The Shankill Butchers

by Martin Dillon

  Watt was later given nine separate life sentences but did not receive a recommended sentence. His lawyers asked for each murder charge against him to be presented separately at court hearings, with the result that he was sentenced on each charge individually. Had he pleaded guilty to nine murders during one judicial sitting, the likelihood is that he would have received a recommendation of at least twenty-five years. The fact that no recommended sentence was decreed means that his case will come up for review with the prospect that Watt may serve a great deal less than twenty-five years.

  When Leckey finally agreed to confess to the murder of Kevin McMenamin, he made a statement in which he said that in the early hours of Easter Sunday he returned home with his wife from a club and was approached by Edwards, who requested him to drive a car. They drove up the Shankill and into Ainsworth Avenue, where he stopped the car and a van passed them. He made no mention of Beechmount or of the fact that the van contained a bomb, and he named no one else but Edwards. Six hours after making this statement he told police he wished to tell the ‘whole truth’ and then named all those involved, with the exception of Mr K. to whom he attributed initials only, and Mr A. and Mr B. to whom he made no reference.

  Waugh made a statement about the same time as Leckey but was unwilling to name accomplices and expressed no regret over the killing of the boy. ‘It was the Provisionals we were after,’ he told detectives. He admitted to assisting others in unloading the bomb from the van and placing it alongside other beer kegs which formed the security barrier in Beechmount Avenue.

  Edwards also later confessed to his part in the bombing mission but refused to name his associates or express regret about the death of the ten-year-old.

  Mr A., Mr B., Mr K. and Mr L. were never charged in connection with this crime.

  13

  The Ultimate Witness

  By the beginning of May 1977 Jimmy Nesbitt and his team were no closer to catching the Butchers than they had been at the commencement of the cut-throat killings. The Press continued to publish speculative stories about them. The Irish News carried a story claiming that the residents of the Glencairn area, where most of the bodies had been dumped, had asked for greater police and Army security. The newspaper said it was informed by the RUC that the ‘mad butcher’ was believed to be a resident of Glencairn. The same newspaper carried a report that a well-known priest, Father Denis Faul from Dungannon in County Tyrone, had received information from sources in Belfast that the ‘knife-man was known to operate in the Carlisle Circus area, was aged about fifty, and wore a surgical collar’.

  It was also the Irish News which in February 1977 reported the following:

  Father Faul said he was disappointed to note in the reports of a Security Review at Stormont that no reference was made to the barbaric murder of Mr Joseph Morrissey or to the psychopath murderer operating in the Shankill/ Glencairn areas of the city. The public would have been reassured, he said, if the Security Committee was taking these gruesome murders of Catholics seriously. He asked if Consultant Psychologists had been asked to provide a mental identikit picture and whether the records of known psychopaths, with a tendency to use knives, had been checked out.

  This report also contained claims by Father Faul, a man well-known in the Province for making statements to the media about what he sees as injustices, that bloodstains found where the victims lay would be vital evidence. A police spokesman replied to the Irish News report by saying that no dramatic developments were expected immediately but detectives were confident that they would eventually find ‘a pointer to the killer and his accomplices’.

  The reaction of the police and the comments of Father Faul, some of which were naïve but understandable, represented a situation which, by May 1977, showed no signs of change. In the office of C Division murder squad, Nesbitt and those men close to him, such as Fitzsimmons, Chambers, Reid and Scott, believed they had covered all the groundwork necessary for the much-needed breakthrough in the case.

  Nesbitt expresses his feelings about this period as follows: ‘You have to understand that we needed a break. We were just waiting for our luck to change. All we needed was one clue. Imagine that above my office was a large balloon filled with lots of information but none of it is vital until I can find the device to prick the balloon. Oh, I knew once I found that device, literally a piece of evidence, I would be able to burst that balloon and everything needed for a successful resolve to the cut-throat killings would be there at our disposal. People forget that, when you are not able to catch criminals, you acquaint yourself with every scrap of detail available, even though it may not have significance at the time, so that when the lucky break comes along you are prepared.’

  At 4.30 A.M. on 11 May Jimmy Nesbitt was in bed at home when he was awakened by a telephone call from the duty inspector in Tennent Street station. He remembers the context of that call, which was to have considerable bearing on his professional life: ‘The duty inspector told me that there was a serious assault in an alleyway off Emerson Street on the Shankill Road and the victim, who was found unconscious, had been taken to the Royal Victoria Hospital.’

