The Shankill Butchers

by Martin Dillon

  The greatest obstacle facing detectives was the fact that members of the public who genuinely advocated support for the police were, in the event, too frightened to pass on any information they might have about terrorists. Jimmy Nesbitt says that his men viewed terrorists as criminals and it was unimportant which community had spawned them. ‘They were all criminals to us and our job was to get them.’ He adds, ‘When we went into Catholic areas we discovered that most of the people there were glad to see us. They would quietly shake your hand, but were too frightened to help. On both sides the ordinary people would have liked us to change their lives but they couldn’t help us for fear of their own lives and the lives of their families. That was the sad part of it all. When someone whispers that it is good to see you in their district, they do it in a way in which they cannot be seen or heard.’

  In Nesbitt’s company there were no hidden agendas, only the discussion of tactics, and never any examination of the political situation, even outside the place of work. He says: ‘We lived for the job. My wife showed me sympathy when I was called out at all hours of the morning and the same with the wives of the other lads. It was the job, the squad, and the recognition that when we were successful we all shared it and celebrated together.’

  This single-mindedness can be seen in one piece of detective work which Jimmy Nesbitt undertook shortly after he arrived in C Division. While at home one morning he was contacted and told a body was lying at the rear of the Windsor Bar off the Shankill Road. The body was that of a man who showed signs of having been badly beaten and shot. Nesbitt rushed over to find that in fact the Windsor Bar itself was the murder scene. There were obvious signs that the body had been upstairs in a back room of the premises and later in a toilet. A considerable quantity of blood was found seeping from the floor of the toilet and through the ceiling to the bar below. The rear yard of the bar was also stained with blood in a manner which indicated that the victim was dragged from the bar into the yard and then to the alleyway at the rear. There was no identification on the body and it was removed to the mortuary for an autopsy. After public appeals failed to produce the name of the victim, a young man in his early twenties, the corpse lay in the mortuary for over a week. Meanwhile Nesbitt became obsessed with his attempts to discover the identity of the deceased. He contacted journalists in the hope that their underworld contacts might reveal something about the victim. It was through this procedure that a freelance photographer approached Nesbitt and told him that he had seen a photograph in a Scottish newspaper of a young man reported missing. The description of the missing young man fitted the description of the deceased.

  Within twenty-four hours of receiving this information Nesbitt knew that the victim was twenty-two-year-old Edward Donnelly from Hamilton in Scotland, a former member of the British Army. Nesbitt contacted Donnelly’s parents and decided to take on the case himself to ensure that this would not remain yet another unsolved crime. He discovered that Donnelly had been discharged from the Army and appeared before Hamilton Sheriff’s Court on 5 June 1974, when he was sentenced to three months in a Young Offenders’ Centre for possessing a small quantity of explosives which he had stolen while in uniform. There was still no apparent Northern Ireland connection but Nesbitt kept digging and teasing away at the story. He next visited London, where Donnelly had gone to enlist as a mercenary after his discharge. In London it was revealed that Donnelly offered his services for the war in Angola and, when turned down, went to France to join the Foreign Legion but returned after a fortnight bearing only a Legion cap badge. The story appeared not to fit any Northern Ireland crime pattern. In the victim’s clothing Nesbitt found a crudely drawn set of unnamed streets. He speculated that they could be London streets but could turn up nothing to substantiate this theory. Weeks of painstaking research were then spent on uncovering the method used by Donnelly to travel to Belfast and finally it was firmly established that he had been a passenger on the Stranraer-Larne ferry. Nesbitt turned to his team for assistance and together they discovered a lorry driver who had given a lift to the young man. He revealed that Donnelly first asked him if he was driving to the Irish Republic and, when told he would be travelling in the opposite direction, the young Scotsman said he would be happy to accept a lift. He told the driver he was a mercenary, had previously served seven years in the British Army and two years in the French Foreign Legion, and was willing to fight for either side in Northern Ireland provided the money was right. Donnelly dismounted from the lorry at a roundabout close to Toomebridge in County Antrim.

  With this information in their possession the murder squad contacted haulage companies and uncovered another driver who picked up Donnelly at Toomebridge then left him at the King’s Hall on the outskirts of Belfast. A picture was being pieced together but there was nothing to explain the presence of the crude map found on the body. A public appeal for anyone who had seen Donnelly in Belfast was answered by two young girls and a middle-aged man. The girls told how they met the young ex-soldier at the King’s Hall and he asked them for directions to UDA Headquarters. They suggested he take a bus to Sandy Row near to Belfast city centre. They drew a crude map giving directions and this was the map found later on the body. However, they gave wrong information regarding the location of UDA Headquarters. The middle-aged man met Donnelly close to the Shankill area. Donnelly asked him for directions to UDA Headquarters and was directed to the Windsor Bar. This was another error, which was to cost Donnelly his life. The Windsor Bar was not a UDA haunt but UVF and was a dangerous place to be. In the bar Donnelly talked to UVF men about wishing to fight for the UDA. His Catholic-sounding name and his harebrained scheme signed his death warrant. He was tortured under interrogation by members of the UVF before being shot through the head. No trouble was taken to hide the body nor the evidence that he had been killed in the bar. The killers were confident that no one who had been present would talk because they were all guilty by deed or association.

