The Shankill Butchers

by Martin Dillon

  The remainder of Large’s confession, which was made in February 1983, was littered with the comments of a young man without remorse for his actions. The Magnum used to shoot Mulholland was also used in the killing of an eighty-year-old woman in the Markets area of Belfast, and Large was one of her murderers.

  Large’s statement shows similarities to the methods used by the Butchers, though his operations were mainly carried out in the Markets and Ormeau Road areas of Belfast. The perceived wisdom was, however, exactly the same. He had enjoyed killing Mulholland, and Murphy recognized this trait.

  The killing of Donegan demonstrated that Murphy was capable of forming another unit, and it could be surmised that he was intent on designating Large to perform the role once played by William Moore.

  According to Murphy’s family, Lenny began to receive death threats after he had been arrested for the Donegan murder. His movements became erratic and unpredictable, which would seem to support this claim, and he was no longer seen regularly on the Shankill Road. His girlfriend saw him only at times of his choosing and without advance warning. He became concerned about the UVF leadership’s attitude towards him and indicated to friends that, should anything happen to him, certain members of the Brigade Staff were to be informed that they were not welcome to mourn at his funeral. The UDA also had no affection for Murphy and believed him to be a psychopath and a menace to their operations in West Belfast. They viewed his actions as inviting too much police scrutiny and activity and the Donegan killing confirmed this view. After such killings the RUC swamped an area for days with increased security which was not welcomed by the different paramilitary organizations. The murder of Donegan and the fact that his body had been left outside Murphy’s home suggested to many that Murphy was careless, if not crazy. There were others who wished Murphy dead and, from the moment of his release from prison, were preparing to assassinate him. These people were members of the Provisional IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army. Both groupings set up special hit squads with orders to be at the ready to kill Murphy at any time, day or night. They knew from media coverage that Murphy was Mr X. though I suspect that, like most terrorist groupings, they did not rely solely for information on what appeared in print.

  Murphy was aware of the newspaper stories and became more concerned about his personal safety. When he was arrested after the Donegan killing, he gave his address as 92 Forthriver Park, the home of his girlfriend. He used this tactic throughout his terrorist career, and police files contain numerous addresses supplied by him with the Percy Street address always prominent among them. Following the Donegan murder he spent most nights at the home of his girlfriend. His routine was to drive there in his mustard-coloured Rover car and park at the rear of the house, entering the premises through a back door.

  At 6.40 P.M. on 16 November, Murphy drove to the Glencairn Housing Estate and made his way to Forthriver Park, oblivious of the fact that a blue Morris Marina van was trailing him, keeping a safe distance and travelling at a steady speed. As Murphy parked at the rear of Hilary Thompson’s house and turned off the engine the blue van turned slightly, with its rear facing the Rover. Suddenly the back doors of the van were thrown open and two gunmen emerged, one armed with a .9mm sub-machine gun and the other with a .38 Special revolver. They opened fire on Murphy who, unaware of their presence, was about to open the door of his car. He was hit by twenty-six bullets in the head and body and died instantly. That night no grouping admitted responsibility for the killing but the following day the Provisional IRA said they were responsible and, as if to prove their claim, they gave journalists specific details of the calibre of the weapons used in the murder. Their delay in issuing a statement was, they said, to allow their unit to escape after the killing. They claimed this had been made easy by the fact that Murphy was known to be involved in internal feuding within the UVF and so when he was shot the police concentrated their efforts in quite the wrong direction.

