The simple explanation may, in fact, be that Moore was known to drive frequently around the Shankill area in his car and in this way had come to the notice of the police. However, I do believe that Nesbitt and his team had long harboured suspicions about Moore and his associates, but to convert such suspicions into hard evidence had been too difficult.
Whatever the truth of this matter, Nesbitt decided to act quickly. He picked three parties of men, made up of detectives and uniformed staff, and briefed them on the search operation he had in mind. He told them that the homes of McAllister, Moore and Edwards were their targets and the three were to be arrested. The operation was scheduled for 5.15 A.M., a time when Moore and his associates would least expect such an operation and when there would be no paramilitaries on the streets to impede their arrest.
McLaverty was kept for his own safety in Tennent Street Station that night. Nesbitt believed he was closing in on his targets, and his precious witness had to be prevented from placing himself at risk at this critical stage.
At 5.15 A.M. three separate parties of detectives and uniformed officers left Tennent Street, each one under instruction to search the respective houses for knives. When an arrest party arrived at Edwards’s house they found he was not at home and his wife explained that they had had a marital dispute the previous evening because of ‘Benny’s womanizing’ and he had stormed out of the house. The premises were searched but nothing found and a communication was issued to all patrols to arrest him on sight.
Moore was at home and was arrested under Section 12 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act 1976, which gives police the right to hold a suspect for questioning for seven days. The house was searched, much to the surprise and consternation of Moore’s elderly mother, and Moore was arrested and taken to Tennent Street. He feigned surprise at his arrest and protested that he was an innocent man who was being wrongly ‘lifted’.
Detective Constable Matt Russell of the murder squad was given the task of leading a search and arrest party to McAllister’s home at 23 Lawnbrook Street. McAllister and his wife were in bed when police arrived and he complained strongly that the search was an intrusion into his privacy but added that he had nothing to hide. Matt Russell was not convinced by McAllister and, with the assistance of Detective Constable George Mason, he searched the marital bedroom. To his astonishment, he found a butcher’s knife sticking out of the floorboards beside the bed. Detective Constable Mason found another such knife under the bed. In a cupboard in the kitchen, Matt Russell found two butcher’s knives and a butcher’s steel for sharpening the knives. McAllister was arrested and Russell hastened back to Tennent Street to present the knives to Jimmy Nesbitt.
Nesbitt says that when Russell entered his office he told him that he could not believe his luck at finding the knives. He added that when McAllister was asked why he had the knives in his possession he had replied that they were for his protection in the event of the IRA attacking him in his own home.
Nesbitt was triumphant but told his men not to think too far ahead because the primary objective was to obtain a breakthrough on the McLaverty case, after which, he felt sure, other things would fall into place. He ordered an immediate examination by a forensic team of the disused doctor’s surgery where McLaverty had been held captive.
At the next stage of the proceedings Nesbitt displayed a characteristic which had helped make him one of the most popular and respected detectives in the Station. He asked for Roy Turner, and other men who were not in the murder squad but had provided valuable assistance, to be made available to him for the remainder of the investigation. This opportunity to experience ‘a slice of the action’, as Turner put it, was welcomed with enthusiasm by all. Roy Turner was given the task of finding Moore’s Cortina, which was not at his home but in the keeping of an associate. Turner collected it and took it to the Department of Industrial and Forensic Science for examination.
The knives were conveyed to the same department and all the exhibits were tested for blood by Richard McClean, a member of the forensic science staff. His tests on Moore’s car produced the following evidence: ‘I found no blood on the inside surface of this car. On the rubber mat lining of the boot and on the rubber seal of the boot I found evidence of blood staining. There was widespread blood staining on the rubber mat taken from the boot. This blood and blood on the rubber seal of the boot gave reactions consistent with it being sheep blood. [No explanation was ever sought for the unusual presence of sheep’s blood in the car and I was unable to discover the reason for the find.] There was nothing of apparent significance from any of the items in the car, except for fibres found in the car which matched those taken from a boiler suit worn by Gerard McLaverty.’
McClean also examined the knives, which ranged in size from six inches to ten inches and bore the marks of having been well honed and used in the butchery trade. The sharpener showed signs of heavy use. No blood traces were found on any of these items.
Nesbitt was not unduly concerned with these results. He was occupied at this stage with selecting men to carry out the interrogations of McAllister and Moore, which were scheduled to begin that afternoon. Nesbitt stressed to the men assigned the task that they were to proceed only on the McLaverty assault. He briefed the interrogating officers in the following manner: ‘McAllister is well known to me and previous interviews with him have proved exceedingly difficult because there was never evidence. He is a tough nut to crack but we know we have something in our favour and that is the clear identification by McLaverty. Be confident but take it slowly. Concentrate on the McLaverty business and, in Moore’s case, on the fact that his car was used in the abduction.’
