The Shankill Butchers

by Martin Dillon

  Constable McGreevy cautioned the four men in the station regarding the attack on Underwood but they denied knowledge of the incident, or of being in Library Street. Constable Shields recorded in the station log that items of clothing were ‘seized’ from the four by his colleague.

  Joseph Orr of the Forensic Science Department of the RUC examined clothing belonging to the four and found widespread blood-staining on Townsley’s trousers, which matched a blood sample taken from Underwood. Similar tests on jeans belonging to Potts and Moore also proved positive in this respect. Later that night the four men were released after denying involvement in the crime and refusing to make statements.

  On 18 June charges were preferred against the four and each of them replied, ‘Nothing to say’, despite Moore, Townsley and Potts having by then made statements to the effect that they had attacked Underwood. John Alexander Murphy did not make a statement and the following are replies given during an interview in January 1978:

  Detective: Were you with William Moore, William Townsley and James Potts on 11 April 1977 in Union Street?

  Murphy: I just want to say I was there. We went down the town and had a few drinks. We went past Unity Flats. A crowd of fellows came out and started hitting us with belts and bottles and we had to give it back to them. We went down to Union Street and we saw this fellow. We thought he was one of the Unity men and all ran up Union Street to get him. The next thing there was a fight and the whole lot started hitting and punching him. I don’t want to say no more. That’s the way it happened.

  Detective: Did you know this man?

  Murphy: No, I never saw him before.

  Detective: Where did you go?

  Murphy: We all went to North Street to get a bus home.

  Detective: Did you know how badly Mr Underwood was injured?

  Murphy: I don’t know anything about it.

  Detective: How do you explain the blood on your shoes?

  Murphy: He fell on me. I don’t want to say any more about it.

  Detective: Had you much to drink?

  Murphy: A brave lot.

  After this interview, Murphy was arrested, charged and cautioned, to which he replied, ‘Nothing to say.’

  Potts told the police:

  I met three mates whom I do not wish to name in the Brown Bear on the Shankill Road. We had five or six pints of lager then went to the Royal Bar and the Silver Jubilee. I think I had quite a number of vodkas. We decided to go into town and took a black taxi down the Shankill to Unity flats where we all got off. We were going into town for more drink. At the Flats a number of youths threw bottles at us and attacked us. There was a short fight and the Army arrived. The Army told us to go down the Road into town. When we got to Union Street, one of my mates spotted this man at the junction of Union Street and Library Street. My mate told me that this was one of the men from the Flats. My mate ran towards this man and most of us followed. We caught up with the man in Library Street. We all got into him and kicked and punched him until he fell to the ground. As the man was going down, he caught me and put his arms round me. I took his arms away from me and started to walk off. I think I hit the man, whom I didn’t know, two or three times. I am sorry for assaulting this man.

  After he made this statement Potts was asked by Detective Constable John Strain of the Regional Crime Squad if he was involved in an illegal organization and he replied: ‘I have not been involved with any illegal acts apart from the one I have mentioned. I was asked to join the UVF three years ago but I declined.’

  Moore and Townsley in their statements alleged that the attack on Underwood had been provoked. They claimed to recognize Underwood as one of the crowd which had attacked them. This was pure fabrication.

  If, as Potts claimed, they were going into town for more alcohol, why did they take a taxi only as far as Unity Flats? Had it been their intention to reach Royal Avenue, they could easily have circumvented the notorious Unity Flats flashpoint. It later became known that they were actually on foot, walking towards an area they knew well: the side streets off North Street, Library and Upper Library Street, Union Street and Upper Donegall Street. These were roads with which Moore especially was familiar because he had traversed them on previous victim-hunting sorties. A likely scenario would have been that they spotted a man they believed to be a Taig, and decided to attack him.

  Concerning this incident, I was struck by the fact that the police in D Division had for a short time in custody two men who were later to become infamous. The police of C Division appear not to have taken much notice of the incident despite the fact that it occurred in an area defined by Nesbitt as under suspicion during the Butcher investigation. The matter may well have been regarded in much the same way as the assault on McLaverty was to begin with: that such incidents are commonplace in that part of Belfast. With hindsight it is easy to see a significance in the attack upon Underwood but, nevertheless, proper communication between D Division and C Division could have proved invaluable.

  14

  The Public Avenger?

  Between May 1977 and February 1979 the Shankill Butcher gang appeared in court on numerous occasions, during which lengthy depositions were recorded. Three solicitors had the task of representing the accused men. One of those solicitors was a Catholic who was a former member of the Nationalist, Social Democratic and Labour Party. He acted for Moore, Bates, Waugh and Edwards only after they decided at an early stage to change their legal representation. I have examined documents which indicate that many of the accused men were advised by their lawyer to plead guilty to the most serious charges to avoid a recommendation by the trial Judge of severely long sentences. However, these accused rejected the advice on the basis that they never intended to cause serious death or injury and would therefore plead not guilty. Even on 25 January, the day set for the opening of the trial, some members of the gang were instructing their legal advisers to contest the charges. The trial began in Crumlin Road courthouse under Mr Justice O’Donnell, with the Crown case put forward by Mr Ronald Appleton QC, a lawyer of outstanding ability. He delivered a lengthy and scholarly outline of what was an extremely complex story. During the lunchtime recess that day legal consultations were held with some of the accused, and in some cases these took place in the presence of relatives. This resulted in several of the Butchers changing their plea to guilty.

