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Showing posts with label Brandon Sullivan & Sean Bradfield. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brandon Sullivan & Sean Bradfield. Show all posts
Brandon Sullivan & Sean Bradfield 🕮 continue with their review of Martin Dillon's The Shankill Butchers.

Intro – 16th November, 1982

Today, 42 years ago, Lenny Murphy was shot and killed by an IRA unit. He was probably the highest ranking loyalist killed at that point by the IRA, and arguably the most infamous. I have been told by a prominent journalist that his house was filled with items to be given as Christmas present, all of then stolen or extorted, and that the car he was driving was likewise obtained dishonestly.

To this day, debate continues as to how the IRA managed to kill Murphy. It is widely accepted that UDA commander Jim Craig assisted them, with some within the IRA saying that Craig was sitting in an IRA man’s house at the time of the killing. The identity of the members of the unit has been difficult to ascertain. The media popularly link the late Gerard “Hucker” Moyna as being one of the gunmen, but some republican sources have disputed this. A 48 year old Protestant man, linked to Jim Craig, named David Thompson was murdered by the UVF in August 1994. The UVF claimed he had been giving the IRA information, including about Lenny Murphy for a number of years. This was disputed by relatives, who claimed he had in fact been kneecapped by the IRA.

A 25 year old Catholic man, Michael Fay, was murdered by the UVF a few days after Murphy’s killing. Fay’s murderer, Billy Giles, took his own life on the 25th September 1998. In an interview with BBC journalist Peter Taylor, he said that he “never felt like a whole person again” after committing murder.

This is a fairly long piece, which will cover two chapters of Dillon’s book. As ever, comments and questions are welcomed.

Chapter 3 – A Killer Squad is Formed

Dillon spends considerable time once again analysing the political situation in NI and also a divergence of attitudes within paramilitary loyalism. Various strands of militant loyalist thinking are discussed, all of which are interesting. It’s also worth noting that when this book was first published in 1989, analysis of the political posturing and beliefs of loyalist paramilitaries was rare in published works. Dillon quotes from a 1975 copy of Combat magazine which articulates a strategy of violent sectarian domination:

And we further hold that the lust for Republican socialism or popish nationalism on the part of our enemies is so deeply rooted in the nature and instinct that nothing less than superior force will ever induce them to abandon their assaults upon the lives and liberties of the Ulster Protestants (p53). 

The UVF’s then leader in prison, Gusty Spence, is quoted as condemning sectarian killings and, with a candour that is still striking decades later, offering this political analysis:

Insofar as people speak of fifty years of misrule, I wouldn’t disagree with that. What I would say is that we have suffered every bit as much as the people of the Falls Road, or any other underprivileged quarter and in many cases more so (p52).

Combat also carries quotes it claims come from RUC officers, saying that had the UVF focused exclusively on republican targets, then the “war would have been won in 1972.” The article did not discuss the efficacy of sectarian violence the UVF had been engaged in, which constituted the vast majority of its actions.

Murphy and his cohort didn’t have time for Spence’s developing political narrative of anti-sectarianism and class-based politics. Dillon describes Murphy as being one of the UVF members “who had joined the UVF not for a political education but to lay their hands on guns” and who had “no time for politics.” Dillon doesn’t say when Murphy got out of prison, but it was the 13th May 1975:

Lenny Murphy’s return to the Shankill Road and his traditional stomping grounds of North and West Belfast was greeted with satisfaction by many young men who needed somebody to lead them in a new campaign. Murphy decided to set up his own unit which would be solely under his control and not that of the UVF Brigade Staff in West Belfast … In the same area he found himself faced with a competing unit which operated from the Windsor Bar and was run by a man of Murphy’s generation: Anthony ‘Chuck’ Berry.

There are four elements to this paragraph that are worth discussing. First, Dillon does not refer in any part of the book to the fact that following the October 1974 Long Kesh fire Murphy and some of his supporters, as well as other anti-Spence personnel, took the opportunity to move to Magilliagan prison camp on the north coast. There he encountered a much more relaxed atmosphere where the military discipline instilled by Spence did not exist. Murphy was not an outlier in disregarding Spence's orders. At one stage the Brigade Staff, then led by a young militant from the Shankill sent a communique into Long Kesh telling Spence to “fuck off” when he asked for a television during a prison hospital stay.

Dillon’s assertion that there were loyalists “who needed somebody to lead them in a new campaign” is naive and ahistorical. Loyalists killed scores of people in 1975. Indeed, according to the imperfect CAIN website, it was the year they killed the most people (123, the same number as 1973). Everything that loyalists were doing in 1972, they were still doing in 1975, including the use of torture and knives in murders.

Secondly, Dillon’s claim that Murphy made a decision to set up a unit which was not under the control of the UVF Brigade Staff in west Belfast is questionable. A source for this information is not given. Nor is a rationale for Murphy’s alleged action. The notion that Murphy and his unit were mavericks or renegades occurs throughout the book. As previously noted, the Balaclava Street blog explained that, far from being a rogue member, Murphy held rank, occupying a powerful position at the time of his death in 1982. We do not believe that there was anything unusual about Murphy assembling his own unit – it was typical of the times and his remit - to terrorise the opposing community - would have fallen under 1st Battalion. What transpired over the following months was only differentiated from other loyalist paramilitaries by the means, not the end.

Lastly, Dillon introduces the reader to “Chuck” Berry from a “competing” UVF Unit. As we have pointed out, Chuck Berry operated with Murphy and those close to him for a time. Contemporaneous news reports exist of this, but Dillon did not reveal this in his book. There is a suggestion that it was in fact Berry that fingered Murphy for the Pavis killing and it was he whose evidence almost secured another murder charge against Murphy for a shooting carried out in Greencastle in late 1972.

The Shankill Butchers Gang is formed

We will quote Dillon’s account of how the Butchers gang came to exist. This is a collection of quotes across a number of paragraphs, but on the same theme:

Murphy knew he needed more recruits in his team if he were to have sufficient power to operate independently of the UVF leadership. He reckoned he required fifteen or twenty, of whom three or four would form an inner circle. A team of twenty would offer him protection not only from the orders of the leadership but also from ‘Chuck’ Berry’s Windsor Bar team. Murphy was fortunate in having alongside him two personal friends who were able to give him a picture of the structure of the UVF in the Shankill area, how it had changed while he was in prison, and who was available for recruitment. Two men were to be his constant support and his eyes and ears. They cannot be named here for legal reasons and will subsequently be referred to throughout this book as Mr A. and Mr B.

As previous stated, we are sceptical of Dillon’s claim that Murphy took a strategic decision to form a unit that would “operate independently of the UVF leadership.” Dillon’s book, and Roy Garland’s biography of Gusty Spence provide examples of when Murphy clashed with the UVF leadership in prison. However, as previously cited, Murphy’s internment was brought up by the loyalist politician Hugh Smyth, and a loyalist prisoners’ welfare magazine publicised and criticised his ongoing confinement.

Dillon’s theorising about Murphy setting up a unit independent of the UVF has thematic echoes of ascribing Murphy’s violent sectarian nature on his supposedly “Catholic” name. Would up to 20 men join an independent organisation, which could clash or be attacked by the much larger UVF, which it was supposedly independent from? Or for that matter the Red Hand Commando, or Ulster Defence Association?

Dillon continues:

Mr A. and Mr B. were several years older than Lenny and had remained closely in touch with him since his school days. Mr A. was a cold, astute and ruthless character who did not have the flamboyance of Lenny, but one thing they did have in common was a deep hatred of Catholics and a desire to carry out a war of attrition. Mr B. was two years older than Lenny and though not as prominent a figure as Mr A., he also detested the other community to the extent that he was willing to do whatever Lenny asked of him.