Moore and McAllister were taken across Belfast to Castlereagh Holding Centre where most terrorist suspects are questioned. The building is custom-built with scores of interrogation rooms. Here, Nesbitt would have the assistance of officers from the Regional Crime Squad who were skilled in interrogation techniques, though Nesbitt wanted his own men to make the initial breakthrough which would unravel the cut-throat murders.
A concern of Nesbitt’s at this time was the safety of Gerard McLaverty. The arrests of Moore and McAllister, according to him, would have ‘hit the streets’ by breakfast time, thus making McLaverty a target for UVF circles. Nesbitt discussed this with McLaverty but the young man seemed unable to recognize the dangers and exhibited no sense of self-preservation. He was no longer in police custody and was free to leave Tennent Street Station at any time. Nesbitt says: ‘I was concerned to make proper arrangements for his safekeeping but this proved difficult because of his behaviour. I could not restrain him but only offer guidance and sound advice, which he ignored. In the days that followed he slipped away and wandered the streets of Belfast. The moment when I panicked was when I received a call that he was in a bar in the Loyalist area of Sandy Row near Belfast city centre discussing his ordeal with people unknown to him. Luckily, someone in the bar had the sense to phone the RUC, and subsequently myself. He could have been blown away and we would have had no witness and been left with a statement which had not even been registered with the court. I decided that the only way to protect him was to remove him from the jurisdiction of Northern Ireland to the Irish Republic. I made enquiries, we supplied him with a sum of money and placed him in an institution run by a religious order in Dublin. Even after that, he telephoned me on a number of occasions, having returned to Belfast. Each time this happened, I sent Coulter and Turner to pick him up and drive him to the border and put him safely on a train to Dublin. I always selected those two detectives because they were the first guys to meet him.’
Because of his concern about McLaverty, Nesbitt used unorthodox means to circumvent the complexities of the legal system – a necessary step at the time. Although not normal practice, he took McLaverty to a remand court and converted his statement into a deposition, which was the only way to preserve his evidence in the event of the young man being murdered. The deposition did not differ markedly from his initial s
tatement but there were several interesting details which emerged in his second telling of the story. In the first account he had said he was at a friend’s house on the evening of 10 May. In the deposition he revealed that he had in fact spent the whole evening in the Simon Community on the Antrim Road. McLaverty, who was unemployed at the time, was a frequent visitor to this charitable centre, where he was often provided with food or given small sums of money. Another detail which he had omitted from the statement was the fact that while being held and beaten in the disused surgery he was questioned about membership of the IRA and whether he knew of anyone involved with the Provisionals.
McAllister’s interrogation began at exactly 3.15 P.M. on 19 May. The following is an account of how the interview progressed, taken from notes made at the time by Detective Constable Raymond Coulter:
On 19 May at 3.15 P.M., accompanied by Detective Sergeant Stockdale and Detective Constable Turner, I saw Samuel McAllister in the Police Office at Castlereagh. Detective Sergeant Stockdale identified us to McAllister and fingerprinted him and Detective Constable Turner completed crime forms. Detective Sergeant Stockdale informed McAllister that we were making enquiries into the attempted murder of a Gerard McLaverty on the night of 10–11 May and cautioned him. McAllister replied: ‘I was at home in bed with my wife and if you ask her she will tell you.’ We then informed McAllister that on 11 May this person, McLaverty, was picked up on the Cliftonville Road, badly beaten and left for dead. We informed McAllister that on 18 May at approximately 10.10 A.M. he was one of a group of men who were seen outside the Stadium Cinema on the Shankill Road and that he had been positively identified as one of the men who took part in this attempted murder. McAllister told us that McLaverty was wrong and he was nowhere near it. He was asked by Constable Turner if he had scars on either arm. McAllister pulled up a sweater he was wearing and showed us a scar which was on the inside and outside of his left elbow. He stated that these scars were caused by gunshot wounds. We called for a photograph to be taken of these scars and continued to question McAllister strenuously about this incident but he equally strenuously denied being involved in it. He maintained throughout the interview that he was at home. At 5.45 P.M. Detective Sergeant Stockdale left the room and Detective Constable Turner and I continued the interview. McAllister still denied being involved and told us that he was at home with his wife that night and the reason why he was so sure of that was that he had stopped going out at night because he had been the subject of a punishment shooting and he was scared that something more serious might happen to him. The interview terminated at 6.30 P.M. and McAllister was returned to his cell.