  McClay and Townsley decided to persevere with their pleas of not guilty. Those who changed their pleas were returned to prison on the instructions of Mr Justice O’Donnell pending psychiatric reports being made available, after which they would be sentenced.

  McClay claimed that the statements which he had made to the police were made under duress but this was dismissed by the Judge. Townsley, who was attempting to plead to a lesser charge than murder, was told by the Judge that he would not accept his plea. The case was heard before Mr Justice O’Donnell sitting alone without a jury, in accordance with Northern Ireland’s Diplock Court procedure which has been designed to remove the jury system in terrorist cases to eliminate the risk of intimidation of juries following a history of such pressure from the beginning of the present conflict.

  Jimmy Nesbitt remembers sitting in court while McClay took the witness stand to argue that the murder squad in C Division had used ill-treatment and threats to coerce him into making his statements of guilt. ‘I was watching McClay,’ says Nesbitt, ‘and I looked closely at him in disbelief, wondering what other lie he was going to tell. Somehow my eyes strayed to a tattoo that he had on his hand, between his right thumb and forefinger. I focused on this and recognized the letters UVF. Now, here was McClay saying that he was an innocent man, unconnected with an illegal organization and with no political allegiance which would associate him with violence. I told the Crown lawyer what I had seen and, while McClay was being cross-examined and making these points again, our lawyer turned to him and said, “What is that on your hand?” I could see that McClay was dumbfounded. That really sickened him and was essentially the en
d of his case and his contention that he was unconnected with anyone.’

  It wasn’t until the morning of 18 February that eleven accused men stood in the dock before Mr Justice O’Donnell charged with nineteen murders. They were Moore, McAllister, Bates, Edwards, Townsley, Bell, McClay, Waugh, Leckey, Watt and McIlwaine. Ronald Appleton QC addressed the court and outlined the Crown case. Hours later he was still on his feet describing how many of the victims had met their deaths.

  Mr Justice O’Donnell began his summation and subsequent sentencing of the gang on the morning of 20 February. At 10.30 A.M., in a courtroom stilled by silence, the Judge began by expressing his view of the case, describing it as a ‘catalogue of horror’. He reserved special attention for the crimes committed by Moore and Bates, but firstly addressed Bates: ‘You pleaded guilty to ten murders. While there is undoubtedly a distinction in those crimes between you and Moore, I cannot see any real distinction in the end result; that result being the deaths of ten innocent people.’

  Then he turned to Moore, the man who pleaded guilty to the largest number of murders, and told him: ‘You, Moore, pleaded guilty to eleven murders carried out in a manner so cruel and revolting as to be beyond the comprehension of any normal human being. I am satisfied that without you many of the murders would not have been committed.’

  In a dramatic voice, the Judge then turned his attention to both of them and announced their sentence: ‘I see no reason whatever, apart from terminal illness, why either of you should ever be released.’

  Moore had begun his morning in court waving to friends and relatives in the public gallery and chatting with his lawyer. He was sporting a new moustache, was dressed in a white pullover and a black and white open-necked shirt. Bates, who had grown a beard while in prison, was dressed in a green and orange V-neck sweater over a dark-blue open-necked shirt. He remained silent while in the dock. Both of them listened intently and remained impassive while the Judge delivered his verdict on their crimes. Justice O’Donnell told the packed courtroom that even the most dispassionate recital of the facts was calculated to cause rage and indignation at the deaths meted out to so many innocent people. He took twenty minutes to deliver his sentences, which totalled 2,000 years imprisonment in concurrent sentences. He pointed out that he had resisted the temptation to cast himself in the role of the ‘Public Avenger’. ‘The facts speak for themselves and will remain for ever a lasting monument to blind sectarian bigotry,’ he told the Court.

  McAllister, McClay and Edwards were given life sentences with a recommendation that they serve no less than twenty years. Waugh was given two life sentences with a recommendation that he serve no less than eighteen years.

  Watt, who was already serving eight life sentences, was given another one to run concurrently with the other sentences he received.

  Bell was given a life sentence. Townsley, because he was a juvenile at the time of his crimes, was ordered to be detained at the pleasure of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

  Leckey and McIlwaine were the last to be sentenced. Leckey, who admitted the manslaughter of Kevin McMenamin (the young boy killed on the day of the Easter Parade) was given ten years. McIlwaine, who pleaded guilty to kidnapping and wounding McLaverty, was also sentenced to ten years imprisonment.

  The Judge reserved praise for McLaverty and the courage he had shown.

  One man whom the Judge was not in a legal position to mention by name was, of course, Lenny Murphy. The Crown Prosecutor did refer to him on several occasions as Mr X. and pointed out that, though he was not before the court, he had been the central figure in the Butcher killings. The court was not told that there were many more people who had not been brought to justice, and many other crimes apart from the nineteen for which the accused had received a total of forty-two life sentences: the largest number handed down in one sitting of a court in British legal history.

