one would a hero. They showed him respect and called him either ‘Sir’ or ‘Boss’.

  Within his team there were several detective sergeants who established a very close working relationship with their boss. In particular there was Cecil Chambers, a quiet and extremely talented investigator. Alongside him were two other men, Jim Reid and John Scott, who were to figure prominently with Nesbitt in the Shankill Butchers enquiry. Scott was a tough-talking, no-nonsense detective from a rural background who possessed a fine mind for detail, names and faces, and who was singularly devoted to his work. Reid was a self-assured man with a thorough knowledge of the paramilitaries.

  After Nesbitt had been with the Division for several months he noted a fascinating dimension to the lives of the detectives around him. Like himself, they did not exhibit signs of stress except when removed from the Division. During working hours the adrenalin flow was high and there were no signs of fatigue, boredom, dissatisfaction or irritation.

  The murder by the IRA of twelve policemen from the station and other life-threatening situations were regarded as part of the job. ‘The real problems,’ says Nesbitt, ‘were dealing with the families of victims and conveying news of tragedy to the living.’ He adds: ‘There were times when it really hit me hard, not simply seeing the bodies but witnessing the heartbreak and tragedy of the living and knowing that in those people it would remain.’ The same view was expressed by John Scott and Cecil Chambers, both of whom spent many hours consoling the fathers, mothers, girlfriends and boyfriends of those who had died tragically. Though dealing with death on a daily basis, there was nothing cynical about his men, says Nesbitt. He witnessed only zeal and a determination to end the killing. Members of his team wished to be included in an investigation even should this mean being called from home after a succession of fourteen-hour days.

  When a killing occurred the murder squad was assisted for at least three days by o
ther members of CID and the uniformed branch. Every effort was made to swamp an area where it was suspected the terrorists operated. After this period of assistance the murder squad would revert to team work and the other members of the Force returned to dealing with ordinary crime.

  In Nationalist areas there was no awareness of the difficulties facing the C Division police officers whose job it was to track down sectarian killers. Firstly the police were countering a constant IRA campaign, sectarian killers on the Nationalist side, plus killings by the UVF and UDA. There were those in the Nationalist community who believed that because most members of the RUC originated from the Protestant community the task of tracking down Loyalists should be easy. This was far from the truth, as illustrated by an episode in C Division shortly before the arrival of Jimmy Nesbitt. One evening, while two policemen were walking down the Shankill Road they were approached from behind by two armed men who forced them into a Loyalist bar. The two policemen were Sergeant Trevor Gray and Constable Malcolm McConaghy. McConaghy was well known around the Shankill for regularly pounding the beat. However, at this time he was not very popular with some members of the UVF, having apprehended one of their members who admitted committing 164 driving offences. The criminal in question was Stewartie Robinson who was notorious for stealing cars and driving them through police and Army road-blocks. He was infamous for having driven a stolen car into Tennent Street, where he waited outside C Division HQ for police to chase him. The job of catching him was eventually given to the man in C Division who was regarded as something of a whiz-kid driver: Constable McConaghy, who raced cars in amateur events. He eventually caught Robinson, who had become the most fired-on terrorist in Northern Ireland because of the number of times he crashed through security cordons. His capture made McConaghy a marked man by the UVF. On the night in question the young constable was treated in a manner which demonstrated the difficulties of policing on the Shankill Road. McConaghy and Gray were held at gunpoint while surrounded by men drinking and deriding them. They were ordered to get down on their hands and knees and bark like dogs, then they were forced to run around the confines of the bar imitating chickens. Afterwards they were taken to a backroom and interrogated about police activities in the area. McConaghy was singled out for special treatment and was removed to a toilet where he was told to spreadeagle himself against a wall. A shot was fired between the gaps of the fingers of one hand and excretia was shoved in his mouth. After several hours the two policemen were released with a warning that they could at a future date find themselves in a ‘wooden box’. The experience was to prove too much for McConaghy and he later left the Force.