  The circumstances surrounding Lenny Murphy’s death have been the source of much speculation with some people saying that it was not the IRA who killed him but Loyalist paramilitaries. Noel Large, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Donegan six months after Murphy’s death, had this to say about the Murphy killing when being interviewed by Detective Sergeant McClenaghan:

  Large was informed that he had no reason to distrust us and he said he was between the devil and the deep blue sea, as it was either a question of doing time or finishing up like Lenny. The defendant was asked if he meant Lenny Murphy and he stated that he did. He was asked what he knew about Murphy’s death and he stated that he did not know who done it, but that he believed it was his own kind. The defendant was then asked what bearing Murphy’s death had on him and he replied: ‘When I told you I was stood down, I did not tell you that I was to be kneecapped and that hasn’t happened yet. Who knows, it might be a nutting job.’ He was asked if he was saying that some members of the UVF might shoot him dead and he shrugged his shoulders and replied, ‘You don’t get to be a military commander without making a few enemies.’

  This transcript, like others in this book, has never been in the public domain and its contents demand examination. Large was, in fact, admitting to police that he had been ‘stood down’ by the UVF, meaning that he was no longer active and was waiting a decision about his fate. My enquiries revealed that because of his involvement in the Donegan murder Large was to be court-martialled, and that could have resulted in a kneecapping or, as he put it, ‘a nutting job’ (meaning that he would be shot through the head). The UVF leadership viewed the Donegan killing as a serious breach of discipline and knew that Murphy had been advised against abducting a Catholic by senior members of the organization during the heated debates in the Rumford Street Social Club. The Brigade Staff knew they could easily deal with Large and the other accomplices but the question of punishing Murphy for his actions presented serious difficulties, some of which I have already outlined in this book. There was also the fact that Murphy was a prominent member of the organization and was held in high esteem by many young men in Loyalist paramilitary circles. The basic problems facing the leadership were that, firstly, if they decided to court-martial Murphy and kneecap him he would always present a threat to them; secondly, if they chose the more severe penalty of execution and Murphy found out in advance, he would be likely to exact revenge; finally, the execution of such a prominent member would bring the organization into disrepute in Loyalist circles and please the IRA. The public humiliation which would have arisen from the UVF executing one of its most infamous figures was not a course of action the leadership was prepared to undertake. So who did kill Murphy?

  To answer that question, one has to look at the contacts which have been formed between the paramilitaries on both sides of the political divide. In the seventies racketeering and building site fraud were on the increase and the paramilitaries carved up areas of Belfast so that they could each equally benefit from criminal activities of this kind. They reached agreements for mutual benefit even though bitter enemies. Without such cooperation, each of the paramilitary groupings could swiftly prevent the other from sharing in well-organized scams, so the killings could continue but in one area of life there would be tacit agreement that there should be no interference from either side. As a result, many strange arrangements have been made which allow frequent contact between terrorists.

  The Provisionals claim that they killed Murphy, but Nesbitt proved from his investigations that it was impossible to mount constant surveillance on suspects in Loyalist areas of West Belfast and I have quoted him as saying that when Murphy was released in 1982 C Division could not monitor his movements. How could the IRA achieve what the RUC found impractical – the tracking of Murphy in his own territory? They could not have done so without collusion with Loyalist paramilitaries. According to my sources the IRA were told that there was one constant factor in Murphy’s routine: his daily visit to Hilary Thompson, and that on a specific day a tip-o
ff would be given to confirm that Murphy was heading from Brookmount Street or a Shankill Road club to Forthriver Park.

  The IRA, I was told, kept an assassination unit on standby in the Ligoniel area and another in the Ardoyne, in readiness for the all-important telephone call. Another factor which supports the collusion theory was presented to me by an RUC detective who had access to the file on Murphy’s death. The file contains an outline of the circumstances surrounding the murder, which ends with the conclusion that it was ‘possibly a killing in which a Loyalist or Loyalists were involved’.

  The blue van used by the ‘hit squad’ was hired weeks earlier in the Braniel area of predominantly Protestant East Belfast. When the killers fled, the van was found burning at Forthriver and Harmony Hill, strategically placed to block anyone pursuing the gunmen. A car, which was used to spirit away the gunmen from Forthriver into the Nationalist enclave of Ligoniel, was also found the same day. It had been hijacked the previous day in the Andersonstown district of Catholic West Belfast.

