The Shankill Butchers

by Martin Dillon

  Monday was set as the day when another attempt would be made on the lorry but there were several factors which Murphy omitted from his calculations. During his trips when he followed the lorry he failed to take note of the faces of the men on it. One week before the attack on the vehicle the Catholic workmen who regularly travelled on it decided to use an alternative route and different transport. A newspaper report later attributed their decision to the fact that they had noticed a black taxi following the lorry through the Shankill. However, this was not the case. They were apprehensive about travelling through a Loyalist stronghold each day and, at the end of January, they were offered alternative means of travel which did not include the Shankill route. Murphy, unaware of this, laid his plans for Monday 9 February.

  As before, Moore and Bates travelled to Brookmount Street and picked up Lenny and Mr A. They made their way in the taxi to a ‘safe house’ nearby and were given a Thompson sub-machine gun and a MkI carbine (an American rifle of Second World War origin). They returned armed to Murphy’s home and Bates, Moore and Mr A. waited while Murphy went to hijack a car. The hijacking was not simply a spontaneous decision by Murphy but one which he had planned meticulously. The car he had in mind, a Ford Cortina, was parked in the same place each morning. It was owned by a postman who delivered letters in the Ceylon Street area and who parked the car before making his deliveries, the timing of which Murphy noted accurately. Ironically, the postman was Nathaniel Cush, a part-time member of the UDR who died in 1987 when the Provisionals booby-trapped his car outside the main postal sorting office in the centre of Belfast.

  Murphy calculated that if he stole the car the theft would not be obvious to the owner for at least an hour, which was sufficient time for him to attack the lorry and then abandon the Cortina. The gang of four drove in the stolen Cortina to Cambrai Street, to a position where they were afforded a clear view of the corner shop and the Shankill Road. They did not have long to wait, and with predictable punctuality the driver of the lorry, Henry McClelland, parked outside Adair’s and went into the shop to buy a newspaper. On the lorry were six other people: McClelland’s son, Harry, Mary Johnston and Raymond Carlisle were crammed into the cabin, and on the open rear of the vehicle were Archie Hanna, Louis Magee and James Wylie.

  Archie Hanna also dismounted from the lorry and followed Henry McClelland into the shop to buy a sandwich. On seeing the two men enter the shop Murphy told Moore to drive slowly down Cambrai Street and then reverse the Cortina until it was close to the rear of the lorry. Murphy cocked the Thompson, easing a round into the breach, and handed the carbine to Bates who loaded the weapon and put it in a firing mode. Mr A. handed each of them a black woollen scarf which they tied around their faces thus obscuring the nose, mouth and chin. As Moore brought the Cortina to a standstill Murphy was first to get out, followed by Bates. Archie Hanna was busy clambering back into the lorry’s cabin as the two gunmen stepped off the pavement onto the road to face the length of the lorry. Henry McClelland was walking out of the shop when he saw the two gunmen and he shouted instinctively, ‘They’re Prods. They’re all Prods’. His split-second reaction in defining the threat emanated either from a long-harboured fear about driving Catholics through the Shankill or because his knowledge of the conflict warned him that on the Shankill Road only Protestants would confront him brandishing guns and preparing to shoot his workmates.

  His warning was in vain. Murphy opened fire with the sub-machine gun, followed by Bates who fired single rounds from the carbine. When Murphy first fired his weapon it was switched to automatic fire and jammed after five shells were discharged. He took the carbine from Bates and handed him the Thompson. Bates made his way back to the Cortina while Murphy continued to spray the lorry with bullets, discharging eighteen rounds in total. He then made his way to the hijacked car and Moore drove the car away at speed.

  They drove to Glencairn where Murphy, Mr A. and Bates got out. Moore was told to abandon the Cortina at Forthriver Way, return to Brookmount Street and pick up his taxi, then operate in the usual manner of a cab driver for the remainder of the day so as not to arouse suspicion. Murphy and Mr A. separated from Bates and left the weapons with an associate in Glencairn.

