My routine was mind-numbingly boring. After the incidents with the two Republicans I vowed I would survive the PSU. I knew the boards had the potential to break men, but I was determined that I wouldn’t be one of them.
I gradually built up a relationship with a couple of the day screws that worked the PSU. They would keep me informed of developments and new arrivals to the unit. They were my eyes and ears and supplied me with gossip.
Six months into my remand, the Governor said I had a visitor. He was introduced as Head of the Board of Prison Visits. In walked John Alderdice. He asked how the Crum authorities were treating me and I said it was fine. He said that any time I needed anything or needed his help, I just had to ask. I thanked him for his kindness and generosity and was very tempted to say, ‘Are you still living at – ?’, but didn’t. When Alderdice left the room I heard the Governor say to him, ‘He has been in the segregation unit for six months and I don’t know how he does it.’
It was my radio that announced the imminent arrival of Sean O’Callaghan. The high-ranking PIRA man was also an RUC informer. He gave himself up after walking into a police station in Tunbridge Wells and confessing to several murders. O’Callaghan was immediately sent back to Northern Ireland and the authorities had him sent to the Crum. I quizzed my screw friends and they confirmed O’Callaghan was being put in the PSU for his own safety. He was an informer and his Special Branch handlers were expecting big things from him. His life was in danger from his own people on the Republican wings and the rumour was they would have him killed for bringing the Republican movement into disrepute.
The screws pointed out O’Callaghan’s cell to allow me to have a look at him during my unlock time. He was sitting on his bed smoking a Marlboro. There were several boxes of them scattered over the bed, and plastic bags full of chocolate bars. I kept a close ear on radio bulletins, but there was no mention of O’Callaghan and there were no revelations of arms finds or new information leading to the arrest of Republicans. It was as if O’Callaghan didn’t exist. I couldn’t understand why a high-profile Republican prisoner had faded completely into the background. I was six months into my own remand and still the subject of heated arguments on the radio. Sean O’Callaghan was a mystery.
The screws kept me informed of his routine. They told me that his health was failing. First he was limping, so the prison authorities gave him a walking stick to help him move around his cell. The following week he had a second stick and two weeks later the prison doctors gave him crutches. Within six weeks of arriving in the Crum, he was confined to a wheelchair. The screws told me he had a bad back, wore a medical corset and was on medication.
O’Callaghan was a Republican soldier and he killed indiscriminately. A former Special Branch detective died at his hands. He used a mortar bomb and killed a UDR woman soldier. He was an informer and the authorities appeared to be taking their time deciding what to do with him, if they were going to do anything with him at all. Perhaps he was in the PSU as part of a bigger plan, to stop me going into the dock.
In the meantime I was going to have fun at O’Callaghan’s expense. I managed to read his mail. The letters were mostly from Republican supporters in County Kerry, but there were other letters from Dublin and even Belfast. Comments in them such as ‘keep the chin up’, ‘we’re thinking of you’, ‘you’re a good lad and keep thinking of the cause’ and ‘we know you’ll come through this’ gave me plenty of entertainment. I would shout at him, ‘I’m going to booby-trap your wheelchair, you Provie bastard.’ I didn’t trust the informer tag the authorities wove into O’Callaghan’s new prison identity. He was in the PSU for a reason. I believe that reason was to kill me. I had a feeling the bad back and wheelchair were not genuine, and there was still no mention of him on news programmes.
Night and day I taunted O’Callaghan. I banged the cell pipes non-stop to hammer home my mantra: ‘Se-an, Sea-aa-annn. There’s only one thing worse than a Provie and that’s a Provie tout. I know why you are in here, you piece of shit. Did your leadership send you in here to take me out?’ His only reply was, ‘Leave me alone’ and ‘I’m going to complain to the Governor.’
He had mysterious visits, always around midnight. His visitors didn’t come in the main door of the PSU but through a side door linking the cells to the dog-run. There were three different voices, one English, one Irish and one local. I could hear the rustle of plastic bags containing his chocolates and cigarettes.
