The Shankill Butchers

by Martin Dillon

  Nesbitt admits that once again he found himself in the position of having no clues. It did not occur to him that Murphy’s associates might be responsible. His feeling was that if Murphy was not the culprit, as he had originally suspected, then there was no justification for believing it was the work of those under Murphy’s control. It is difficult to see how Moore or the others could have entered police reckoning as there is no evidence to suggest that Nesbitt and his men were aware of Murphy’s operations, or the people in his unit. This will be borne out by the evidence the murder squad acquired during later interrogations of some of the butchers. In fact on 30 October, with a third cut-throat victim on their files, detectives in C Division were no further on than when Murphy began his reign of terror.

  In October Nesbitt was faced with six other murders in his patch and a multitude of on-going investigations. The figure for 1976 show a total of forty-seven murders in the Division, thirty-eight detections and forty-eight persons charged. Nesbitt puts it this way: ‘We faced a massive task dealing with killings by all the paramilitaries and with no assistance from the public. We never allowed ourselves to get depressed about the workload. In respect of the cut-throat killings we knew that we needed a lucky break.’

  A difficult aspect of the Butcher murders was the task carried out by Nesbitt and his men of breaking the news to the families of the victims whilst trying to protect them from the awful facts of the crimes. Stephen McCann’s father, who later died from a heart attack, was spared the details. Roy Turner met the father several times, together with one of Stephen’s brothers, but always hid from them the details of the last minutes of the boy’s life.

  Frances Tohill has lived with the tragedy constantly on her mind. When I interviewed her for the purposes of this book she still displayed all the emotion of someone who may never be able to recover from a terrible loss. She married six years after the tragedy and gave birth to a baby boy but her husband died within three months of their marriage. She says there are still little details which constantly remind her of Stephen:

  I remember the moment we were leaving the students’ union. Stephen saw his young sister and her boyfriend. He turned to the boyfriend and said, ‘Make sure you take care of my wee sister.’ Looking back, we might not have stayed together because he was restless but I loved him and I still do. I told my husband all about Stephen and he was very understanding. I had nightmares every night for one year afterwards about the walking through Millfield and the evil eyes of the man who held me. For a long time afterwards I was suspicious of strangers when I was walking outdoors. I know we should not have walked through Millfield but I suppose it was a case of believing that it happened to other people and it would not happen to us. It was silly. I did not know the area and at the time I was more frightened of a parked car for fear it might contain a bomb. Also in my thoughts is Stephen’s feeling that someone was going to kill him. I never understood it. At his funeral a member of his family turned to me and asked, ‘Why did you do it?’ I took this to mean that I was responsible for him walking me home that evening. I felt very guilty because he might have remained at the party if he had not been obliged to take me home. I remember walking towards Millfield and knowing that if only we had the money we would have taken a taxi. I will never forget reaching the Millfield junction with Stephen. The traffic lights turned green and he said, ‘The lights are turning green just for us.’

  When I asked Frances how she felt when she saw the killers in the dock of Crumlin Road courthouse two years later, she replied: ‘I wondered how they could have killed so many. I asked myself what drives someone to kill someone like Stephen?’

  We need to look at the statement which Moore later made to Jimmy Nesbitt to find part of the answer to Frances Tohill’s question. It will be noted that McClay is referred to as McKay in the statement. This seems to have been due either to the fact that McClay was not on police files, or that the interviewing detectives misheard Moore’s pronunciation of McClay as ‘McKay’.

  I want to tell you the whole story. I want to get it off my chest. It was Lenny Murphy who first got me involved in killings. One of the ones I did was the wee lad we picked up in Millfield and dumped him in Glencairn. I was drinking that night in one of the clubs, I think it was the Lawnbrook. I was along with Sam McAllister, John Townsley and Artie McKay. I know Artie well and I think his second name is McKay. He used to live in Winchester Street and he now lives in Antrim town. After the club finished the four of us had a chat and decided to go out and get a Taig. My motor was outside. At that time I had a beige Mark 2 Cortina. Mr A. owns it now. The four of us got into my car and I drove down the Shankill and turned into Millfield. I turned into the first street on my right, Brown Street beside the car park. I parked the car a few yards up in Brown Street from Millfield. Artie and Sam and me got out of the motor. John Townsley stayed in the motor a while, Artie, Sam and me stood against the wall at the corner of Brown Street. We seen a fellow and a girl walking along Millfield towards the Shankill. That’s why we stopped there. We were standing at the corner a couple of minutes when the fellow and girl reached us. The fellow was on the outside and the girl was walking on the inside taking his arm. They were on the same side of the street as me. We waited until they walked past and when they were about ten or twenty yards up the street we ran after them. I grabbed hold of the girl and pushed her onto the ground. I knelt beside her and held her down. Sam and Artie grabbed hold of the fellow and pulled him round the corner and put him in the motor. I let the girl go and ran back round and got into the motor. I drove up Brown Street, along Townsend Street and up the Shankill. The fellow was between Artie and Sam in the back seat and while I was driving along they hit him a couple of times. He wasn’t unconscious but he wasn’t shouting or anything. I drove to Brookmount Street and went to Mr A.’s house which is – I told him we had a Taig in the motor and he gave me a .22 pistol and a knife to do him with. I drove up into Glencairn. I drove up Forthriver Road and turned at the car park where Morrissey was found facing the community centre. Me and Artie and John Townsley took the fellow out of the motor and walked him across to the back of the community centre. I told the fellow to sit down. He sat down. I shot him once in the head just at the top. When I shot him he fell sideways on the ground. When he was lying on the ground I cut his throat. It was a butcher’s knife I had, sharp as a lance and it just slits his throat right open. We left him lying there. Sam had stayed in the motor and he drove it over beside us. I got into the driver’s seat and drove back to Mr A.’s house and gave him the gun and knife. I dropped the other three off and went home.