Meanwhile, Nesbitt and Fitzsimmons were about to concentrate their efforts on Moore. This duo of interrogators shared a wealth of experience in dealing with terrorists and Moore was undoubtedly aware of the formidable opponents he was about to face. Nesbitt led the questioning with constant interjections by John Fitzsimmons. They harassed, cajoled and convinced Moore they had a store of evidence and that he would be well advised to admit to his part in the abduction of McLaverty. Nesbitt told him they had McAllister in custody, that he had been identified and that he was ‘grassing’ on the others. Unlike McAllister, Moore was not resilient, and Nesbitt knew this. Both detectives told him he would go down on the attempted murder charge but if he admitted that he had driven the car which McLaverty clearly identified as belonging to him, he might be able to plead to a lesser charge. Within an hour Moore admitted that he had been one of the four men involved in the kidnapping, and he made a statement:
Four of us went out last Tuesday night. We were in my yellow Cortina car. We went to the town of Holywood in County Down and visited nearly every pub in it. We left Holywood about twelve midnight when the bars shut and headed back to Belfast. On the way home somebody said: ‘Come on and we’ll knock the bollocks out of a Taig.’ We drove onto the Cliftonville Road. We saw this fellow come down the Cliftonville Road on his own. He was on the opposite side of the road from us over by the school. Two of the boys got out of the car and went over to him. We did a U-turn on the road and drove over beside him. I was driving and two of the others got out and went over and spoke to him. I don’t know what they said to him but he just got in. There was no fight or anything. We drove off and one of the boys said: ‘Take him to the wee place at the corner of Emerson Street.’ I drove there and we took him in. We gave him a digging. I had a stick and I hit him with it. We then took him out the side door into Emerson Street, down Riga Street and up Carnan Street into an entry. We took him to the corner of the entry and knocked his bollocks in. I had a knife. I hit him with it in the wee place in Emerson Street. I think I hit him with it on the back of the hand. It was a penknife and I didn’t cut or slash him. I remember I didn’t.
Nesbitt knew, of course that Moore had cut both McLaverty’s wrists before he left the alleyway in Carnan Street. Had a butcher’s knife been available in place of the penknife, Moore would have cut his throat. Nesbitt was now almost certain he had the cut-throat murderer sitting before him.
Moore completed his statement at 10.05 P.M. and Nesbitt immediately asked him if he had ever worked as a butcher, to which Moore replied: ‘I worked at Woodvale Meats and one of the butchers there showed me how to do the job and let me help him’. When asked if he had ever kept butchery knives in his home Moore replied that he had not. Nesbitt and Fitzsimmons continued to probe this issue but without ever alluding to the cut-throat killings. Of the interview, Nesbitt says: ‘We let him know we were on to him but there was no question of us confronting him with the major crimes for a while. We wanted him to ponder on his situation and the fact that we might just have hidden evidence to connect him with other things. This was our way of making him sweat it out.’
When Nesbitt left the interview room he summoned two of his most experienced men, Detective Sergeants Cecil Chambers and John Scott, to instruct them in the methods of interrogation to be used on McAllister. In two four-hour sessions they followed Nesbitt’s advice and extracted this statement:
Me and two other fellows went to Holywood for a drink. We left the bar after closing time and the three of us had a fair amount of alcohol. We were looking for a chippy. We ended up on the Cliftonville Road. We were coming up the Cliftonville Road from the Antrim Road when we seen this man walking down the Cliftonville Road on the right hand side. He looked like a Provy and we turned round and came down behind him. We asked him if he would come with us and he got into the car voluntarily. We took him into the Shankill and took him into a place at the bottom of Emerson Street and the Shankill Road. We took him inside. We just questioned him about arms dumps belonging to the Provisionals or any other Republican Movements. I know it wasn’t right questioning him about anything but it was only that we had too much alcohol on us at the time. During the questioning, I hit him a smack up the ears and asked him if he was involved with the provisionals. He replied, ‘Yes.’ I had a bit of wood in my hand and it is possible that I may have struck him with it at some stage. During this time I went out and made tea. He was still being questioned by two other fellows. When the tea was ready, they stopped questioning him. We kept him on a chair in the room for about an hour and a half. I want to state that in that room there was no guns and two other fellows with the man started to walk up Emerson Street. One of the fellows with me took the shoelace out of his boots. We turned left into Riga Street and into Carnan Street. While this was all happening, at no time did I have a knife. One of the others might have had a knife. It would only have been a short-blade knife. I stood at Paris Street for about three minutes. The other two fellows came back to me and told me that the other boy had got a bit of a digging. We all split up and I walked home.
The Shankill Butchers Page 27