Mr B, as is now commonly known, was Lenny’s older brother John Murphy, who died in a car accident in republican west Belfast in 1997. The identity of Mr A is fairly well-known, but for legal reasons we won’t name him.

Dillon again:

Three others were chosen to form the inner circle of the unit. These three other ‘lieutenants’ had the distinction of also being well known to Murphy: Bates and McAllister, who regarded Lenny as a hero, and a third man, twenty-six-year-old William Moore, from 88 West Circular Road in Belfast. Moore was not well known to the authorities, like Bates and McAllister, but he did have a criminal record dating back to 1966.

An interesting, and not well known, fact about Basher Bates is that he was in the doomsday outfit Tara with Davy Payne. Both were also members of the UVF. They later, with a number of others, left for the UDA. Payne stayed and enjoyed the kudos of rank (it was easier to achieve authority in the often rudderless UDA), but Bates returned to the UVF. For his part Bates was a well-known and well-liked member of the Orange Order on the Shankill who had given evidence to the Scarman Tribunal in 1971 and was regarded as something of a character, having made newspaper articles in the mid-1960s for causing trouble at a Linfield away game. He was also part of a blended UVF/RHC squad who were charged with armed robbery in 1973 and was once acquitted of weapons charges, once being caught in possession of a humane killer.

Bates was also one of the UVF men chosen to speak to Irish journalist Michael Hand in 1972:

Hand later stated that he recognised Basher from seeing him at various ‘no-go’ barricades. He is also infamous for being captured in the photograph from Ardoyne during the post-internment disturbances of August 1971 which eventually formed the cover of a Dexys Midnight Runners album.

Basher at left, in suit. Roy Stewart in denims.
Bates' presence in Murphy’s unit makes a nonsense out of Dillon’s claim of independence from the UVF.

Dillon again:

By September 1975 Murphy had recruited types who would allow him to establish his dominance … their names are worth mentioning at this stage to illustrate the type of people with which Murphy surrounded himself. There was twenty-two-year-old Arthur Armstrong McClay who worked as a plasterer and who committed his first crime at the age of thirteen when he placed explosives in a letter box. He was not known to the police as someone involved in illegal activities until the time the butchers were caught.

Once again Dillon reveals that he hasn't done the most cursory of research into the individuals he is writing about; in fact, Arthur Armstong ‘Artie’ McClay was remanded in custody in October 1975, where he remained until being found not-guilty of possession of a loaded .45 revolver. His two co-defendants were found guilty, and named as UVF members.

Dillon again:

(David) McKittrick, a fine investigative journalist, was aware in the autumn of 1975 that, in his words, a ‘blood-thirsty’ leadership had taken control of the UVF which was planning a new terror campaign. The Brigade Staff called for a ‘Big Push’ for the beginning of October to give notice of their intentions … Lenny Murphy received orders to plan ‘something’ for 2 October.

This contradicts Dillon’s earlier theorising about the supposed independence of Murphy’s unit. If he was a renegade then why did Brigade Staff choose him for this “offensive”? The ‘something’ that Murphy planned was the robbery of the Catholic owned “Casey’s Wholesale Wine and Spirits establishment in the Millfield area.” The robbery, most likely by Murphy's design, turned into a quadruple murder of four politically uninvolved Catholics: two middle-aged women, and two men in their teens, all shot dead by men with Murphy. This was a shocking incident, even by the standards of Belfast in the mid-1970s.

Towards the end of this chapter, Dillon claims that:

Lenny Murphy by this time (October 1975) had his own unit firmly established and seemed beyond control. He operated as he wished and without fear of retribution either from the new leaders in his own organization or the authorities. He knew that within the UVF and within his own unit he was so feared that no one dared compromise him because of the terrible revenge he would exact on them or their families. He was secure, with Mr A. and Mr B. in position to guard his back, and was confident that the rest of his associates would carry out orders. Within three weeks of the killings in Millfield he was evaluating his strategy for the future. The policy outlined to his men was that, for every Protestant killed, a Catholic should be killed in revenge. He boasted of the terror he would instil in the enemy and expressed his conviction that the ultimate way to kill a man was to cut his throat. He now felt so secure that he could revert to type, to the days of 1972. He believed he was invincible, to the extent that he could publicize to his unit his intentions for the campaign he planned to wage against the other community.

There are a number of challenges with these claims. Dillon does not say how he came to know that Murphy believed that “the ultimate way to kill a man was to cut his throat” – it is unreferenced. There is also no reference as to how Dillon knew that Murphy believed he was invincible, or indeed that he publicly shared his intentions to terrorise the nationalist community. The claim that Murphy “now felt so secure that he could revert to type, to the days of 1972” is also supposition, and given the context it is clear that Dillon is referring to knife murders. As we have discussed, there is no evidence linking Murphy to any knife murders in 1972.

Chapter 4 – The Butchery Begins

Like the previous chapters, Dillon begins with some context and analysis. In this case, he cites some studies about prejudice, and also the extent to which the conflict in Northern Ireland was religious in nature:

In Northern Ireland Catholics often saw the whole Protestant and Unionist community as the oppressors and, obversely, Protestants believed that all Catholics were subversives and therefore Republicans. As a result, when the IRA began to destroy the fabric of Unionism, Catholics were seen by the Loyalist paramilitaries as the root cause of the evil.

This, like preceding analysis, could arguably be described as lacking in depth. Generally, loyalists harboured grave suspicions of Westminster politicians whose actions (or lack of them) they considered part of the continuing destruction of the “fabric of Unionism.” Ironically, Dillon (or was it Lehane?) himself skilfully pointed this out in another one of this books, Political Murder in Northern Ireland, in which he published what he described as “a cogent and compelling justification of their (loyalist paramilitaries) actions.” The relevant sections read:

Traditionally the English politicians let us down - betrayal we call it … The politicians who rule our lives from England do not understand us. They stop the Army from defending us properly and stop us from defending ourselves. We do not like these flabby-faced men with popeyes and fancy accents. We do not like Heath and we do not like his 'side-kicks'. We had to stomach Reggie (Maudling) until (John) Poulson saw him off, and Lambton and Jellicoe went in a more interesting way. We should really like to see wee Willie (Whitelaw) waddle off to cut the throats of his colleagues in Westminster and leave us to sensible ideas and policies which will work. (p280 – 283)

In "The Butchery Begins" chapter Dillon continues with his claim that Murphy had established a unit “independent” of the UVF, but this thesis loses even more credibility in the context he offers to support it:

It was against this background (loyalist fears of Catholics ‘taking over’ Protestant areas) in late 1975 that Lenny Murphy began a new campaign of terror. In spite of the fact that a new Brigade Staff of the UVF had taken over, Murphy was determined to go it alone and to vent his hatred as he thought best. It is an indication of his single-mindedness, his sense of omnipotence and invincibility, that he ignored a plea from within Long Kesh to accept the orders of the new Brigade and not to wage war on any group except armed Republicans. Murphy had only one formula in his mind, which was that all Catholics were potential targets.

The “plea” to which Dillon is referring is a communiqué issued from Long Kesh which concluded:

These men (the new leadership) have our trust and our blessing to restructure the UVF. The sole aim of our organisation is to defend the Loyalist people against their enemies, at the same time stating that it is not our wish to wage war on anyone except armed Republicans determined to overthrow Ulster in order to force us into an Irish Republic. (p67).