O’Callaghan spent eight long weeks on the boards before losing the plot. The boards broke him. It was early one weekday morning. The alarm went off, and I heard prison officers trying to restrain O’Callaghan and calm him down, but he was shouting at the top of his voice that he didn’t kill anyone and was ‘here to kill Michael Stone’. He kept shouting that he didn’t kill that detective and the woman soldier. The commotion continued for hours. I was locked in my cell, so I pressed my face up against the bars to try to see what was happening, but I couldn’t see anything. I could hear raised voices, official voices and O’Callaghan’s hysterical voice arguing back. I asked the screws to let me out. They told me that was impossible. They told me to sit quietly in my cell and behave myself.
Four hours later I still hadn’t been let out of my cell. I hadn’t eaten, I hadn’t showered and I hadn’t slopped out. The screws told me that I couldn’t go anywhere until things had calmed down. It was lunchtime when two of the three strange accents could be heard, the English and the Irish. I strained my ears to listen. Perhaps his visitors – I believed they were his police handlers – could shed light on the mystery.
One of the official-sounding voices asked O’Callaghan what was wrong with him and I could hear his answer. He didn’t want to go down for life, he didn’t kill those people and he was here to take Stone out. The second voice told him to settle down and not ‘fuck things up’.
By four in the afternoon O’Callaghan was gone. I was allowed out of my cell. Outside his cell, lying in a heap, were bedclothes marked with tiny drops of blood that had been smeared so as to look worse than they actually were. There was a razor, a blue plastic disposable one minus the handle. The wheelchair was in the corner of the cell and several packets of cigarettes were scattered over the mattress.
I got strip-searched three times a week. They were random, and in addition to my twice-daily morning and evening searches, so I never knew when a search was coming. O’Callaghan was supposed to have the same security procedures, so how did he get the razor in? The screw said it was probably smuggled in in the lining of his medical corset and probably travelled from England with him. I asked about the wheelchair, as O’Callaghan apparently couldn’t move without it. The screw said he miraculously didn’t need the wheelchair when he was leaving. He walked out of the PSU like an athlete with his back ramrod straight. The walking sticks, the corset and the wheelchair were all a ploy to lull me into a false sense of security. O’Callaghan had planned to strike when I was least expecting it. He would leap out of his wheelchair and slice my throat. I asked about the blood on the sheets and was told O’Callaghan cut his skin, just enough to cause bleeding but not enough to wound himself. He wanted to make it look like he was suicidal so that he could be moved from the PSU to another part of the prison.
I could see just two possibilities. One, O’Callaghan is a tout; he kills me to get back in with the IRA, which clears the debt he owes to the Republican movement. Or two, he was placed in the Crum by the security forces to have me killed. I hope it wasn’t a conspiracy to silence me, but I believe it was. I believe the RUC were unnerved when they ran checks on my conspiracy confessions. I think they did a deal with O’Callaghan: kill Stone, make it look like a fight, get yourself injured, say it was self-defence, you get your time, you get early release and we’ll give you a new life on your release. After the O’Callaghan incident there was a change of prison staff in the PSU. The old team were moved, including my pal the Beet, and were replaced by officers who never opened their mouths and never smiled.
I believe O’Callaghan went straight to the Republican wings and was welcomed with open arms by Danny Morrison. In his own book O’Callaghan tells how he wanted to smuggle in a gun and kill me and two RUC officers sent in to question him. The two policemen weren’t sent in to question him. O’Callaghan said the three deaths inside the Crum would be proof positive of his loyalties to the Republican movement. When he put the idea to Gerry Adams, Adams is believed to have replied, ‘No, no, no.’ O’Callaghan failed to mention the blade hidden inside the lining of his medical corset. He failed to mention his midnight visitors with the English and Irish accents.
Later that day the Governor came to see me and said I owed my life to the duty prison officers. I told him I owed them ‘fuck all’. I told him I knew from day one that O’Callaghan was in to take me out.