  Nesbitt admits that he did not see any significance in this communication at the time because such assaults were commonplace in the Shankill area: ‘It was a way of life in that district but the reason why I was phoned was because I requested that every serious assault be referred to me because of the Butcher killings. However, I must be honest and say that call at the time was not terribly meaningful. I did, however, ask for two detectives, not from the murder squad, to spend part of their night-duty hours by making their way to the Royal Victoria Hospital to check it out as a matter of routine.’

  When Nesbitt arrived in the station a few hours later he was informed that the two detectives had been refused admission to talk with the assault victim because he had been placed in intensive care. They had, however, established the identity of the victim as twenty-year-old Gerard McLaverty. Nesbitt admits that at this stage he did not link the assault with his Butcher investigations. On 16 May he dispatched two other detective constables, Turner and Coulter, to the Royal Victoria Hospital on behalf of CID (not the murder squad) to investigate the ‘serious angle’ to the McLaverty case; ‘serious angle’ referred simply to the gravity of the crime rather than any added significance. Retrospectively one might have expected Jimmy Nesbitt to be alerted by the fact that McLaverty was a Catholic but on the other hand past experience of Butcher attacks confirmed that victims were never left alive.

  Detective Constables Turner and Coulter were eventually given access to McLaverty, who was released from intensive care and permitted to speak with them. Immediately upon their return to the station they informed Nesbitt that McLaverty had knife wounds to both wrists. Nesbitt recalls that moment vividly: ‘As soon as they told me he had been slashed, my thoughts were that here was something sinister. Bells began to ring in my head. I summoned John Scott and briefed him on the fact that there was something more to this one and, knowing his experience, I directed him to accompany Turner and Coulter to the hospital to interview Gerard McLaverty.’

  John Scott returned to Nesbitt’s office within an hour with McLaverty’s account of how four men, posing as Tennent Street detectives, kidnapped him at gunpoint on the Cliftonville Road and drove him to the Shankill area.

  Nesbitt says: ‘I knew we were onto something. I contacted the hospital and asked if McLaverty was well enough to be released and was told he could be signed out the following day, 17 May. On the morning of that day I instructed Roy Turner and his colleague to collect McLaverty and bring him to me. When he arrived I made him feel at ease and talked to him at length about his experience. When he had finished telling me his story, I went into my boss and said, “We’ve got the big one”.’

  During McLaverty’s session with Nesbitt he told his story, which he later put into a written statement:

  On 10 May I was living alone in a flat in Belfast. I left the flat at 6.30 P.M. and went to a f
riend’s house on the Antrim Road. I stayed there until approximately 11.30 P.M. when I left accompanied by two girls and I walked with them to the junction of Cliftonpark Avenue and the Cliftonville Road. The girls turned up Cliftonpark Avenue and I turned down the Cliftonville Road towards the Antrim Road. As I walked past the Belfast Royal Academy I saw a yellow Cortina car. It was parked on the opposite side of the road with its lights out. It was facing up the Cliftonville Road. I could see two men in the front of this car and at the same time two men walked towards me on the same footpath on which I was standing. I had seen this car draw up while I was walking and had seen these two men get out. I then saw them cross the road and walk towards me. I was the only person on the street at the time. I would describe one of these men as large and fat. The two men stopped me and the large, fat man told me they were from the CID Tennent Street. They then asked me for my identification. I showed my diary with my name on it to the fat man. I then felt the fat man put a gun in my back. He ordered me to go to the yellow Cortina across the road. As I was getting into the back of the car I could see the gun in his hand. I got into the back seat of the car and the fat man got in also and sat on my right The other man got into the car and sat on my left. There were already two men in the car. I said to the fat man, ‘I’ve done nothing to be picked up’. He said: ‘We are taking you to Tennent Street to check you out and then we will drive you home again.’ He then put the gun in his inside jacket pocket. None of the others spoke. The car did a U-turn on the Cliftonville Road, drove down the Antrim Road to Carlisle Circus, up the Crumlin Road to Cambrai Street and along Cambrai Street to the Shankill Road. The car then turned left into a street off the Shankill Road and stopped on the right-hand side of that street. No one spoke to me during the journey. I was stopped at the side door of a building which fronted onto the Shankill Road. The man sitting on my left got out of the car and I saw him opening this side door with a key. It appeared to me to be a steel- or metal-covered door because it rattled when it opened. While this was going on the fat man told me that I would be going into the building and would be kept there to get more details. We all got out of the car. The two men in front of the car took one of my arms each and marched me into the building. The fat man came behind. When I got into the room, the fat man said: ‘You’re staying here.’ I saw a dining room chair and two electric heaters in the room. They made me sit on the chair. There was what looked like a shop counter in the room. The fat man said: ‘We’re gonna check up on you and we won’t be back till the morning.’ They did not go out The fat man and the car driver went behind the counter and came back with sticks. The stick that the fat man had had a nail driven through the end of it. They both started beating me around the head with the sticks. I put up my hands to protect my eyes. I was afraid of the nail in the fat man’s stick piercing my eyes. The fat man said: ‘Get your fuckin’ hands down or we’ll give you more.’ I started to squeal with fear and pain and they stopped beating me. They had a teapot and a kettle and the driver of the car went and made some tea. The fat man asked me if I wanted tea and I refused. I said: ‘I want to go home’. The fat man said: ‘You are not going home. There is no way you are getting out of this.’ They all sat and drank their tea. I was sitting in the corner and they were all sitting watching me. When they had finished their tea, they put their cups away and came back to me. The driver punched me on the side of the face and eye with his fist. I was knocked onto the floor and he took his heel and drove it into the side of my face. They set me down on the chair again and the driver of the car took the lace out of his right boot. He gave it to the fat man and then they held my hands behind my back. The fat man held me and tied the lace loosely round my neck. Throughout this the other men did not touch me but they stayed at one of the two doors in the room. When the lace had been tied loosely round my neck, the other two men left and locked the door from the outside. The fat man and the car driver had broken open the other door before the first two left. When I was alone with the fat man and the car driver they took me out of this open door into an entry. The yellow Cortina was in the street at the end of that entry. At this time the fat man had a large clasp knife. The driver tightened the lace around my neck and the fat man started slashing at my clothes with the knife. With the tightening of the lace around my neck I lost consciousness. When I regained consciousness I was lying in the entry. There was a crowd of people around me and I was taken by ambulance to the Royal Victoria Hospital. Both my wrists were severely slashed and my neck was sore and swollen. I would describe the fat man as being twenty-four-years old, tall and fat. He was wearing a black leather jacket and black trousers. I think he was wearing a jumper. At one time I saw his right arm and he seemed to have a scar inside opposite his elbow. I would describe the driver as being about twenty-five to twenty-six years old, tall, of medium build and longish hair. He was wearing a brown leather jacket and blue trousers. It was the fat man and the car driver who attacked me. I would describe one of the other two men as small, of light build and about twenty-two years old. He was wearing a white jacket.

  Nesbitt recognized that McLaverty was exhausted after giving his account of events and thought it would be unfair and unwise to attempt to extract any further revelations from him at that point. It could be argued that he should have shown McLaverty photographs of known terrorists but Nesbitt believes that such a course of action would have been foolish and says: ‘At that stage I knew firstly that he was tired. I felt that he needed a rest since his injuries were only six days old. There was no question, anyway, of showing him photographs because the investigation was at too early a stage for that procedure. I knew from experience that producing photos for identification at a primary stage can later damage positive identification evidence. I was thinking: “This guy can identify these men if we can catch them. If I show him photos and he later identified them, it could be argued that the identification was based on his seeing the photos.” I knew what I wanted and there was no way I was going to jeopardize the potential that McLaverty presented to me.’

  McLaverty for his part asked Nesbitt if he could leave the station and return home for a rest but Nesbitt told him that his safety was of paramount importance. Further, he could not be permitted to return to the Antrim Road area because his attackers had possession of his diary and therefore his address, and would by this time know that he was still alive and a potential witness against them. Nesbitt also pointed out that it would be impossible to give him ideal security in the Antrim Road area because it would expose policemen to attacks from the IRA. McLaverty suggested going to his mother’s home in – (a town in County Antrim which I prefer not to name to preserve Mrs McLaverty’s privacy and because Gerard McLaverty may still be a marked man). McLaverty assured Nesbitt that his mother and other members of the family had only recently moved to the town and were not known to other residents in their neighbourhood. Nesbitt agreed to this alternative because he felt that McLaverty required the comfort and security of his family after such a terrible ordeal. Police in the town were contacted and said that they were unaware that the McLaverty family had moved into the area. This satisfied Nesbitt who ordered an armed guard to be placed discreetly round the house and surrounding neighbourhood as an added protection.