  Mr Justice O’Donnell did not forget the role played by Jimmy Nesbitt and his team. He praised their diligence and tenacity and said that ‘the thanks of the whole community’ should be accorded them.

  As the accused were led from the dock Moore raised his right hand and waved to relatives. Bates hesitated as he was led away, tapped his right hand on the wooden rim of the dock and walked down the stairs to the corridor leading to Crumlin Road Prison.

  The following morning all the national and local papers carried the story and some reserved their editorials for comment on the trial. The Irish Times printed this editorial which summed up the feelings of many people:

  Religious and racial fanaticism often goes no farther than wild words; it seems to be merely vulgar and offensive; but the scorn, a dilution of hatred, which the words carry, may be taken by the over-impressionable, the disordered, as a directive and a pardon in advance. Religious invective in the North is often covered with a veneer of earthy heartiness . . . it is deadly just the same.

  How can men murder their fellow human beings because they are of a different religion or race? This question was raised on a horrendous scale when the full details of the Nazi extermination camps became known at the end of World War II.

  Yet it was to be demonstrated that Western civilisation is a thin layer in Western man, and whilst the list of crimes by the ‘Shankill Butchers’ is infinitesimal in comparison to the holocausts of Europe a generation ago, the principle seems to be the same; Catholics to men like these desperadoes were taken as a species marked out for extermination just as, to the German camp commanders, Poles and Jews filled the same roles.

  Once persuade an impressionable mind, starting with childhood, that his or her neighbours are inferior, in some basic respect . . . in religious beliefs, in colour of skin or in some other allegedly racial respect . . . and the way may be open, as it was to so many apparently normal Germans all those years ago, to treat people so labelled as less than normal in standards, and by progression less than human and therefore to be exterminated. Professional men, doctors, chemists, lawyers were apparently no more immune to the virus than less privileged folk.

  There have been other atrocities which have accounted for Northern lives in quite appalling fashion . . . burning alive in the La Mon restaurant for example . . . but there is something particularly chilling about the close quarters butchering which was involved in so many of the Shankill murders.

  After the war as an SS Commandant was interviewed by a newspaper interviewer who asked how so many educated men in the SS could have done what they did. ‘They were led astray by that man,’ was the answer. Who initially, and who proximately, could have led these miserable murderers to do what they did?

  The answer to the final question in the editorial became the focus of media speculation. The day after the trial, the Newsletter carried the headline: ‘Butcher Boss to be Unmasked’. The story beneath claimed that the ‘crack police squad which brought the Shankill Butcher gang to justice’ was determined to unmask Mr X.

  The Northern editor of the Sunday World newspaper in Ireland, Jim Campbell (who had taken a message from the killers when he was working for the Sunday News), was the most revealing in his treatment of the Mr X. story. He did not name Murphy but indicated why he was in prison and when he was likely to be released.

  Most newspapers examined the police handling of the case and accorded to the RUC the same respect as was given to them by Mr Justice O’Donnell. The Northern editor of the Irish Times, David McKittrick, who now works for the Independent, was, however, more probing than some of his colleagues in his analysis of the police handling of the investigation. This is what he wrote on 21 February:

  Some of Moore’s team are still at large, and there are other teams, principally in the Shankill and Woodvale, which retain the potential for similar violence. But a number of factors have combined to persuade them to remain inactive, and one of them has certainly been the charging of their colleagues.

  McKittrick also looked at the clues which he believed had been available to the police, and added:

 
; The Butchers could easily have provided unnecessary clues by using the same taxi and car every time, and one of them kept a selection of knives in his home. Another, in a telephone call, said he was Captain Long, which would immediately have brought to mind the Long Bar to anyone with the barest background knowledge of the UVF. Such names have often served as significant clues; the real name of the original Captain Black of the Ulster Freedom Fighters (the name used by the UDA from June 1973 to claim responsibility for sectarian killings) was White.

  Now that the trial is over one final question lingers . . . could anything else have been done to prevent any of the deaths, which were after all spread over eighteen months? No one is suggesting that the detectives who led the investigation, Jimmy Nesbitt and Cecil Chambers, were in any way lax but their Serious Crimes Squad, centred at Tennent Street, consisted of only ten detectives, supplemented occasionally by others. There were hundreds of other killings in Belfast and the rest of Northern Ireland over this period, and the ten detectives had many other murders to investigate. Enquiries which would be handled in England by a Detective Chief Superintendent are often handled here by a Detective Constable. Ten detectives were handling these murders, while across the water hundreds of policemen may be put to investigate a single killing. With such resources, the Major Long clue could have been checked out, by surveillance on all those associated with the Long Bar. There are several hundred black taxis but with more police available each could have been checked out right from the first death. Witnesses heard vehicles which sounded like a taxi engine. Bates was a barman in the Long Bar and Moore owned a taxi and in this way a connection might have been made. But in a city which has had more murders than detectives, the niceties often go by the board. RUC manpower is scarce everywhere and the blanket coverage available in England is not available here. In this case the police took their chance well enough when it came; but with more men on the ground, they might not have had to rely on such a phenomenal stroke of fortune.