  Nesbitt was not to forget this particular case because it symbolized for him the many bizarre and peculiar aspects of crime in Northern Ireland. It showed that survival in Belfast depended on an acute awareness of the geography of the city.

  The problems of the murder squad were not solely confined to the activities of Loyalist paramilitaries, though that would change with the emergence of the Butcher campaign. There were the ever-pressing demands of trying to cope with an increasing campaign by the Provisional IRA, based mostly in the Ardoyne area which sat in the middle of what was largely Loyalist territory. On the Republican side there were young men very much in the mould of Lenny Murphy who grew up knowing nothing but violence and who were more concerned with the power of the gun than with any special knowledge of the conflict they were promoting. Within their tribe they were Murphy’s counterparts and, equally, their hatred of the other community was so intense that events around them triggered them into action.

  One such young man came to the attention of Jimmy Nesbitt, and the facts of the case are as indelibly printed on his mind as those crimes committed by the Butchers. The young man was called Norman Robert Patrick Basil Hardy. He was a bricklayer who in 1974, at the age of sixteen, was killing Protestants. He was the eldest in a family of seven children, four boys and three girls aged between five and fifteen. His parents separated when he was fourteen and his father, a merchant seaman, left the family to live in England. Robert Hardy left school at fifteen and lived with his family in the Ardoyne district, working as an apprentice bricklayer. His involvement in violence came to the attention of the RUC and Army when he was fourteen years old. As a member of A Company in the Provisional IRA’s 3rd Battalion he was used primarily as an assistant in serious crimes. He was found guilty of riotous behaviour in 1973 and was detained in borstal for six months. On his release he resumed his role within the IRA and was found in possession of explosives the following year; this time he was placed on probation for two years. But this was not to be the end of his terrorist activities, even though the court
was advised that because of his youth he was influenced by older people and was prepared to change his ways and thus deserving of clemency. On Saturday 23 November 1974 several Catholics were murdered and this was the catalyst for a train of reaction. Hardy went in search of two friends his own age, Joseph Todd and Michael Donnelly, who were also involved with the IRA. He told them he intended retaliating for the murder of Catholics. He later admitted that he brought them round to his way of thinking by pointing out to them that it was their duty to assist in an operation. He described the likely consequences if they refused to cooperate, then sent them to hijack a car in the Ardoyne, knowing this to be an area where a car owner would be frightened to report a stolen car immediately. Meanwhile, Hardy went to a Provisional IRA arms dump, to which he had access, and lifted two hand guns and ammunition. The three teenagers got into the hijacked car with Hardy in the front passenger seat and Donnelly as the driver. Hardy handed a gun to Todd and told Donnelly to drive up the Crumlin Road in search of a ‘Prod’.

  Hardy later told Jimmy Nesbitt the story of the events which followed:

  ‘We came down the Crumlin Road past the Edenderry Filling Station. We turned into a side street near the Crumlin Picture House and into another street which brought us out again onto the Crumlin Road and past the Edenderry Filling Station. We reversed back into the Filling Station. I saw an attendant come out of the office and me and my mate dashed out and put him back into the office. There was a young girl in the office. We took them both into an office on my left. I told them both to lie down. The fella said to take the lot and I thought he meant to take the money. The fella lay down flat but the girl knelt down. There was a short space of time while I was considering to shoot the girl or not. Both of us then opened fire at the same time. I emptied my gun and there were about twelve shots fired in all. These murders were not done on behalf of a political organization. They were not politically motivated murders. It was just a rash decision on my behalf.’

  Before he made this statement admitting his involvement, and in the knowledge that Todd and Donnelly had already been charged, Hardy had shown a different side to his character. He had proved difficult for the detectives interviewing him until Nesbitt took over.

  Like Murphy, Hardy chose a route where he knew only Protestants would be found walking; he did not know the identity of his victims and did not wish to know. His statement, however, omits some very important details. Firstly, he provided himself with two ‘standby’ victims should he have found no suitable target walking the street because he knew that two young Protestants worked in the petrol station and they could be killed if Hardy was unable to find a ‘suitable’ and innocent person walking on the public thoroughfare. Secondly, he directed the car into the filling station and decided to kill the occupants. His victims were Heather Thompson, aged seventeen, and John Thomas McClean, aged twenty-four. Hardy never explained why he hesitated before shooting the girl six times. She, for her part, did not lie on the floor like her colleague but, possibly out of a sense of humility, knelt down and bowed her head. One can only speculate as to the effect of seeing a young girl in a prayer-like posture. Did it stir something deep within Hardy or was it simply that she reminded him of the females in his own family? Whatever the effect, it did not restrain his actions. To Nesbitt, the image of Heather Thompson lying dead on the floor when he arrived on the scene was deeply moving. He says he had difficulty erasing the memory. Perhaps he was beginning to understand that in C Division he was dealing with what he himself called the ‘chilling dimension to terror’.