  By now Nesbitt felt he was ‘getting closer to something big’ though he would not have defined McLaverty’s evidence as leading directly to the cut-throat murderers. He felt there were clues which could possibly lead him in that direction.

  The following morning he instructed Detective Constables Turner and Coulter to collect McLaverty from his mother’s house and drive him to the precise point on the Cliftonville Road where he was abducted. They encouraged him to retrace the route taken by the Cortina and, if possible, to lead them to the building where he had been held. McLaverty, with the events of the night of 10–11 May etched on his mind, was eventually able to guide them to a disused doctor’s surgery at the corner of Emerson Street on the Shankill Road. The satisfied detectives returned t
o Tennent Street with their charge and informed Nesbitt that McLaverty had been able to show them the route taken by his attackers and the very building in which he had been beaten. Nesbitt reacted with the speed and professionalism of a detective of many years experience. ‘I know what we’ll do,’ he told Turner and Coulter, ‘we’ll take full advantage of the massive identification parade on the Shankill Road and, if McLaverty is as good as he says he is, then we should have results.’

  Turner and Coulter looked at Nesbitt, not understanding the full significance of what he was saying. Nesbitt explained: ‘Look, there are lots of people on the Shankill Road at the moment, many of them members of the UDA and UVF. That is our identification parade. Take an unmarked car, put Gerard in it, but put a hat on him and dark glasses as a disguise, and do a tour of the Road.’

  Nesbitt’s thinking was simple but clever. At that time the Province was experiencing its second general strike, the first having occurred in 1974. This second strike, though it failed after two weeks, resulted in the mobilization of Loyalist paramilitaries at a time most expedient for Nesbitt’s purposes. On 18 May the Shankill Road was full of members of the UDA and UVF, many of them simply standing at street corners.

  As Turner and Coulter drove McLaverty down the Shankill Road he indicated that two men walking along the pavement were the ‘fat man’ and another of the gang described in his account to Nesbitt. Turner knew he had to be sure and drove the car past a second time to allow more certain identification. McLaverty had no doubts. Turner and Coulter would have liked more than anything at that moment just to stop the car and apprehend the two men, whom they knew to be Samuel McAllister and Benny Edwards. However, Nesbitt had warned them to observe but not to act. This was shrewd advice because to have attempted to arrest the two suspects, with paramilitaries out on the street, would have put McLaverty’s life in mortal danger. Instead, they returned in haste to the station to inform Nesbitt. Nesbitt says that at that moment he knew he had made the breakthrough to the Butchers. When he first mentioned this to me I was puzzled about why the identification of two men should bring him to such a conclusion. He replied that during that day he had dwelt on McLaverty’s story and, by the time Turner and Coulter returned from the Shankill, he had accepted that the facts of the case pointed to the Butchers. He went immediately to the office of his Divisional Commander and told him that he believed he now ‘had the link’ which would lead him to the cut-throat gang. He outlined the McLaverty case and the identification of the two men and requested that an arrest and search operation take place the following morning. He also decided to include William Moore in the arrest operation because, he says, of McLaverty’s mention of a yellow Cortina. If Moore was known to Nesbitt’s murder squad, as this decision implies, it prompts the question why the sighting of a yellow Cortina on the night of the Cassidy killing was not investigated. I have commented on this earlier and given reasons for the lead not having been followed up. Now it seems the police knew that Moore owned a yellow Cortina. I believe there was more to the decision to arrest Moore than the fact that he owned a Cortina. He was, in fact, a prime suspect in relation to serious crimes other than the Butcher murders. At the very least, he would have been known as an associate of McAllister and Edwards. I can only assume that his arrest came about as a result of the previous interview when his taxi was tested after the Rice murder. Presumably all such information would be on file, together with details of the Cortina which replaced the taxi. These details would have permitted positive identification of the Cortina mentioned by McLaverty. Nesbitt has not commented on my analysis of what led to the arrest other than to reiterate that he was arrested because he owned a yellow Cortina. It is interesting to note, however, that Nesbitt also told me that his murder squad ‘knew a lot about everybody’.