O’Callaghan couldn’t live with himself for being a tout, the lowest form of life, but he still went to court and nailed his colours to the mast. He announced he was an informer for eleven years and confirmed he had police handlers. He claimed to have saved lives, including those of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. After pleading Not Guilty to the charges, he was found guilty and sentenced to life. He was sent to Maghaberry but ended up in a psychiatric ward. He thought there was a plot to poison him. British intelligence admitted O’Callaghan was one of their main agents. Despite being given a life sentence, he served just eight years for three murders and his release had nothing to do with the early release scheme introduced as part of the Northern Ireland Peace Process. After walking out of Maghaberry a free man he became an overnight celebrity and now works as a security consultant against terrorism.
Following O’Callaghan’s release I spoke to my solicitor. I said O’Callaghan had threatened me. I’d heard him yelling at the top of his voice that he had been sent to the Crum to kill me. I wanted to take this matter much further. I had affidavits made out and tried to pursue a private prosecution, but no one would touch it. I couldn’t get anyone above my own solicitor to represent me or touch the case.
After the O’Callaghan incident I had an official visit from the Governor. He came to my cell accompanied by three prison officers and a principal officer and was holding in his hand the order to renew Rule 25. He addressed me from outside my cell. Prison staff are not allowed inside a cell. He said, ‘Michael, the Secretary of State is thinking of putting you in the general prison population. How do you feel about that?’
‘I intend surviving.’
‘What does that mean, Michael?’
‘It means, Governor, that if someone comes near me that I don’t know and can’t identify, I will take them out before they take me out.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It means, Governor, I will kill them. I am going away for the rest of my life. If I am threatened I will defend myself and I will kill to defend myself.’ He read the renewal of Rule 25 but came back to my cell the following morning. He said I would stay in the PSU until my trial.
A six-foot by ten-foot windowless box was to be my home until my trial in the spring. The Governor asked me how I felt about that and I clearly remember saying I was fine. The defiant soldier in me had already kicked in. I told him I wanted my day in court.
As soon as a Republican prisoner was sent to the PSU I went into overdrive. I was fine-tuned for signs of danger and threats to my safety. Many prisoners like to ‘work their ticket’, pretending to be mad in order to get into the PSU. I was suspicious of all new Republican arrivals, especially those the screws said were ‘acting up’ on the wings.
Tommy McGrath was the latest recruit. He was serving a double life sentence for the murder of a UDR soldier and his son, William and Leslie Corrigan, who were shot dead in County Armagh in 1976. McGrath was sentenced to life and had served some eleven years but his mind was affected. He attacked a screw in the prison hospital and the authorities sent him to the boards for three days as punishment. McGrath was the subject of a television documentary called Indelible Evidence. The programme revealed how the RUC caught him and got a conviction with an imprint of his teeth left on an apple found at the scene. McGrath had protruding front teeth. The programme showed how a dental expert built a cast from the tooth imprint and this nailed him to the double murder. McGrath had left his personal calling card when he murdered the father and son.
The screws said he was mad, went nuts on the wing, was carrying his excrement on his shoulder and talking to it like it was a budgie, but I needed to be sure. After O’Callaghan, anything was possible. I had a look at him. McGrath was a wiry fellow about the same build as myself. He was very twitchy and kept jumping up and down and looking out of his viewfinder. He looked like he had overdosed on caffeine or was on drugs.
Then bizarre things started to happen in the middle of the night. One night I heard two voices. One was clearly McGrath but the other I didn’t recognise. I can still remember the ‘conversation’.
‘McGrath, we know you did it. We know you killed a UDR soldier and his son.’
‘I didn’t bite the apple, mister, that’s a lie.’
Then I heard a third voice. It was the night screw asking McGrath if he was all right. The strange voice answered, saying McGrath was fine, leave him alone and we’ll look after him. The words were followed by the crack-crack of a fist on flesh and the strange voice shouting, ‘We know you did it, you lying little Provo’, accompanied by the sound of McGrath sobbing. Next morning the screw told me McGrath spent the night interrogating himself. He used a deep voice when he was the RUC and his own voice for himself. In the days following his self-interrogation, he calmed down. When he was chilled out he asked for his guitar. He was quite good and sang Eagles and Johnny Cash songs.