The victims of UVF terrorism in the last quarter of 1975 did not differ in any meaningful way to the first three quarters. The UVF killed UDA men, Protestants mistaken for Catholics, Catholics from Northern Ireland as well as Eire, a number of UVF members in different circumstances, and an English civilian. They also killed a 17 year old IRA member, Francis Rice (who was stabbed to death), and a member of the SDLP (Denis Mullen). If Murphy didn’t follow the orders from Long Kesh, then neither did all of the UVF personnel involved in the vast majority of UVF killings. When one analyses the UVF communiqué against the details and status of victims of UVF violence, it is difficult to dismiss the idea that it was a public relations exercise of some description.

Dillon again:

On 23 and 24 November four young soldiers were murdered in South Armagh. The Newsletter, a Belfast-based daily paper, on 24 November dealt graphically with the killing of the soldiers and reported the tough talk of politicians on the need for increased security and stricter measures to deal with the IRA. (p67)

The Belfast Newsletter led on the story of the IRA killings of British soldiers in South Armagh with a headline “Wave of Fury” on 24/11/75. Two days later, also on the front page, though not the leading article, the Belfast Newsletter published an article titled “Blood Flows in Shankill Gutter.” The article noted that 34 year old Francis Joseph Crossan “died of vicious knife wounds” and that his head was “almost hacked from his body.” The article also said that Mr Crossan was a married man, with two children, a teenager aged 14, and an eight year old.

The Scotsman reported that Francis Crossan’s brother had also been murdered by loyalists. Patrick Crossan was a 34 year old married man with two daughters. He was working, driving a bus, when two UVF men opened fire on the driver’s cabin, killing Patrick and wounding a colleague, in full view of a busy bus full of passengers. It was reported that he was “well known” for voluntary work and that, in the moments after his murder, his killers were chased by a woman passenger who was “screaming her head off.” Bus drivers staged a strike in protest against the murder. The next day, republican gunmen shot two men outside Ligoneil Orange Lodge. 52 year old George Walmsley, the secretary of the Lodge was killed instantly and a friend seriously injured. Some reports said that this was a reprisal for attacks on Catholics, including Patrick Crossan’s murder.

Towards the end of the chapter, about Murphy’s actions after cutting Francis Crossan’s throat, Dillon wrote this: “(f)inally, and triumphantly, he held the knife aloft. It was a demonstration by Murphy of the ‘ultimate way to kill a man’”. Murphy’s claim that using a knife was the “ultimate way to kill a man” is unreferenced, as is the claim that he held the knife aloft “triumphantly.” It is more than possible that both things are true, but reappraising the Shankill Butchers has uncovered what appears to be a reliance on unreferenced or cited incidents or details that confirm Dillon’s overall narrative.

Basher Bates articles:
1973

1970

Feb 1966

‎Martin Dillon, 2009, The Shankill Butchers: A Case Study of Mass Murder. Cornerstone Digital. ASIN: ‎B003RRY608

⏩Brandon Sullivan is a middle-aged West Belfast émigré. He juggles fatherhood & marriage with working in a policy environment and writing for TPQ about the conflict, films, books, and politics.

⏩Sean Bradfield is a Former researcher who shouldn't care about this stuff so much but can't help himself.

The Shankill Butchers 📖 A Reappraisal 📖 Part Three

Brandon Sullivan & Sean Bradfield 🕮 continue with their review of Martin Dillon's The Shankill Butchers. 



Chapter Two – A Killer is Blooded


(Intro & Chapter One is here, The Shankill Butchers – A Reappraisal – Part Two (A) is here).

Note – due to the density of materiel in A Killer is Blooded, the reappraisal is split into two parts, this is Part B.

Murder, motorcycles, and Lenny Murphy

On Thursday, 15th January 1973, the Belfast Telegraph reported that two men, “Hugh Leonard Murphy of Percy Street, and Mervyn John Connor of Mayo Street are accused of murdering Edward Pavis of Glenvarlock Street, Belfast, on September 28 [1972].” There are a number of interesting points neglected by Dillon to this court appearance. Firstly, they were charged at Newtownabbey Courthouse, not in Belfast. Secondly, charged with them with notorious UVF member Anthony Berry. Berry was charged with having stolen, with Murphy and Connor, a motorcycle. A motorcycle was used in the murder of Edward Pavis. Lastly, Dillon gets the date of the Pavis murder wrong: Dillon has it as 26/09/72 – it was 28/09/72.

Dillon gets some of the facts surrounding Edward Pavis’s legal troubles with firearms correct – Pavis did go shooting with a Catholic Priest, but omits that two men with Catholic sounding names (Patrick McIlhattan and Liam Joseph McAuley) were also arrested, and that Pavis had in his possession a Luger pistol.

Dillon is correct that the UVF would have been suspicious that one of their “own” community was involved in the selling of firearms to nationalists and Catholics, or indeed spending time with them, let alone shooting with them. The murder of Pavis was, however, still atypical for Belfast at the time in terms of motive, but standard in terms of execution. Pavis was shot at a distance of one or two inches. Contemporaneous newspaper reports described powder burns, a motorcycle (allegedly driven by Connor), and a long-haired youth (allegedly Murphy) talking to the 32 year old Pavis.

It is interesting to note that Murphy was so confident in his ability to evade justice that he actually entered the Pavis household, chatting to his father briefly in the front room.

It is worth considering whether Murphy would have conceived of this operation of his own initiative. Dillon didn’t say this, instead describing the operation as an “order.” If it was an order from his UVF superiors, this demonstrates that at this stage in his terrorist career he was not the “independent” maverick that Dillon describes him as later in his book.

As an aside, a section of Pavis’s inquest makes reference to a comment PIRA leader Martin Meehan is supposed to have made to the East Belfast man as he left Crumlin Road Gaol on parole: “You’re getting out; but you’ll not be back in here.” Without context it is impossible to make much of this third-hand information, but a cynic might wonder if there was some level of collusion between supposed bitter enemies to deal with a common problem. Like much of what went on in the early 1970s we are unlikely to ever find out exactly what happened and what the machinations were; speculation is not something we indulge in, so we are merely sharing the information for others to consider.

Murphy and Connor escaped the dragnet over the autumn and winter until their luck ran out. Dillon wrote: 

Several months passed before the police picked up Murphy and his accomplice, during which time another motorcycle was stolen in the Glencairn estate and used in the murder of a Catholic.

It is likely that this is a reference to the murder of 16-year-old James Joseph Reynolds, who was on Dandy Street, near the Shore Road area of Belfast, when two men on a stolen motorcycle attacked him. He was struck by a number of bullets fired from a Sten submachine gun. The motorcycle had been stolen from the Crumlin Road earlier that day. The Sten was recovered later on in the Shankill area. Dillon may have mistaken Glencairn for Crumlin Road. Anthony Berry and Mervyn Connor were charged with the murder. The victim had received threatening letters in the post previously.

Mythology in the Making

Armed loyalists travelling on motorcycles and murdering Catholics, or Protestants who associated with Catholics, was not unusual during the Troubles. But the way that Murphy acted following his being arrested and charged with the murder of Pavis was extraordinary. Dillon’s research is thorough, and is corroborated by contemporaneous newspaper reports. Pavis’s parents were ordinary, elderly people who were grieving and their nerves were evident during cross-examination. This made for weak evidence for the prosecution, but the RUC had a further ace up their sleeves. They had found witnesses to the murder of Pavis and arranged for an identity parade to take place. As Dillon wrote:

Murphy demonstrated that his trips to Crumlin Road courthouse did have a purpose. When the witnesses to the shooting were asked to point out the killer, Murphy created a scene, stepped out of the identification line-up and protested that he had no wish to take part in the procedure. In effect, he was preparing the groundwork for his defence by attempting to make void the identification process. He appreciated that any jury given the task of trying him would be forced to consider whether the witnesses identified him because they were sure he was the killer or because his protest at the identification parade line-up made him the most prominent person present. It was a clever ploy and was recognized as such by a detective who was there.