  Meanwhile, on the lorry Archie Hanna and Raymond Carlisle were dead and Louis Magee and James Wylie were injured. Magee and Wylie survived after lengthy hospital treatment, though Wylie suffered from bouts of acute depression long after his physical wounds had healed. A medical report in April 1976 recorded that Wylie was ‘suffering from considerable mental trauma and was finding it difficult to sustain interest in any subject for any length of time’. This condition persisted for a lengthy period.

  Louis Magee had shown great courage and here is his account of the shooting: ‘I turned my head to the side and saw a masked man who appeared all black to me. He had something long in his hand and was in a crouched position. I saw sparks coming from what he had in his hand. I tried to hide behind a battery when I saw what he had in his hand because I realized it was a shooting. Then I felt something hit my head. I thought I was a goner so I lay still pretending I was dead. When I was lying there I felt a bullet hit my left leg and another bullet tear into my left forearm. I thought they were gonna try to finish me off. I jumped up and off the back of the lorry. I knew I couldn’t run so I crawled underneath the lorry and lay there until the shooting stopped.’

  At lunchtime that day Moore called at Murphy’s home just as the BBC radio lunchtime news was revealing details of the attack on the lorry. The news stated that the dead and injured were Protestants. Moore says that Murphy ‘went mad’ and threatened to shoot ‘twice as many Catholics’ to counterbalance those they themselves had killed on the lorry. Moore’s account suggests that Murphy did not wish to believe that he was guilty but preferred to see it as a crime which called for revenge. I am more inclined to think that Murphy suddenly realized that he had made an error of judgement and that to obscure his participation from the UVF leadership he would have to make it known that he intended to retaliate. Moore did not understand Murphy’s reaction because he was overwhelmed by its ferocity, to the extent that Moore adds that Murphy ‘went berserk’ and had to be restrained by Mr A. Murphy did not reveal to anyone outside his circle of associates that he was the man who had committed the killings. Instead, he made it known in UVF circles that he attributed the murders to a Provisional IRA murder squad and he wished for revenge. Whether the UVF leadership actually believed this or not, they took no action to investigate the shooting or to accuse Murphy of being responsible.

  It was among the members of his unit that Murphy felt vulnerable on this issue and it was never mentioned again in his presence. His ferocious outburst of anger during the lunchtime news was the only occasion on which he talked about it. The threats made during that tirade were eventually put into practice.

  Murphy remained inactive for two weeks following the lorry killings, but during this time he had a conversation with Moore, Bates and McAllister which reveals how he coped with the cut-throat killings. He told them the best way to ‘handle it’ was to keep doing it so that the memory of seeing one individual dying faded with the next killing. This may well have been fanciful theorizing on Murphy’s part articulated for the benefit of his gang, since it is clear he did not actually suffer from bouts of depression or remorse; the reverse was nearer the truth. It was he who said on another occasion that the ultimate way to kill was to cut someone’s throat. Murphy perceived himself as macho and cavalier and wished to impress this image on others.

  On the evening of Saturday 26 February 1976 he was ready to demonstrate his personal thesis on ways of coping with the use of the knife. As with most of his crimes, the plans were made over a drink in a bar and on this occasions it was the Long Bar. In his company were Bates, Moore and Mr C. who, like Mr A. and Mr B. cannot be named here because, like them, he has never been charged with the Butcher killings and remains a free man.

  At some stage in the evening Murphy invited t
wo women to join him, and bought them drinks before encouraging them to linger with him and his associates. (The women have never been charged and for obvious legal reasons cannot be named here. One of them has since gone to live in Canada.) Murphy held court until midnight, expressing his views about the political situation and concluding that the only way to change it was to create terror among the ‘enemy’. At 1.00 A.M. the four men and two women boarded Moore’s taxi, with the women in the front seat alongside William Moore. When Bates was later asked why they all got into the taxi he trotted out the rehearsed response that they were intending to travel across the city to buy chips. Bates knew only too well what lay ahead, since Murphy had made clear his intentions before they left the Long Bar. Moore says that when they were all in the taxi Murphy told him to drive to the Library/Upper Donegall Street area to ‘look for a Taig’. They took a route similar to that taken on the nights they abducted Crossan and Quinn and made the same detours through the darkened side streets of the district.

