The Loyalist killers who first struck eight years before the pub attack

The Loyalist killers who first struck eight years before the pub attack

15 June 2016

ON January 11, 1986, a television engineer drove into the yard of a house near the picturesque beauty spot of The Twelve Arches, between Dundrum and Newcastle.

He had been telephoned and asked to connect a television aerial at the house but when he arrived it appeared the house was run down and abandoned.

The Catholic workman got out of his van and went towards the back door but before he reached it a masked man stepped out with a shotgun. As the workman tried to run away he was shot in the back but miraculously survived after emergency surgery in the Downe Hospital.

The attempted murder was the first organised terrorist operation carried out by Loyalists in south Down and one of the two-man unit which carried the attack was to become the lynch-pin of the deadly UVF gang which eight years later was to carry out the terrible murders in Loughinisland.

The driver, who is prominent throughout the Ombudsman’s report into Loughinisland as Person A, went on to become the most committed and deadly Loyalist terrorist to operate in south Down.

Police later established his role in the attempted murder of the television engineer and a file was sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions who determined there was insufficient evidence to charge him.

A serving UDR soldier at the time of this first murder bid, he was later to graduate to the role of gunman in terrorist attacks in south Down and the Ombudsman reported how he was drafted in  by his UVF commanders to murder a Catholic workman in Belfast in 1992.

The Ombudsman found no evidence directly linking Person A with the gang’s next major attack — the murder of building contractor, Jack Kielty, in his Dundrum office on January 25, 1988. 

Mr Kielty was to be the prime witness in Central Television’s defence of a libel action brought by prominent UDA extortionist Jim Craig. Craig, who was suing the television company which connected him to racketeering, is said to have ordered the businessman’s death.

The police had success in the hunt for the gang responsible for Mr Kielty’s murder. Three local men and a woman were convicted for peripheral roles including disposing of the .358 Magnum used in the attack and driving the killers back to east Belfast. The gunman was never caught.

The police had further success against the UVF unit on May 19, 1988, when they raided Clough Orange Hall and found a rifle, sub-machine gun, semi-automatic pistol,a revolver, ammunition and other terrorist paraphernalia. They also discovered a UDR album containing montages of IRA suspects on which forensic tests found the fingerprints of Person A.

Because he was a member of the UDR, Person A claimed his fingerprints could have been on the album legitimately and in the absence of other evidence no charges could be brought. However, the RUC submitted a report to the army citing his alleged use of army photographs to assist his terrorist activity and demanded his dismissal.

The army was very slow to act leading to anger within the RUC which culminated in an amazing incident at Newcastle police station. This incident is not contained in the Ombudsman’s report but was widely talked about within the RUC at the time.

A UDR patrol, which included Person A, pulled into the barracks during a patrol. A senior RUC officer, on being told that Person A was in the station, stormed downstairs from his office and ordered him off the base. The patrol was eventually escorted out by the officer who then contacted the army to tell them he was banning Person 

A from the station. From then on whenever a patrol containing Person A arrived at Newcastle police station, the Land Rovers had to pull up outside on the footpath while the patrol leader went inside.

Several months after the discovery of the weapons in the Orange Hall, Person A was finally discharged from the UDR. The Ombudsman’s investigators found a report written by the police officer who investigated Kielty’s murder in which he described Person A as a “main organiser, planner and probably responsible for others now made amenable. It is suspected that (Person A) is still an active loyalist terrorist”.

The success of the police in convicting several members of the gang after the Kielty murder drove the terrorists underground and it was to be four years before they reemerged.

On November 6, 1992, Person A and two others abandoned a planned terrorist attack on the Thierafurth Inn in Kilcoo but on November 19 the three men returned to the isolated pub.

Two gunmen, one of them Person A, burst into the building and opened fire at four men sitting at the bar. Peter McCormack sustained several wounds and died from his injuries.

The UVF claimed responsibility for the attack claiming a local IRA commander had been in the bar.

The Ombudsman’s investigators established that by mid-1993 Special Branch had intelligence linking four people to the aborted attack at The Thierafurth and had also detailed knowledge of the murder of Mr McCormack, including the identity of the killers. This intelligence was marked in the Special Branch file as ’NND\Slow Waltz’. NND stood for no downward dissemination from Special Branch to other officers, while Slow Waltz allowed for information to be passed on once an appropriate period had passed.

The senior investigating officer in the murder of Peter McCormack told the Ombudsman’s team he did not receive such intelligence and Dr Maguire’s team could find no documentary evidence that it was shared with him.

The intelligence Special Branch received about the McCormack murder also provided detailed information on the UVF murder of Martin Lavery in Belfast on December 20, 1992. The Ombudsman found the same gunmen who carried out the attack on the Thierafurth, including Person A, carried out the murder of Mr Lavery but they were never arrested or questioned about the attack.

Again, the officer in charge of the McCormack murder probe was not given any intelligence linking the murders of Mr McCormack and Mr Lavery.

The next attack carried out by the south Down UVF gang was on June 7, 1993, on the Ballylough Road, near Annsborough.

Two armed men tried to break down the door of a small cottage and when they failed, fired shots through the bedroom window. They were trying to murder the man inside, believing him to be a member of the IRA. The man, and his wife, were uninjured in the attack.

An eyewitness identified the driver of the car and he was arrested by detectives but the witness would not make a formal statement so the alleged driver had to be released without charge.

Special Branch later established that the same gunmen who murdered Peter McCormack and Martin Lavery were involved in the Ballylough Road attack. However, Dr Maguire’s report said they were never arrested and the information was not passed on to the investigating officers.

The Ombudsman’s report found that until mid 1993 there was a lack of intelligence relating to Loyalist terrorists operating in the RUCs Newcastle sub-division. Two Special Branch officers identified this shortfall and proactively established intelligence ’assets’ which helped them build up an ’intelligence picture about the UVF’s south Down gang.

“However, I am satisfied that most of this information (obtained from mid 1993 onwards) was not passed to detectives investigating these attacks in order to protect the source of that information,” said Dr Maguire.

In the summary of the section of the report dealing with the gang Dr Maguire said evidence suggests that the security forces in the Newcastle sub-division has been compromised, principally from the UDR but also from within local RUC.

“My investigation has established that at least three individuals and their families, directly associated with the UVF unit active in south Down, were members of the UDR. They also had close family members working at RUC establishments and within the police force itself. This does not in itself suggest that police staff had done anything wrong. Quite often family members will have diametrically opposed views on matters. It can, however, lead to suspicion in the eyes of others and every criminal justice organisation needs to be aware of such issues.”

The Ombudsman said it was clear the police were principally concerned with the very high threat posed by the IRA in the area, “at the expense of disruption and intrusive tactics against the UVF, which its actions in the area warranted.”

Dr Maguire also found that while Special Branch in Newcastle was not revealing intelligence to local detectives, they themselves were not being told of intelligence uncovered by branch officers in Belfast which linked senior UVF figures in Belfast to the south Down gang.

The Ombudsman said the absence of a concerted and sustained effort by the police against the members of the south Down gang may well have encouraged them to continue their campaign which culminated in the attack in Loughinisland. 

“Had this unit been subject to sustained and robust investigation for the previous murders they may have been arrested and brought to justice and may not have been involved in the Loughinisland attack, for which they were suspected,” says the report.

Two Loyalist murders not referred to in the Ombudsman’s report were those of 79 year-old Kathleen Mullen and her 31 year-old son Terence who were shot dead at their Dromore Road home on the outskirts of Ballynahinch. It is believed they were murdered by UFF gunmen who were not linked to the south Down UVF gang.