The Belfast Telegraph reported (21/06/73):

Three witnesses later identified Murphy at an informal identification parade as the man they had seen talking to Pavis. All three admitted that when they identified Murphy he was standing apart from the other men and was shouting about his rights.

Earlier that year, the Belfast Telegraph (24/04/73) reported that:

an investigation is being held at Belfast's Crumlin Road jail into the death of a loyalist remand prisoner in his cell ... foul play was not suspected ... it is understood that there were no marks on his body.
Martin Dillon wrote about Connor’s killing:

On 24 April Murphy was given a pass by a member of the prison staff at the hospital which allowed him to leave the hospital confines. He walked out of the wing in which he was housed and straight to the cell where Mervyn Connor was kept. In his pocket Murphy carried a quantity of cyanide, a pencil and a scrap of blank paper. The two warders whose job it was to guard Connor were some distance away watching television with other prisoners.
Another prisoner witnessed Murphy with his hands tightly around Connor’s throat while Connor was writing on a piece of paper. When Connor ceased writing, Murphy continued to hold him by the throat with his left hand and produced a phial from his pocket. He then poured a substance down Connor’s throat and quickly left the cell. When the warders returned to the cell Connor was unconscious and was rushed to the prison hospital where attempts to revive him failed. He died the following morning … An interesting dimension to the Pavis/Connor affair is that before Murphy killed Connor he forced him to write a confession exonerating Murphy of the murder of Pavis.

Dillon gets the dates wrong, but the rest is probably true, as is Dillon’s assertion that: 

The Crown Case against Murphy was weak. Connor was dead and the Crown did not seek to use a written statement made by him because Murphy would have been in a position to discredit it by referring to the note Connor wrote before he died.

At a time when terrorist trials still had juries pre-Diplock, Murphy had played his hand well. He was found not guilty. He didn’t get to enjoy freedom, however: he was re-arrested as he went to leave Crumlin Road Courthouse and interned. This decision received widespread criticism from within loyalism. In the Belfast Telegraph that day it was reported that:

Mr Hugh Smyth, newly elected Councillor for Shankill ward said he intended taking the matter up very strongly with [Secretary of State for NI) Mr Whitelaw: 'I feel that after a jury returns a verdict of not guilty, for anyone to be re-arrested under the Special Powers Act is making a mockery of British justice.

 Murphy’s internment plight also made the pages of Orange Cross magazine, with a headline asking “How Long Will This Boy Be Held?”

There are some interesting elements of Murphy’s actions to consider. He had literally got away with murder – twice. And one of his victims was a fellow UVF member. Why did the UVF consider one of their volunteer’s lives as expendable, whilst his killer received the attention of an elected representative, and a feature in a loyalist prisoner’s welfare magazine which was endorsed by the UVF? How did Murphy manage to commit murder inside Crumlin Road prison, and how and why did the documentation of the investigation into Connor’s murder disappear? These are questions which are difficult to answer, but they play into the mythology of Lenny Murphy.

The “boy” would be held until the 13th May 1975.

Rompering Mythologies

At the very end of the chapter, in smaller print, Dillon wrote this, in an notation about the term “romper room.”

The murder gang was run by an infamous homosexual paramilitary leader called John McKeague. The gang called the ‘Red Hand Commandoes’, was made up mostly of young men. McKeague was a sadist who initiated his followers by ‘rompering’ victims. This involved bringing a victim to a club, lock-up garage or a disused house, where a group of Red Hand Volunteers participated in the torture and murder of the victim … McKeague in some respects pioneered the ‘rompering’ process but it had a more bizarre application in the Shankill area.

What this ‘bizarre application’ was we aren’t told. It is correct that John McKeague was infamous, as well as “homosexual.” His infamy came from his links to violent, militant loyalism. And it is true that there was a paramilitary outfit named the Red Hand Commando who were (along with every paramilitary group in Ireland) “made up mostly of young men.” McKeague may have been a sadist, and may have been involved in murders involving torture, though there is no clear evidence to confirm this – but there is no evidence that “rompering” was a refined tactic that had been“pioneered.” We believe the reality is both more mundane, and much more frightening.

In north, south, east, and west Belfast, groups of loyalists engaged in the abduction, torture, and murder of Catholic civilians. We believe that, far from there being a unique locus, or dominant character, behind “romper room” murders, it was instead an organic development across multiple geographical locations in the city, in the same timeframe. One contemporary journalist of the time referred to multiple “knife gangs” and said “at that time war magazines full of gruesome violence were popular … things like the Chinese “death of a thousand cuts.” The journalist also mentioned footage of a hooded loyalist demonstrating how to cut a man’s throat at a loyalist paramilitary training exercise featured on local news footage (other training footage can be viewed here). There would have been no single factor driving this particular phenomena, we believe there would have been a dark alchemy, the result of which was savage and bloody.

In the book Breaking: Trauma in the Newsroom, Martin Dillon contributes a chapter, which discusses the Shankill butcher gang. He wrote the following, discussing the murder of Tom Madden with another Belfast reporter, Peter McKenna:

We often talked about the killing as if the more we discussed it we would somehow solve it … Looking back, our fascination with the murder and similar killings was somewhat bizarre. We were like directors of an absurd play, rewriting the script each time we reviewed it. Peter would imagine the number of killers involved, whilst I would insist that our focus should be on the one I called the prime mover; the dominant torturer with the knife.

Dillon’s focus on identifying the “prime mover” is understandable. Honourable, even. But a fixation on a “prime” and “dominant” individual limits the scope of inquiry. Enter into the mix a man like Lenny Murphy, an individual with a mythology that began when he was in his very early 20s and demonstrated himself able to get away with murder, as well as killing inside the walls of a prison, and it is perhaps easy to see why Dillon linked Murphy to torture murders in 1972.

But the inquiry should not have been limited in scope, and robust analysis and interrogation of the evidence would have led to the identification of other knife gangs operating (and not all of them loyalists). Dillon knew that there were other loyalists knifing Catholics to death in sectarian attacks. He wrote about the double murder carried out by John White in Political Murder in Northern Ireland. White, an extremely active loyalist paramilitary, is not mentioned once in The Shankill Butchers. This is a baffling omission.

This chapter contains what we consider three deep flaws in the book’s credibility: the mythology of Lenny Murphy as an individual; a lack of understanding of the breadth, depth, and provenance of knife and torture murders within loyalism, and Dillon’s apparent fixation on there being one person in a dominant role at the centre.
 
‎Martin Dillon, 2009, The Shankill Butchers: A Case Study of Mass Murder. Cornerstone Digital. ASIN: ‎B003RRY608

⏩Brandon Sullivan is a middle-aged West Belfast émigré. He juggles fatherhood & marriage with working in a policy environment and writing for TPQ about the conflict, films, books, and politics.

⏩Sean Bradfield is a Former researcher who shouldn't care about this stuff so much but can't help himself.

The Shankill Butchers – A Reappraisal – Part Two (B)

Brandon Sullivan & Sean Bradfield 🕮 continue with their review of Martin Dillon's The Shankill Butchers. 



Chapter Two – A Killer is Blooded

(Intro & Chapter One is here).

Note – due to the density of materiel in A Killer is Blooded, this article is split into two sections. The second part will follow soon.

The atmosphere in 1972

This chapter begins with an interesting and well-presented overview of the political temperature of Northern Ireland at the beginning of 1972, and how it increases throughout that year. The malignant nature of politicians like Bill Craig is analysed, as well as the impact of IRA actions on sections of the PUL community. Quotes are used to describe a growing extremism with militant loyalism, with Dillon noting that a: “phrase which frequently found its way into Loyalist news sheets and bulletins was ‘the Provos and their passive sympathizers’. A lack of any proper definition of the enemy encouraged many Loyalists to believe that all Catholics were IRA sympathizers, if not actual supporters.” Other quotes are now infamous, Bill Craig’s call to “liquidate the enemy” and “God help those who get in our way.”