  That night, twenty-four-year-old Francis Dominic Rice, an unemployed labourer, spent much of his time drinking with friends in a Catholic social club on the periphery of Belfast city centre. He played a few games of snooker and decided to lay down his cue when he saw a girl, Margaret, whom he had known for six years, enter the club. He joined her and remained with her and some of her friends until midnight, at which time she said she wished to go home. Francis asked Margaret if he could walk with her to the taxi stand. Margaret agreed because, as she later confided to detectives, she was ‘fond’ of Francis. They walked together to within fifty yards of the taxi depot, where they talked casually for a few minutes and Francis kissed Margaret goodnight. Margaret’s memory of Francis was that he was not drunk and would have been capable of defending himself if attacked. His journey home took him through Union Street, past the junction with Library Street and into Upper Donegall Street, from where he intended making his way to Carlisle Circus and the Antrim Road. As he walked into Upper Donegall Street, Moore’s taxi pulled alongside him and Murphy leaped out of the vehicle brandishing a wheel brace. Rice tried to escape but was felled from behind and staggered onto the roadway. Bates rushed from the taxi and helped Murphy drag Rice, who by now was slightly dazed, into the vehicle. Moore drove off into Upper Library Street and onto Peter’s Hill and the Shankill Road.

  As the taxi travelled slowly along the Shankill, Murphy, Moore and Bates kicked and punched Rice while the two women watched from the front seat and Moore from the rear-view mirror. Murphy stopped the beating and searched Rice to ensure that he was a Catholic. Rice had on his person a membership card for a club situated in the predominantly Nationalist New Lodge Road district, and Bates later told detectives that when Murphy found the card it ‘sealed Rice’s fate’. Personally, I do not think it made any difference, because he was already injured before Murphy searched him and found the card. Rice might well have revealed his religion under torture and therefore finding the card would not have been of any great consequence.

  Murphy instructed Moore to drive to Brookmount Street where Murphy left the taxi, entered his house, and returned with a butcher’s knife. The taxi was then driven in the direction of the Lawnbrook Club and, at Murphy’s insistence, to Esmond Street. During this journey Murphy taunted Rice with the knife and cut him about the throat and sides of the neck while he was being held down on the rear seat. Mr C. sat on his chest and Bates held his arms. Moore admitted later that while Murphy was in his house getting the knife, Bates and Mr C. beat Rice and Mr C. told him he was going to be killed.

  When the taxi reached Esmond Street Murphy gesticulated to indicate that he wished Moore to pull up at the entrance to an alleyway. Rice was conscious, Murphy having ensured that the throat wounds were not fatal, and he was moaning with pain. Murphy told Moore that he was going to ‘finish off’ Rice and that he would require the assistance of ‘Basher’ Bates and Mr C. and that, while he was doing this, it would be safer for Moore to drive the women around the neighbourhood and meet up with him and the others at the far end of the alleyway. Rice was carried deep into the alley and dragged a short distance before being laid on his back. He was kicked by the three killers before Murphy set to work with the knife. It took Murphy several minutes before he hacked through his victim’s throat until the knife touched the spine. Shortly afterwards the gang, including the women, were on their way to Forthriver in Glencairn, where Murphy, Mr C. and the women took their leave of Moore and Bates. Moore went to Bates’s home where they cleaned the interior of the taxi and Bates changed his clothing.

  An elderly woman whose house overlooked the alley found the body at 8.00A.M. when she ventured outdoors to put rubbish in her dustbin. She told police that during the night she had heard voices with Belfast accents and the sound of a ‘heavy vehicle’, which reminded her of the noise made by black taxis on the Shankill Road.

  Jimmy Nesbitt swamped the Esmond Street area with uniformed policemen together with members of his own murder squad and members of CID who were temporarily released from other duties. The only person who was able to provide assistance was the elderly lady who found the body.