  In this statement Moore again proves to be a master at understating the degree of planning and thought which had been put into the killing. The choice of Brown Street had been deliberate because of its proximity to the Shankill and because it afforded cover from the main thoroughfare. It also enabled the gang to return to the Shankill without coming under scrutiny from an Army observation post situated in Unity Flats. The statement was made before Moore admitted to other murders, and it is worth noting how keen he was to blame Lenny Murphy for those crimes committed prior to Stephen McCann’s death. He produced this statement after he was ‘broken’ under interrogation by Nesbitt and Fitzsimmons and, though this will be dealt with extensively later in this book, it should be said that at the time of making this confession Moore was still trying to deceive the police about his role in many other Butcher-related crimes. He neglects to reveal the exact details of the treatment meted out to Stephen McCann in the car on the journey to Mr A.’s house and subsequently to Glencairn. His evidence about the position of the body before he used the knife is correct but he does not relate how he knelt on the ground to hack at McCann’s throat and how he rearranged the corpse before leaving the murder scene.

  The statements of his accomplices provide fewer details of the events of that night and morning. Twenty-four-year-old Artie McClay lived in Antrim, twenty miles from Belfast. He had formerly been a resident
of the Shankill Road and, despite the travel involved, returned there regularly to spend time with Moore and others. In his statement he begins by refusing to name the Lawnbrook Club and the men in his company on that night. He uses a familiar Butcher expression, namely that the motive for the trip to Millfield was to ‘pick up a Taig and give him a bit of a hiding’. The tenor of the statement is similar to that of Bates’s in that it deliberately attempts to dilute the motivation, and what eventually occurred. The frequent use of expressions such as ‘a bit of a digging’ and ‘a bit of a kicking’ was intentional and well rehearsed by all the gang. As I have pointed out, it was a means of seeking to suggest that murder was not on the agenda at the outset of each reconnoitre. Also, it could be interpreted as a means of personally distancing the killers from the horrific reality of their crimes. McClay states: ‘It was agreed among us that we would grab the first fellow who came along and give him a beating’. He claims that he took McCann to Moore’s car ‘to talk to him’ and that at Glencairn he believed that McCann was ‘going to get a good beating’. He ends his statement without mentioning that he watched the killing and adds simply that the following day he heard the news and realized that McCann was dead. He also makes the assertion, repeated by some of the other Butchers when caught, that he took part in the murder because he feared reprisals if he refused.

  At the time of Stephen McCann’s murder, William John Townsley was sixteen years of age, the youngest of the Lenny Murphy gang. He was a hardened terrorist whose height and physique gave the impression of an older man. His statement begins with an admission that he was in the Lawnbrook with the others but he claims that they ‘all got into Moore’s car to go for a bit of a run’. His statement treats the episode in a manner which suggests he did not know what was happening. He admits to witnessing McCann being shot and goes on to describe the trip from Glencairn. He then changes tactic and says, as if having remembered a vital point, ‘I forgot to mention that one of the men with me cut this man’s throat with a knife.’

  Townsley also reveals an interesting detail, not mentioned by Moore or the others, that two of the passengers in the car got out for a short time at Tennent Street while they made a phone call to the news desk of two morning newspapers to inform them of the killing. Such a call was indeed made, on behalf of an unknown grouping, to the Irish News and Belfast News Letter. His statement mentions Moore and McAllister. Mr A. is not mentioned and Arthur McClay is referred to only by his Christian name.

  ‘Big Sam’ McAllister gave police a terse statement about the crime and, like his associates, chose expressions intended to downgrade his role:

  We were drinking on the Road and we had a car. We decided to go for chips and we drove to Brown Square and Millfield. I can’t remember whether we decided to get a Taig before we saw this fellow or after. I can’t recall if we saw this fellow and girl while we were in the car but anyway the fellow and girl were coming up Millfield towards North Street. We were standing at Brown Street and they walked past. One of the boys grabbed the girl and the other two grabbed him and we put him in the car. He was asked in the car what his religion was and he got a slap up the face. We drove straight to Glencairn to up facing the community centre. The other three took him out of the car. He was walked towards the community centre. I moved into the driving seat and moved the car over to the community centre. I heard a shot and the three of them came back and got into the car. I don’t wish to name these three men. When I heard it on the news the next day I heard his name was McCann. When we took him to Glencairn we were taking him up to be shot. I’m sorry about it all. I suppose we had too much to drink.