Notes on Lenny Murphy’s personality

Focusing back onto Lenny Murphy, Dillon again offers insight into his personality:

In the first six months of 1972 Lenny Murphy was preparing for his terrorist career in a most unusual fashion by attending many of the murder trials being held in Belfast’s Crumlin Road courthouse. He not only appeared in the public gallery at the trials of those UVF members whom he knew but also at trials involving members of the IRA. Murphy was learning about the law, the nature of witness and forensic evidence, and when such evidence was ruled admissible or inadmissible.

Dillon quotes an RUC man who had this to say about Murphy:

Lenny loved his notoriety and the fact that we knew who he was. He enjoyed watching the reaction of his friends when he talked to me or my colleagues. It was as if he was saying to his friends, ‘Look, I can talk to these jerks and they don’t know what the hell I’m up to and even if they suspect me there is nothing they can do about it.’ … He was like the smiling assassin. When I saw him in the scarf and the leather jacket he reminded me of those First World War pilots who were going off in glory to battle and were loved by the women. He was like that. He always had young girls around him even in the courthouse. There was a Jack-the-Lad quality about him as well. I’m not a homosexual, you understand, but I have to say he was good-looking. I think in retrospect that he saw himself as a film star.

Dillon wrote:

The only apparent thing was his pathological hatred of Catholics which he constantly stressed in all his conversations. He seemed a hardworking shop assistant, though his criminal activities paid for his flamboyant lifestyle of heavy drinking and womanizing.

Numerous accounts of Murphy from his time in prison, and others of him socialising, suggest he was not overtly sectarian at all times, and could in fact be charming and likeable. This is also borne out by anecdotes shared with us by people who encountered Murphy in pubs and music venues in Belfast city centre up to and including the early years of the conflict. It is also worth noting that later in the book Dillon states that Murphy was not a particularly heavy drinker which contradicts the assertion above.

Murphy’s relationship with the security forces is returned to in Dillon’s book, as well as others. It seems clear that he enjoys being a person-of-interest to the RUC and army. In his memoir, Billy Hutchinson recounts Murphy being upset that soldiers arrested Hutchinson but not Murphy when they were stopped together in 1972. Another incident where Murphy came to the attention of the security forces is not covered by Dillon. During 1972 when loyalists were setting up no-go areas across Belfast Murphy had a brush with the army when he stole a military vehicle and narrowly escaped a custodial sentence. This would fit into a pattern of behaviour which preceded the Troubles when Murphy and some of his associates were prolific car thieves.

Dillon's attempt to flesh out the Lenny Murphy behind the subsequent headlines is limited. This is largely due to the fact that it is unlikely that many people who knew Murphy well would have spoken to Dillon; though it is evident that he did try to get information - he recounts arranging a meeting with Margaret Berry, Murphy's ex-wife, while he was researching the book. At the last minute she cancelled the arrangement as her husband, a former associate of Murphy, didn't approve.

One of the authors has spoken to people who knew Murphy well, including some family members, and recollections range from 'a sound guy' to 'an utter psychopath' - this isn't surprising and speaks to the complexities of comradeship and kinship in a low-intensity conflict situation.

What we do know about Murphy from the conversations that we have had with people who knew him are that he was, on the surface, as Dillon states, much like any other young man of his age. He loved music, particularly the Beatles (and later Wings) and when he was told that he reminded someone of the pop star David Essex, he immediately started getting his hair styled a la Essex 'Gonna Make You A Star' era.

A common thread in anecdotes about Murphy's development into his later notoriety was the murder of Thomas Kells and the anger this stirred within the young loyalist. Some senior loyalists also talked about a particularly gruesome torture murder of a Protestant in 1972. The man, who was associated with loyalist politics, was allegedly found in a cold storage van and the loyalists one of the authors spoke to still talk animatedly about how the RUC pasted SOC photos of the victim on walls around the Shankill. Whether this is true or apocryphal, it demonstrates the then pertaining mood and the increasing levels of barbarity in society.

Back to the chapter in question, Dillon goes on to link Murphy to four killings that, for various reasons that we will explore, are at the very least open to question.

Reappraising murders attributed to Lenny Murphy in 1972

On page 34 of this chapter, Dillon writes:

His [Lenny Murphy] first direct involvement in killing was on Friday 21 July 1972. That day a thirty-four-year-old Catholic, Francis [Frankie] Arthurs, from Fallswater Street off the Falls Road, was travelling in a taxi from the predominantly Nationalist Ardoyne area in North Belfast. The taxi was stopped on the Crumlin Road, which runs parallel to the Shankill Road. The mistake made by Arthurs was a classic one, in that the enclave from which the taxi emerged signalled to those watching the area that the occupant of the vehicle was a Catholic. Arthurs was drunk and was unaware that the previous night a young Catholic couple, also travelling in a taxi, had been apprehended and murdered. When Arthur’s taxi was stopped he was bundled out of the vehicle unceremoniously and was hit over the head with a metal object. He was then taken to the Lawnbrook Social Club, a Loyalist club off the Shankill Road.

Later in the chapter, Dillon states:

A detective revealed to me details of Murphy’s involvement in another murder which occurred around this period. I could not, however, trace the victim because of the number of unsolved crimes in June and July of 1972. The detective’s source, which I cannot reveal here, could be described in journalistic terms as impeccable. This informant described how Murphy beat and tortured a Catholic man in a lock-up garage in a street running from the Shankill Road to the Catholic Springfield Road. The informant confirmed one detail about Murphy in these words: ‘Lenny hit the guy harder than the rest of the people there that night. It was as if he was out to prove that he hated the Taigs more than the rest of us. He wanted to show that he was more violent and more capable than anyone else there. He was the one who used the knife before we shot the guy.’

Dillon again:

One month after the Arthurs killing an elderly Catholic was murdered in a way which bears a striking resemblance to the Arthurs crime. Though no one was ever brought to justice for these murders, it was thought that the manner of killing strongly indicated the same hand at work.

And later:

The third murder was that of forty-eight-year-old Thomas Madden who worked in a mill on the Crumlin Road and who, due to the geography of Belfast, was obliged to travel each day through tough Protestant enclaves to reach his place of work. Madden was a bachelor, an inoffensive man who enjoyed a drink and went to Mass on Sundays. He lived in a boarding house in Cliftonpark Avenue in North Belfast and worked as a security guard, which involved night shift duty. Three weeks before his death he was stopped by vigilantes and taken to a club on the Shankill where he was interrogated. There is little doubt that it was the Lawnbrook Social Club, where Arthurs was murdered.

Of these four killings, two of the victims are named, and two are not. Of the two that are not named, regarding the man alleged to have been tortured and murdered by Murphy in a lock-up garage between the Shankill and Springfield Roads, working on the assumption that Murphy and his fellow murderers would dump their victim close to where the murder took place, we looked to Lost Lives and the CAIN index for June and July 1972 to see if we could identify the victim. Despite exhaustive searches of all available open source records, we were unable to – perhaps John O’Hanlon, but his body was left in Twickenham Street, which was closer to the Oldpark than the Springfield Road adjacent part of the Shankill.

Regarding the murder of an “elderly Catholic” a month after Frankie Arthurs was killed (so by the end of August 1972), the oldest Catholic to die in this timeframe was 57 year old James Casey, shot dead by the British army in Derry. We do not believe that an elderly Catholic man was killed in the circumstances Dillon describes in the timeframe given and are not sure why this was suggested by the author.