  Most of these elements would support strongly the IRA claim that their men shot Murphy but there is one detail, missing from newspaper reports but in the Murphy file in Tennent Street, which might lead one to suppose otherwise. The missing detail concerns items found near the scene. Close to Murphy’s girlfriend’s house was a gap in a hedge leading to a field, a shortcut known only to locals. Through the gap in the hedge, police found masks and gloves which they believe were used by the gunmen who shot Lenny Murphy. One is obliged to ask why two IRA men, who had a van at their disposal and a car waiting at the point where the van was to be abandoned, should decide to make off on foot through the Protestant Glencairn estate?

  The Irish News carried what it described as an ‘exclusive’ in December 1982 claiming that Murphy had been killed by Loyalists with guns provided by the IRA. The author of the ‘exclusive’ said that Republican sources confirmed that ‘Murphy was killed in a unique, joint operation by the IRA and Loyalists to eliminate a “mutual problem”.’

  It is possible that the gunmen discarded the gloves, masks and, possibly, the guns before making off in the van, though eye-witness evidence does not indicate that there would have been sufficient time to engage in this type of manoeuvre. On the other hand, the items found by the police could well have belonged to any of the Loyalist paramilitary organizations who, as I have shown, used Glencairn as a base. The Provisionals may well have killed Murphy but I would contend that they could not have done so without the assistance of a person or persons from within one of the Loyalist paramilitary groups.

  A man who lived near the scene of the shooting ran from his house on hearing the gunfire and found Murphy slumped over the steering wheel of the Rover. He lifted the dead man out of the car, wrapped him in a blanket and placed him on the roadway. This man’s wife saw the blue van being driven slowly past her home and says that it arrived in the vicinity of Murphy’s car a short time after he had brought his vehicle to a halt. She saw the rear doors of the van being flung open and seconds later observed blue flashes. She made no mention in her statement to police of seeing the gunmen making off on foot, but saw the van drive away.

  On 20 November six masked gunmen fired a volley of shots over the coffin containing Lenny Murphy, outside his mother’s home in Brookmount Street. The coffin was draped in an orange and purple flag and police were kept from the scene by a phalanx of black taxis which sealed off the street from the Shankill and allowed the masked gunmen to escape. Traffic was prevented from using the Shankill Road by about thirty taxis which blocked the main road and many of the side streets. As the cortège moved slowly down the Shankill Road, a lone piper played ‘Abide with Me’. The coffin was flanked by men in battledress. Journalists and television cameramen were warned not to take pictures of the mourners, and some journalists were threatened and told to leave the area. Prominent among the mourners were leading members of the UDA and UVF, though certain high-ranking members of the UVF, who had been informed of Lenny’s comments before his death that certain people would not be welcome at his funeral, did not attend.

  The cortège proceeded from the Shankill to Carnmoney Cemetery on the outskirts of the city, where there was a heavy security presence in attendance. The lone piper led the mourners to the grave, where a brief religious service took place. As the mourners left, two solitary gravediggers began their task of filling the grave.

  The Belfast Telegraph carried eighty-seven death notices, including ones from Moore and Bates. Ironically there was a notice of sympathy from Dessie Balmer, whom Murphy had ordered to be shot on the day Shaw was murdered. Other notices read:

  From old friends, Dinks, Harper, Hacksaw, Fox, Dick, Basher, Noel, Head-Monkey, Artie and Stewartie, all written from their current home address, B Wing, H-Block, the Maze prison.

  At the going down of the Sun we will remember Him.

  His Aunt Agnes penned the following tribute to Lenny: ‘Nothing could be more beautiful than the memories we have of you; to us you were very special and God must have thought so too.’

  Lenny Murphy’s mother reacted to his death by saying that he had been planning to leave Northern Ireland because of police harassment. She echoed the view of her family and friends that the police had killed Lenny, or were responsible for ‘setting him up’, and she told Noel Adams of the Belfast Newsletter: ‘Lenny was a man who spoke his mind . . . he believed in his country . . . he was so outspoken he was a target for propaganda. I don’t know if he was a member of the UVF.’