  McAllister maintained his silence vis-à-vis the naming of accomplices in other statements given to the police. He understood well the risks of reprisal, especially had he named Mr A. However, this was not his sole reason for keeping quiet. He was a hardened criminal and someone the police considered impossible to break under questioning. They did, however, achieve this to some extent but he remained impenetrable in the face of police demands for the names of his accomplices, and those of others in UVF units. He was also meticulous in his choice of words to describe McCann’s ordeal and did not refer to the use of the knife during the car journey.

  McAllister had remained in the car at Glencairn for two reasons: Moore had told him it was necessary for McClay and Townsley to experience the killing and thus become accomplices. He was ‘blooding’ them as Murphy had done with him. McAllister was also on standby should he be required to drive the car from the scene in the event of an Army or police patrol entering Forthriver.

  The behaviour of Stephen McCann raises questions. He acted like someone bent on bringing about the realization of his own premonitions, like a fatalist who had encountered reality. Yet his death has an intense poignancy. After his murder one of his brothers recalled how he once travelled with Stephen on the Belfast-to-Liverpool ferry. It was a summer’s evening and as they made their way along the Belfast shoreline, Stephen pointed to Carnmoney Cemetery on a hillside on the outskirts of the city and said, ‘Someday I’m going be to buried there.’ He was indeed buried in that cemetery, just as he predicted. In closing this account of Stephen’s death, I shall quote some of his own words, written at the height of the Northern Ireland Troubles in August 1973, which are both revealing and nakedly poignant:

  SKIES

  In our dreams we know a man

  Who knows what life and death are all about;

  Because he’s seen them he can feel them,

  He has been them so he knows.

  We all live just for a moment

  But we know we die for ever more

  And all our dreams come true.

  The man we know so well has come to take us

  And to claim us

  And to bring us to the place where we belong

  And where we should have been the day we were born.

  But all my dreams are over now,

  I’ve lost the man who gave me life

  To use it or to abuse it,

  I returned it to him broken

  And discoloured with my sins since time began;

  But he forgave me.

  11

  A Natural Successor

  Five days before Christmas 1976, Sam McAllister decided to round off his day with a visit to a UDA club in the Shankill area. He had spent most of the evening visiting popular bars and clubs which were the haunts of Moore and Bates. After 10.00 P.M. he took the unusual step of visiting premises used only by members of the UDA. McAllister was feeling belligerent; a trait exacerbated by his abuse of alcohol. He drank for a long time on his own, standing at the bar ordering pint after pint of lager. There was little love lost between the UDA and UVF and, at various times in the 1970s, they found themselves at loggerheads over the control of various areas. The UVF viewed the UDA as an amateur organization, unaccomplished in the ways of terrorism. McAllister was regarded by the UDA in the Shankill as a ‘swaggering, boastful thug’. Because of his connections with the UVF they tolerated him. On the evening of 20 December McAllister overstepped the mark by threatening other drinkers. One man took exception to this behaviour and confronted him. The man was twenty-two-year-old Thomas Easton, a UDA volunteer from Glencairn Way. Although smaller in stature than McAllister, he felt himself able to ‘take on’ the bigger man. When the two were about to come to blows, senior members of the UDA who were drinking with their wives intervened in the dispute. It was quickly pointed out that McAllister had been the instigator and that he should be asked to leave. McAllister protested that if Easton felt he could ‘sort him out’ then they should both go outside and resolve the matter. The prospect of a lone brawl outside the club made Easton lose courage and he declined the offer. McAllister angrily left the club, hurling threats at Easton as he walked from the building, and once outside he decided not to go home but to wait for Easton to emerge at closing time.

  Shortly after 1.00 A.M. Easton left the club, alone, and was confronted by the massive
bulk of Sam McAllister who told him: ‘You can do your slabbering now.’ Then McAllister hit the smaller man several times, knocking him to the ground. While Easton lay dazed, McAllister kicked him incessantly, then he picked up a breeze block and brought it down repeatedly on Easton’s head. When he was certain that Easton was dead he picked up the body, dragged it into a nearby churchyard and went home.

  McAllister attributed the killing to drunkenness but alcohol had not rendered him incapable of going to the rear of the club to arm himself with a breeze block. The UDA demanded that the UVF punish McAllister for killing one of their members. A kangaroo court was set up by the UVF at the beginning of January 1977 to determine how McAllister should be punished for the murder. McAllister was summoned to appear and when he did so he pleaded that he had been provoked by Easton outside the club premises and that the crime was committed in self-defence and could be attributed to the effects of too much alcohol. A decision to kneecap McAllister was taken by those who sat in judgement. McAllister’s wife was expecting a child at the time and the shooting was deferred until after the birth. McAllister used the opportunity to extract a further concession for domestic reasons. He asked to be shot through the arms instead of the knees on the grounds that kneecapping would cripple him and render him incapable of helping his wife after the birth of the child. His request was acceded to and he was shot through the arms with a .22 pistol two months later. The wounds were minor and healed quickly. Had he been kneecapped his injuries would have been incomparably more serious.