Regarding the two named victims, Frankie Arthurs and Thomas Madden, these are widely regarded as having been carried out by members of the UDA, and not of the UVF. As Dillon points out in his book, dual membership and overlap of association - before regimental loyalty became a defining characteristic of loyalist militancy - means that the situation in 1972 was fluid. But there are a number of other reasons why it could be wrong to connect these murders to Lenny Murphy.

Dillon gets a number of details wrong about the murder of Frankie Arthurs. He states that Arthurs was travelling in a taxi from Ardoyne when in fact he was travelling from the Engineer's Club in Corporation Street in the centre of Belfast, having spent an evening socialising with his girlfriend and others. The city was tense, having been subjected to widespread bombing earlier in the day. This would become notorious as Bloody Friday.

The taxi containing Arthurs, his girlfriend and another man and woman was stopped at a loyalist roadblock (vehicle checkpoint) on the Crumlin Road, near to St Mary's Church of Ireland, between Silvio Street and Yarrow Street. Along with the other passengers Arthurs was asked for identification and then frog-marched towards Yarrow Street – not to the Lawnbrook social club. Arthurs was also not struck with a wheelbrace after he left the taxi, as Dillon claims. Arthurs' girlfriend later gave a chilling account of what actually happened. Having been asked to exit the taxi, all the occupants were allowed to get back inside. One of the loyalists then returned to the taxi and spoke to Arthurs: 'Right, out you.' His girlfriend said "He did not protest or put up any fight to the men. He was taken by the arm by a number of men who took him round the front of the taxi and across Crumlin Road towards Yarrow Street. As soon as Frankie was out of my sight a dark haired man twentyish and slightly built came and spoke to the driver of the taxi. I didn't hear what was said but the taxi driver turned the car and he drove to Glenravel Street Police Station.' Dillon claims that Arthurs' mistake (coming from Ardoyne in a taxi, which he didn't) was a 'classic one' and that a couple had been abducted and murdered in similar circumstances the previous evening. In fact, the couple Dillon alludes to were taken around an hour before Arthurs was abducted and we consider it likely that elements of the same killer gang were involved in both murders.

Dillon claims that once in the Lawnbrook Club Lenny Murphy repeatedly stabbed Frankie Arthurs. The source of that information is however of dubious quality: 

Joe Bennett, who later became one of the major UVF supergrasses, once told a friend that Murphy stood out from others that night as the most barbarous gang member present.

Bennett was a skilled bomb-maker who was popular with some UVF members but regarded as unreliable due to his womanising and gambling problems. In the early 1980s a large number of senior UVF members were convicted on foot of Bennett's supergrass evidence.

In December 1984, after a lengthy appeal process, the men were released; Lord Lowry questioned the credibility of Bennett's evidence and the UVF men won their appeal. Bennett has long been regarded as a fantasist in UVF circles and while there may well be some truth to what he claimed in the supergrass trials his legacy is that of an unreliable witness.

Thus information he is alleged to have given 'a friend' about the circumstances surrounding the murder of Arthurs must be read in the context of his unreliability.

It is worth noting that in almost all accounts of the brutal and sadistic murder of Frankie Arthurs (including coroner's reports from the time) he is not noted as having been stabbed.

Elsewhere in the book, Dillon spoke of Murphy’s hesitance in being seen with other members of loyalist paramilitary organisations. This would exclude him from the roadblock at which Frankie was abducted, where his girlfriend states that a 'fair-haired man' was in charge.

It is possible he would have been at the venue around Yarrow Street where the unfortunate man was taken, but we do not believe that it is plausible. Convictions were secured against some men who murdered Catholic civilians in identical circumstances to those in which Frankie was killed, and in all cases those involved were UDA members.

Throughout the summer of 1972 press coverage (mainly in the south of Ireland) began to publish articles about a 'Jack the Ripper'-style loyalist assassin operating out of Yarrow Street. This seems to have been forgotten or ignored through the sands of time, despite matching up with what contemporaneous witness statements suggest.

The murder of Thomas Madden in August 1972 was horrifying (see newspaper graphics at the end of this article). Dillon claims that Madden’s first abduction saw him being taken to the Lawnbrook social club. He offers no evidence for this, despite saying “there can be little doubt.” In fact, it seems that the UDA, and not the UVF, had taken an interest in Madden, having shot his brother, Hugh, dead earlier in the year. It seems that Madden, like Arthurs, was brutally murdered by UDA men operating around the Crumlin Road/Oldpark areas of Belfast. There was an extremely active, extremely brutal group of men abducting, torturing and murdering Catholic men in that area at that time. We do not believe that there is compelling evidence to suggest that Lenny Murphy was among them. We do believe that Davy Payne was.

On page 36 on chapter two, Dillon states that: “Until now [1989, date of the book’s publication] no-one has known of Lenny Murphy’s involvement in several murders in the summer of 1972.” In fact, on the 27th November 1982, the republican newspaper sold in the USA, the Irish People, published an article titled “Lennie Murphy’s Bloody Career” which linked Murphy to the murders of Arthurs and Madden.


Contemporaneous newspaper reports of Thomas Madden’s murder note that his ears were cut off. On the 26 August 1972, two Catholic men from Ballymena, John Nulty and Patrick Kelly, were abducted together, tortured, murdered, and their bodies left in separate locations “400 yards apart in the Oldpark area.” One of the men had had an ear cut off, and another had his tattoos gouged with a knife. The CAIN website, among other databases, list these two murders as the work of the UVF. In terms of the appalling treatment of the politically uninvolved civilians murdered, and the location, and the time-frame, it could be reasonably assumed that the same gang was responsible. We think that Dillon linking Murphy to the murders of Arthurs and Madden, but not Nulty and Kelly, does not make much sense. The Woodvale UDA were notorious in the summer of 1972 for operating in plain sight - quite literally picking innocent Catholics who drove into their vehicle checkpoints off the street at will (often during daylight hours) and subjecting them to unimaginable cruelty before murdering them and leaving their bodies in the Lower Oldpark/Clifton Park Avenue areas (see newspaper graphics at the end of this article).

Dillon also wrote:

Four weeks after the death of Thomas Madden another Catholic, fifty-year-old William Matthews, was found dead in the Glencairn Estate in a spot where Lenny Murphy was later to dump many of his victims. Matthews’ body also bore the signs of torture and the use of a knife. Again, the character of the wounds indicated the hand which killed Arthurs and Madden.

It is not implausible that Murphy was involved in this killing. As we will see, he headed to Glencairn after other paramilitary operations. We feel that this is clutching at straws, given the number of killer squads operating in the area at the time.

Less than a week after the murder of William Matthews, was a killing for which Lenny Murphy was tried and which fits an emerging pattern of a Murphy as an accomplished gunman whose preferred mode of transport during murders was a motorcycle. 






‎Martin Dillon, 2009, The Shankill Butchers: A Case Study of Mass Murder. Cornerstone Digital. ASIN: ‎B003RRY608

⏩Brandon Sullivan is a middle-aged West Belfast émigré. He juggles fatherhood & marriage with working in a policy environment and writing for TPQ about the conflict, films, books, and politics.

⏩Sean Bradfield is a Former researcher who shouldn't care about this stuff so much but can't help himself.

The Shankill Butchers – A Reappraisal – Part Two (A)

Brandon Sullivan & Sean Bradfield 🕮 with a new review of an old book.


Introduction

If studying the conflict teaches anything, it is that arriving at objective truth is deeply challenging for historians. With this in mind, this series of articles (one per chapter of the book) are not presented as the final word, but as hopefully the beginning of a conversation about the book in question and associated themes.