  Residents of Glencairn interviewed by Noel Adams after the funeral said they had seen the van used in the killing at least half an hour before the shooting and one of them claimed that a call was made to Tennent Street Station to say that the vehicle had been acting suspiciously. There is no note on the police file that any such call was ever made.

  The Murphy family alleged that there had been a twenty-four-hour guard on Murphy and this had been withdrawn twenty-four hours before his death. The police have dismissed this allegation as ‘absurd’. Mrs Joyce Murphy also said that a detective had told Lenny that he would not be alive by Christmas and it was because of the sinister nature of this warning that he had been planning to leave Northern Ireland. ‘The police never left him alone from the day he got out of prison,’ added Mrs Murphy. She told other reporters that her son had never led the ‘Shankill Butchers’, but Peter McKenna writing in the Irish Independent, quoted a UDA leader as saying: ‘Lenny was a typical psychopath.’

  A comment from Joyce Murphy which captured the attention of many journalists who interviewed her was: ‘My Lenny would not have hurt a fly.’

  It is unlikely that Joyce Murphy and the other mourners at the funeral on 19 November were aware that there was someone else of significance buried in Carnmoney Cemetery; a young man who once travelled down Belfast Lough and pointed to the graveyard; a young man who enjoyed writing songs; Stephen McCann.

  We may never know the identity of the killers of Lenny Murphy. Many people in paramilitary organizations, both Republican and Loyalist, are willing to admit that the Provisionals carried out the actual killing but with assistance from Loyalists. One source within the Loyalist paramilitary world told me that there were many within the ranks of both the UDA and UVF who were of the opinion that Murphy had to be ‘wiped out’ because he could not be controlled and was about to start a sectarian war which would generate too much police ‘heat’ on Loyalist areas of West Belfast and jeopardize other operations, including racketeering. This source was of the opinion that the Provisionals provided weapons as payment for information leading to the murder of Murphy. When I asked about the presence of the gloves and balaclavas in Glencairn after the shooting, I was told that the guns were also left behind but were spirited away since they were part of the deal.

  The Provisionals have always contended that they shot Murphy as a result of information supplied by their own intelligence officers. I do not doubt that they shot him but would they be willing to admit that they had
had assistance from Loyalists? And would Loyalists ever admit that they helped the IRA kill a man who received a hero’s funeral and whose headstone reads: ‘Here Lies A Soldier’?

  In the years following Lenny Murphy’s death two other leading members of the UVF from West Belfast were assassinated by the Provisional IRA. The first was John Bingham who was regarded by many as Murphy’s successor though this was not strictly accurate in that Bingham was not involved in grisly murders. He was believed, however, to have been implicated in the murder of several innocent Catholics. Bingham’s death was followed by the gunning down of William ‘Frenchie’ Marchant as he walked along the Shankill Road. The UVF carried out an internal enquiry to establish whether anyone in the UVF ranks had supplied information to the IRA which led to the deaths of the three. The enquiry concluded that no one in the organization was responsible but that the similarities in the killing of the three UVF men indicated that someone in Loyalist circles had provided information to the IRA on the whereabouts of the three a short time prior to their deaths. Murphy’s killing initially aroused suspicion that the Provos were supplied with vital intelligence because of the obvious difficulty of mounting a concerted surveillance of their target in a predominantly Protestant neighbourhood.

  The murder of Bingham reinforced this suspicion. He was shot in his home in the staunchly Protestant district of Ballysillan in North Belfast. Bingham, like Murphy, was security conscious and shortly before his death was living in the tiny, remote village of Millisle on the County Down coastline. On the night of his death he was attending a pigeon-fanciers’ get-to-together and returned home earlier than expected by his wife. He had specially-secured doors in his home but did not have time to lock them. He no sooner entered his house when an IRA murder squad arrived and shot him dead.