  Hardy, who ended up being detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, was also believed to have been directly involved in the killing of another innocent Protestant, James Carberry, who was shot dead and whose body showed evidence of torture. One has to ask how many more people would have died if Hardy had not been caught and whether he would have been one of the Shankill Butchers if he had been born a Protestant, less than one mile away.

  In late 1975, after the Crossan murder, Nesbitt and his squad went about their daily work unaware that Lenny Murphy was being sidetracked by an internecine UVF feud which would postpone his sectarian assassination plan, if only for a matter of months.

  6

  A Public Execution

  The new leadership of the UVF in West Belfast was determined, at an early stage, to rid itself of the legacy created by the previous leadership and it sought to do this by exercising greater control over UVF volunteers, particularly those who were using membership to practise the extortion of protection money from shopkeepers. A decision was also taken to stamp out petty crime, particularly offences such as housebreaking and larceny which were responsible for bringing the UVF into disrepute and eroding its power base with the Protestant working-class community. The new leaders quickly made it known that they wished to hear from anyone who was being intimidated or being forced to hand over money to members of the UVF. Leaders of UVF units were told that volunteers who strayed from the rules would be severely dealt with irrespective of their standing in the organization. Ironically, the Brown Bear team’s activities were not scrutinized during this putsch against ‘criminal’ elements. Murphy was asked to help in the clean-up operation to root out the ‘undesirable elements’. He was soon given an opportunity to demonstrate his willingness and it provided a welcome diversion from his real purpose of killing Catholics. It also distanced him from the rumour and whispering taking place in the Shankill area following the killing of Crossan.

  Murphy’s part in the clean-up began several days after the killing of Crossan. He was asked to investigate a burglary which had taken place on the Shankill Road. An elderly spinster living at 161 Shankill Road was awakened in her bedroom during the night by three intruders. She was threatened until she revealed the whereabouts of a small amount of cash which she kept in her home. Before the robbers made their getaway they tied up the old lady, who remained in that condition until a neighbour entered her house twelve hours later. The crime shocked the ordinary people of the Shankill and representations were made to both the UDA and UVF by local residents who wished an example to be made of the culprits.

  The leadership of the UVF saw this as their first opportunity to demonstrate their intent to stamp out crime and thus enhance their reputation. Lenny Murphy and Mr A. were called to a meeting of the UVF Brigade Staff and told to find the ‘criminals’ responsible for the robbery and punish them. The Brigade Staff provided a list of twelve men in the neighbourhood who had a history of petty crime. Some of those on the list were members of the UDA and Murphy was told that should the culprits be found to be UDA members they should be handed over to that organization, which was equally anxious to see the matter resolved. Before the meeting ended, a UVF staff officer arrived with a description of the burglars which he claimed came from a police source who interviewed the victim of the robbery. With the description fixed firmly in his mind, Murphy left the meeting certain he knew the identity of the criminals. He was, however, faced with a difficult problem if his theory as to the identity of the thieves was indeed correct. He confided to Mr A. that the three men he had in mind were members of another UVF unit and that it might be judicious to involve that unit in the search for the culprits, rather than the Brown Bear team taking independent action. This was a shrewd decision on the part of Murphy since the team he had in mind was the Windsor Bar team which would not brook lightly any interference in their affairs. Murphy and Mr A. conducted a brief meeting with the leader of the Windsor Bar team at which Murphy sought agreement that no matter whence the culprits derived they should be dealt with. This cleared the way for Murphy to operate freely and he made no mention of the fact that he believed he knew the identities of the men being sought.

  His next task was to inform his own men about his intentions and prepare a plan of action. That same day he retired to the upstairs room of the Brown Bear and called an ad hoc meeting of his volunteers. Firstly he told them that he was sanctioned by the Brigade Staff to apprehend the crim
inals who robbed and assaulted the old lady. Discussion followed as to the means of punishment. One suggested that the three should be ‘breeze-blocked’ (a form of punishment favoured by the UVF and UDA for their members: concrete blocks were dropped onto fingers and, in the event of a serious crime, onto the head); another volunteer suggested it should be a ‘head job’, implying that the three should be shot through the head. Murphy vetoed these suggestions and pointed out that it was the wish of the Brigade Staff that the punishment be restricted to kneecapping: a practice which has been used by all the paramilitaries in Northern Ireland but primarily by the IRA. Thousands of men, young and old, have been subjected to this form of punishment. When it first began, victims were shot through the front of the kneecaps and in most cases recipients of this barbarous punishment were able to walk again after surgery. As a result, the paramilitaries changed their methods and shot victims through the back of the legs, thus blowing out the kneecaps and crippling the victims for life.