Anyone with a modicum of knowledge about the Troubles in Northern Ireland will be familiar with Martin Dillon, Lenny Murphy and the Shankill Butchers. Indeed, Dillon’s career as a journalist has come to be defined by his 1989 book on the subject. Regarded by many as a ground-breaking journey into the heart of sectarian darkness, there can be little doubt that in writing The Shankill Butchers: A Case Study of Mass Murder Dillon put his life on the line to document a particularly notorious example of the subterranean violence of 1970s Northern Ireland which many other journalists wilfully avoided.

Dillon’s first book, Political Murder in Northern Ireland (1973), co-authored with Denis Lehane, exposed the Northern Irish public to some of the most extreme examples of sectarian killings; details of which mainstream newspapers had elided in their coverage of the Troubles up to that point. Dillon has written of the obstinance he experienced when trying to convince his news editor at the time to run some of the stories he had researched into the ‘romper room’ killings of the early 1970s. In his autobiography, Crossing the Line, Dillon recalls that:

Much of my time in 1972-73 was devoted to writing about some of the most ghastly killings of the Troubles. Many mornings, my news editor dispatched me to alleyways where bodies had been dumped …

Dillon’s impulse to give more attention to these killings was almost immediately stymied by his bosses:

… I wanted to know why they [sectarian murders] were becoming so prevalent, but editors had no desire to devote resources to in-depth investigations … In my view, print and broadcast journalism was becoming reflexive, with little space or time being set aside for investigative journalism.

The frustration in the young Martin Dillon is tangible and no matter the shortcomings of his research and hypotheses into the Butchers his bravery and indefatigability when so many others in his profession turned a blind eye will ensure he is rightly praised for generations to come.

Dillon’s attempts to confront these often impenetrable subjects does not preclude him from criticism however, particularly some 35 years after his most famous book was published and new facts have come to light. Conor Cruise O’Brien noted in his forward to Dillon’s book that the:

Provisional IRA – by far the most important of the various murderous organisations in Northern Ireland – never unleashed on society anyone quite like Lennie Murphy (Murphy spelled his name with an ie, although some legal correspondence issued by his solicitor in later life included the spelling of his name as 'Lenny'), the chief of the Shankill Butchers.

Dillon’s book created an almost spectral image of Murphy which was quickly lapped up by readers from across all class and religious backgrounds.

We can think of two loyalist figures who were more prolific and at least as sadistic as Murphy. It is striking that neither is mentioned in Dillon’s book. This is something that we will return to.

Numerous myths were created by Dillon in The Shankill Butchers, many of which were successfully rebutted (with next to no mainstream acknowledgement) by the researcher and author Iain Turner in his 2015 article ‘In the Shadow of the Butchers.’

For a book that has had the impact of The Shankill Butchers, there is a paucity of detailed reviews of it. Justifiable critiques have appeared, starting with Steve Bruce in his 1990 book The Red Hand. We believe it is hard to overstate the influence Dillon’s book had on some students of the Troubles. The historian and author Gareth Mulvenna described the effects of the book as a “toxic glue” on his brain. Both writers of this review read it around 25 years ago, and the effects were profound and lasting.

This is a reappraisal of a landmark book in Troubles historiography, but it is also an opportunity to take a more nuanced and in-depth look again at some of the people and events portrayed in its pages.

This series of articles will criticise some of Martin Dillon’s work, but it is important at all times to recognise and pay tribute to the work he did that was accurate and unique.

The fact that his work is being debated 35 years after publication is a tribute to the quality of some of it, but also that he brought into the public consciousness a deeply disturbing aspect of the Troubles that might otherwise not have been recognised for what it was. As a journalist in the early 1970s he was brave and passionate about unearthing the truth that so many, including those in officialdom, were keen to keep a shroud over.

Chapter One – The Making Of A Killer

Dillon focuses a lot of the first chapter, 'The Making of a Killer', by theorising a motive for Lenny Murphy’s evolution into a sadistic murderer. This is understandable - it is human nature to try and rationalise or find a thread of logic behind brutality when we are confronted with it, but we are quite convinced that he got it wrong. Dillon wrote that the family surname, Murphy, marked them out as “different” to the Protestant community that they lived among, and resulted in Lenny being bullied – referred to as “Murphy the Mick.” There was also, Dillon alleges, community gossip about how Lenny’s father, William Snr., could have been a Catholic.

The Balaclava Street blog had this to say on this:

One of the most enduring theories concocted by Dillon … is that Murphy developed a pathological hatred of Catholics as a result of being taunted about his “Taig” surname. This is a classic piece of amateur psychology and one for which there is no real supporting evidence. Murphy is a faintly uncommon name amongst Protestants but it is not unusual by any means. A glance at a list of UVF prisoners in Long Kesh from the 1970s reveals plenty “Taig” names, such as Galway, McCracken, Quinn, Kirkpatrick, McCartney, O’Neill, even an O’Malley…presumably all incarcerated for fits of nominative homicidal rage. He also claims that Murphy used the name Len or Lenny over Hugh as the former sounded less Catholic!”

A quick search of a Belfast street directory in 1960 has the following Murphys living in strongly loyalist areas, or in close proximity to Orange Halls or Protestant churches:

Annie Murphy (Newcastle Street), James Murphy (Newtownards Road), Margaret Murphy (Nile Street), Noel Murphy (Norwood Street), N.K. Murphy (Oberon Street)

Ellen Murphy (Old Lodge Road), Marion Murphy (Oldpark Avenue), Hugh Murphy (Orangefield Avenue), John Murphy (Parkgate Parade), Edward Murphy (Pisa Street), A. Murphy (Pity Street), Wm. Murphy (Prestwick Park), John Murphy (Ainsworth Avenue), Elizabeth Murphy (Albertbridge Road), N. Murphy (Albertbridge Road), Albert Murphy (Alloa Street), James Murphy (Alloa Street).

And then there was Samuel Murphy, the UDA “Brigadier” who was charged with the murder of Ann Ogilby, and later jailed for 439 years and described as a loyalist “terrorist Godfather.” And there was a leading UDA man convicted of various serious terrorist offences in 1975 named Walter Murphy.

We believe that Dillon’s theory on the supposed impact of the Murphy surname had a structural effect on the book. As early as 1973 he and Lehane had focused on Murphy as being a loyalist with a Catholic surname: “Murphy - the Protestant with a Catholic name" (Political Murder, p127) yet even the most light-touch research at the time (street directories, phone books) would have thrown up a plethora of Murphys in loyalist areas as well as Molloys and other Catholic-sounding surnames in neighbourhoods such as the Shankill. Attaching such significance to something that doesn’t stand up under the lightest interrogation cannot fail to subtract from the historical value of the work. We do not wish to spend much more on this theory, except to note that we consider it debunked, and that Dillon advanced the same theory about Michael Stone in a biography of him.

Dillon is on more solid ground revealing the criminal background of Lenny Murphy. Petty crimes, not unusual for a young man of his social class in that era came to characterise his evolution from a boy into a young man. Murphy is remembered as a bully at school, disinterested in studies, and prone to throwing his weight around using as back-up the threat of his two older brothers, William Jnr. and John. John was two year older than Lenny, and William about four years older. Both were physically more imposing than Lenny.

Dillon writes that as he entered his late teens, and political violence became more intense:

Lenny was regularly seen frequenting two bars on the Shankill Road, the Gluepot and the Bayardo, the latter being a haunt for men connected with the UVF. It was at this time, as events in Northern Ireland were beginning to make headlines, that he joined the junior wing of the UVF. He was observed associating more openly with prominent figures in the community, unlike his brother, William, who was regarded as a loner, and his other brother, John, who had a small circle of friends but did not visit bars where trouble was easily found.