  Nesbitt was in no doubt that he was dealing with a crime committed by the murderers of Crossan and Quinn because of the similarities and the frenzied nature of the attacks. He now had an avenue which required urgent investigation and that was the possibility of the use of a taxi in the killing of Rice. He immediately assigned men to trace the names of all taxi drivers on the Shankill Road. He reckoned that if he could narrow down the number of taxi drivers to those who could be described as suspects, he could have their taxis forensically tested. The selection was related to those drivers who had been observed ‘acting suspiciously’, and a shortlist was drawn up on the advice of members of the murder squad and other detectives within the CID. The taxis under suspicion were brought to Tennent Street during the course of one day. There is no figure available for the number of taxis called in by the RUC, but Nesbitt says that Moore’s taxi was amongst them. Nesbitt’s tactics were flawed, as he himself was aware, since the first taxi driver to be contacted by police would pass on word to other members of the Taxi Association and news of the police operation would be common knowledge within a matter of hours. This was inevitable in a small neighbourhood such as the Shankill. Nesbitt believed the chance was worth taking on the basis that even a speck of blood might be detectable under forensic examination. Why was Moore’s taxi one of those selected for examination in Tennent Street Police Station? In what way had he been acting suspiciously? The police answer to these questions is simply that he was assessed as a person who was ‘seen acting suspiciously’. I believe that Nesbitt was forced because of the lack of manpower, because of the time it would have taken to test every taxi and because of the fact that such a massive operation would have alerted the guilty party, to settle for a random selection. According to Nesbitt, the examination of Moore’s taxi revealed nothing of value to the police. The examination was, however, valuable to Moore. Murphy ordered him to dispose of the vehicle as quickly as possible. He took it to a scrapyard and had it destroyed and within twenty-four hours had replaced it with a beige Mark II Cortina, registration DIA 9477. Police documentation on the testing of the taxis has since been destroyed and I have no reason to doubt their assertion that Moore’s was examined.

  News of the third cut-throat killing generated bizarre speculation in some sections of the Press and tabloid imagery featured strongly. Significantly, the word ‘butchers’ found its way into the journalistic language of Northern Ireland, though the description Shankill Butchers was not used until several months later. Nesbitt found a greater significance in the use of the word ‘butchers’ because the expert post mortem analysis carried out by Dr Thomas Marshall, the State Pathologist, suggested that a butchery knife was likely to have been the murder weapon, and from this information it occurred to Nesbitt that the murderer or murderers could be butchers by profession or employed in the butchery trade. Nesbitt and o
ther members of the C Division murder squad visited most of the butchery premises in the Shankill area and spoke privately with the owners in the hope that someone might have come to their attention. Enquiries were made as to whether knives were missing or stolen but, as with other enquiries, Nesbitt’s team was out of luck. With hindsight one may feel entitled to ask why Moore was not investigated after his taxi had been forensically tested, since he previously worked as a packer in Woodvale Meats; surely a vital clue with regard to the cut-throat killings. It is easy to frame such a question in retrospect and the response from the RUC is simply that at the time Moore was cleared of suspicion following a detailed examination of his taxi. There was at the time a serious problem vis-à-vis resources available to the police. The number of terrorist acts being committed within C Division alone called for large-scale facilities and manpower, and those which were available were plainly inadequate – a shameful situation. I examined the register for the hours worked by the Tennent Street murder squad during February 1976 and I was shocked by the frequency of twelve-to-sixteen-hour days worked by Nesbitt and his men. In one three-week period, Nesbitt’s diary shows that he worked 336 hours, which is almost three times the hours anyone would expect to work in a normal job.

  During those three weeks Nesbitt and his team ‘called in markers on all the informers they used in West Belfast’. Nesbitt adds: ‘We interviewed every informer and, I shouldn’t say this, but we went close to making promises. Christ, we were determined to solve those killings. When we got nothing from the touts, something I considered unusual. I knew we were dealing with either someone who was running a very tight operation or someone who scared the hell out of everybody in the Shankill area. We even brought in a leading member of the UVF on a false pretext and tried to persuade him to deal with us, but he offered nothing.’