McGrath asked to see a priest. The priest was brought to him and I could hear them chatting. McGrath sounded well. He even sounded happy, because faint laughter drifted through the unit. He played a couple of songs for the priest. It went quiet for a few seconds, then there was a bing-bong-bing, the sound of a guitar being smashed. The priest’s screams could be heard all over the unit. McGrath had tried to strangle the priest with a guitar string. The alarm was hit, the Ninjas stormed in, McGrath was sedated, and the priest was taken away to recover. McGrath had used a bass string. The priest would have been decapitated if he had used a treble string.
McGrath was a tight wee guy and gave a good fight. He liked to get steamed into the Ninjas, but he wasn’t well and should never have been on the punishment blocks. He should have been getting the medical attention he deserved. Soon after the priest incident, he was gone. I was told he ended up in Broadmoor, but I don’t know if this is true. I just hope the young lad got the medical attention he needed.
There was another man, a young Catholic hood who was doing time in Magilligan Prison for handling stolen goods. He was held hostage by Loyalist protesters who threatened to kill him unless they got segregation. This man was given three days on the boards but I don’t know what he did wrong. He walked with his head down and was a sad-looking figure. The screws asked me not to wind him up but I couldn’t help myself. He had a budgie and the Governor allowed him to keep the bird in his cell. The bird tweeted a lot and the hood would tweet back at it. This went on all night, so I shouted at him that if he didn’t stop the fucking tweeting I was going to kidnap the bird and smother it in onions.
The lad was on medication. The prison orderly would give him tablets every night. He only lasted two nights. On the second morning, when the screws unlocked his cell, they were confronted with a gruesome sight. He had given himself a vasectomy. He had smashed the little mirror in the budgie’s cage and used the shards of glass to cut open his scrotum and had tried to slice off one of his testicles. The screw said it had unravelled like a ball of string and was hanging down his leg. This prison officer who unlocked him threw up and had to take sick leave.
There were plenty of ‘screamers’. Philip Laffan was in for armed robbery. He was caught doing a smash-and-grab on a jewellery shop on
Royal Avenue. He was on remand and attacked prisoners and assaulted screws. He was sent to the boards, never recovered and committed suicide.
The screws had asked me to keep an eye on Laffan, befriend him and keep him occupied until his trial, which was just weeks away. I took a look in his cell one morning and saw he was sitting on his bed naked. His clothes were in shreds and he was shoving the ripped fabric into his mouth. The screws had given him a radio, exactly like the one I had in my cell, but he dismantled it and wires and batteries were all over the floor. He had even eaten bits of the plastic.
Laffan called me ‘Rambo Stone’ and pleaded with me to get him out of prison. I told him I couldn’t because we were in a high-security prison, but he didn’t understand a word of what I was saying. He just repeated the same thing over and over: ‘Rambo, Rambo Stone, you can get me out of here, please take me with you.’ The screws had told me he was likely to get four years for the robbery but he would be out in two and he would serve his time in Magilligan. I told him to try to relax, to think of his wife and daughter, not to pick fights with the screws and not to eat his clothes. He got worse, but no one seemed to care. He was awake all night, shouting at the top of his voice. The night screws ignored him, but that isn’t a surprise. They had ice water running through their veins.
Then, out of the blue, Laffan asked for food. He said he wanted sandwiches, so the screws allowed him to have a plate of bread and a tub of margarine. He seemed happy making his sandwiches until the screws looked inside his cell. He was naked and had smeared his body with the margarine. He was in one of his aggressive moods and attacked the screws, lashing out with fists and feet. Every time they tried to grab him, Laffan slipped through their fingers. He threw his cell bucket over them. The alarm was pressed and the Ninjas came thundering into the unit. They dumped him back in his cell.
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