It’s worth discussing Lenny’s brothers as they are significant figures in the book. John, as is widely known, was the “Mr B” who appears many times throughout the book. John Murphy was a member of the UVF and was allegedly involved in many of the “Shankill butcher” crimes. John was a powerfully built man and worked as a plumber. In 1982 he was employed a team of men, mostly UVF members, to complete plumbing contracts. Some of this team were extremely violent men with short fuses. Dillon’s claim about John Murphy “avoiding bars were trouble could easily be found” is especially strange considering he was convicted of a serious assault in the late 1970s, and served time in prison. William, far from being a loner, managed a popular loyalist club on the Shankill Road. The Murphy brothers' father, William, was also a UVF man, who died in 1990 and was honoured an a UVF “roll of honour.”

In relation to family matters, Dillon provides a fascinating vignette about how Lenny's mother Joyce arrived at a disco one evening in the spring of 1969 to remove Lenny - dragging the drunk youth by the hair from the crowd and trailing him home. Murphy's relationship with Joyce isn't developed, but those who the authors of this article have spoken to knew Joyce Murphy (née Thompson) to be a formidable woman who wrapped Lenny up in cotton wool. Many killers have unhealthily close relationships with their mothers, but this isn't a psychology article. Suffice to say that Joyce Murphy was outspoken, dominant and potentially encouraging of her son's propensity for violence. Future studies of the Butchers might do well to probe into this sort of family history with more texture like Gordon Burn did in his magnificent deep-dive into the community from which Peter Sutcliffe emerged.

Dillon also states that Lenny Murphy had joined the Young Citizen Volunteers (YCV), the “youth wing” of the UVF in 1970. This is untrue. While Murphy certainly joined the UVF at an early stage, there was no YCV until 1972. The YCV was formed in the summer of 1972 by young Shankill loyalists including Billy Hutchinson who were self-starters galvanised by the restructuring of the UVF led by Gusty Spence then on the run. Hutchinson also revealed in his 2020 autobiography that Murphy was keen to take over the YCV and ended up poaching one or two members from the organisation Hutchinson had helped to create at the age of 16.

So, not for the first time, Dillon get important details wrong, whilst still being able to accurately describe the man in question. Other than his brothers, Dillon details two of his later to be infamous associates:

(Lenny Murphy) was in the UVF and was surrounding himself with a group of people loosely known as the ‘Murphy gang … among them were two young men, Robert Bates and Samuel McAllister, two nonentities ideally suited to be Murphy’s cohorts, and who were to figure prominently and infamously in Murphy’s later life.

We have never heard any mention in any history of the Troubles of the “Murphy gang” though Lenny was a member of the pre-Troubles teenage Ant Hill Mob gang which included other future prominent Shankill loyalists.

Robert “Basher” Bates was many things, but nonentity is a strange description for him. He was well-known and well-regarded in paramilitary circles, and gave interviews to the press under the anonymity afforded to him on behalf of the UVF in 1971. Bates had also been called to testify publicly to the Scarman Tribunal in 1971 which sought to assess the tumult of August 1969 when parts of Northern Ireland had quite literally gone up in flames. Along with Davy Payne, a former UVF member, Bates had been an early member of Tara and the UDA during the fluid nascent years of loyalist militancy when regimental loyalty was not the important concept it later came to be.

McAllister could perhaps more fairly be described as the nonentity type, though it is notable that Dillon fails to mention the fact that his brother, Joe, was convicted of the murder of drink salesman Barney Moane in 1972. Like Bates, Joe McAllister was well-regarded within paramilitary circles. Interestingly the investigation into Moane's brutal murder revealed that McAllister became angry when goaded on by some of his co-accused during the murder, stating that he would deal with the person who lied about Moane being a republican; unlike his more infamous brother Sam, Joe may well have possessed the ability to feel remorseful for what he had become involved in.

Dillon writes that:

the UVF and UDA recognized that they could not acquire the weapons or perhaps the expertise to fight ‘the enemy’. So they decided it was better to engage in a ‘dirty war’ of indiscriminate terror which would prove that the IRA was incapable of defending its own people. Such a view is simplistic, though there is little doubt that by the summer of 1972 a decision had been made by the UDA/UVF to conduct a sectarian assassination campaign.

In fact, sectarian murders of Catholics by Protestants started prior to the summer. And the raison d'etre usually given by loyalists is less that the IRA couldn’t defend “its own people” and more that killing Catholics would, somehow, drive Catholics to pressurise the IRA into stopping its campaign. But Dillon misses some important information. The IRA had carried out some murders that could be described as sectarian assassinations. One of them, a man named Thomas Kells, was a close friend of Murphy, as well as a criminal associate. The killing of Thomas Kells is covered in Political Murder in Northern Ireland, but Dillon and Lehane’s account of it is inaccurate. This has previously been written about the Kells killing on TPQ:

19 year old Thomas Henry Kells was found dead … shot by the IRA. Rumours abounded that Kells and McFarland had been viciously tortured before being killed. Mulvenna reported Stormont MP Johnny McQuade saying in parliament:

Nobody in the Shankill or Woodvale areas will believe anything other than that young Kells had a tattoo on his arm cut off before the bullets were used on him.

These rumours, and Kells' friendships with later-to-be infamous loyalist paramilitaries such as Stewart Robinson and Lennie Murphy, had a radicalising effect on young loyalists.

Dillon and Lehane allege that Kells was killed by the IRA for spying on them. Information emerged rebutting Dillon and Lehane’s theory, and noting that Kells had in fact fired a shotgun through the door of a house on Clifton Park Avenue where some republicans were attending a party. That particular road had a number of houses in decline that were being rented out for the purposes of hosting parties and drug-taking. In some ways, similar to AirBnB now-a-days. Lenny Murphy and Thomas Kells attended many of these parties in the 1960s, and took LSD, and other drugs. At one of these parties, Murphy is alleged to have raped a young woman from Bangor, who was aged 16. Murphy is also alleged to have burgled houses along the Antrim Road. None of these allegations would appear out of place alongside the details of Murphy’s other crimes, pre and during the Troubles.

Dillon ends the chapter by discussing the effects of the absence, through imprisonment, of “older men” such as Gusty Spence on young men like Lenny Murphy. He wrote:

The absence of the older men paved the way for Lenny Murphy, ‘Basher’ Bates, ‘Big Sam’ McAllister and many others like them to develop their own type of warfare in alliance with the omnipresent UDA, which was prepared to flex its muscles to establish credibility as a paramilitary force.

On the Shankill Road at that particular time were two men who would commit sadistic murders with knives. They were two or three years older than Murphy – at the age of 19 or 20, however, a 22 or 23 year old can appear far more worldly. The two men were John White and Davy Payne. It is impossible to say if they influenced Murphy directly, but he must have known about their crimes.

An intriguing article from the Belfast Telegraph, 21st October 1970, describes how “nine members of the Pride of the Shankill flute band” were convicted of “aiding and abetting the holding of a public procession” and, despite being defended by Desmond Boal, were fined. Among the nine were William Murphy, and Lenny Murphy. Also convicted was Henry Victor Matthews, who would feature in a number of loyalist trials. We could not find anything else related to the Murphy brothers time in a flute band.

‎Martin Dillon, 2009, The Shankill Butchers: A Case Study of Mass Murder. Cornerstone Digital.
ASIN: ‎B003RRY608

⏩Brandon Sullivan is a middle-aged West Belfast émigré. He juggles fatherhood & marriage with working in a policy environment and writing for TPQ about the conflict, films, books, and politics.

⏩Sean Bradfield is a Former researcher who shouldn't care about this stuff so much but can't help himself.

Martin Dillon’s The Shankill Butchers 🔖 A Reappraisal – Part One

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