The Shankill Butchers Read online

  The word ‘romper’ was derived from an Ulster Television series which involved children talking and playing with a television presenter. How the word ‘rompering’ came to be associated with killing can be better understood in the context of the manner in which killers disposed of their victims. Francis Arthurs, when he was dragged from the taxi, was taken to be ‘rompered’, which involved torturing him in front of an audience, in this case in the Lawnbrook Club. The involvement of large numbers of people guaranteed silence in much the same way as the Mafia code of omerta, and it also blooded potential recruits. On the night of 21 July Arthurs was held at the rear of the club until those drinkers with no paramilitary connections left for home. He was then paraded before the remaining drinkers and beaten severely by all of them. One man was seen to demonstrate that he could cause the victim the most pain by hitting him harder than anyone else. That man was Lenny Murphy. Joe Bennett, who later became one of the major UVF supergrasses, once told a friend that Murphy stood out from the others that night as the most barbarous gang member present. Arthurs was not just beaten until he was unrecognizable, he was stabbed repeatedly in different parts of the body with a knife wielded by Murphy. At 4.00 A.M.. the following morning, after he had been interrogated and tortured, Arthurs was shot on the premises, his body taken outside and bundled into a car, then dumped in a street less than a mile away.

  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.’

  The use of a knife was to be Lenny Murphy’s trademark. Until now no one has known of Lenny Murphy’s involvement in several murders in the summer of 1972, even though there was suspicion in the minds of detectives when Murphy eventually became infamous. It is incredible to think that Murphy was in fact a murderer at the age of twenty. There were many people at the time who would not have believed it. After all, he looked like most young men of his age, and his appearance did not suggest anything sinister about his character or his intentions. 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. Indeed, many of his companions derived an income from Unemployment Benefit supplemented with proceeds from robberies or extortion. He was five feet six and a half inches in height, of slim build, with a crop of curly dark brown hair, blue eyes and a sallow complexion. He had a long face with overly long ears, a small, turned-up nose and a rounded chin. There was a scar on the back of his left hand and several tattoos on both arms. The tattoos were of King William of Orange on a horse, the words ‘Mum and Dad’, the Red Hand of Ulster and ‘Rem 1690’. The tattoos were fairly typical of many working-class men of his age though he often kept them hidden from view. It has been suggested that vanity caused him to do this since the tattoos were drawn in his teens but later conflicted with his ‘man-about-town’ image.

  The killing of Arthurs was gruesome but it was only the beginning of this type of murder involving torture or ‘rompering’. 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. 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. He was detained at gunpoint in the rear of the club for almost twenty-four hours. His captors removed his personal possessions, which included a pair of rosary beads, a small amount of cash, cigarettes and a lighter, then interrogated him about his background, where he drank and whether he knew any IRA men in the area where he lived. After twenty-four hours he was released and all his possessions, with the exception of his money, were returned to him. His release was unusual, since people picked up in this fashion were immediately marked for death on the basis of their religion. We will probably never know why he was allowed to go free, though we can speculate that his captors intended that he should be kept under surveillance. Unfortunately, if this was the tactic, Thomas Madden’s drinking haunts would have placed him at risk, in particular one pub which he frequented often and which was bombed several times by Loyalist paramilitaries because it was a meeting place for Republicans. On the evening before he met his death he was drinking in his favourite pub, The Meeting of the Waters, and appeared reluctant to go to work that night. He mentioned to his drinking companions that he feared for his life but did not elaborate beyond this comment. However, he returned after 9.00 P.M. to his lodgings and repeated his fears to his landlady. It may have been due to the alcohol he had consumed that day, or perhaps the fear of losing his job, that made him set out for the Crumlin Road. Somewhere between his lodgings and his place of work he was apprehended by his killers, most likely in the vicinity of the Crumlin Road. He was taken to a lock-up garage in Louisa Street off the Oldpark Road. Between the hours of 10.00 P.M. and 4.00 A.M. he was tortured. He was suspended by a rope from a wooden beam and stripped of his clothing. A knife was used on his body much in the manner a sculptor would chip away at a piece of wood or stone. Long cuts were made down his back and thighs and in all there were 147 stab wounds on his body. This was the work of a sadist, and the pathologist’s report indicates that it was the work of one man. Not one of the wounds would have been likely to cause death but Thomas Madden must have lost consciousness frequently and been revived. Unlike Arthurs, his death did not occur from a bullet wound but from gradual strangulation from a slowly tightening noose. A woman in the vicinity of Louisa Street later revealed that at 4.00 A.M. she heard a man screaming, ‘Kill me, kill me.’

  The body was dragged one hundred yards by the killers, lifted to a height of six feet and thrown over a metal gate into a shop doorway. The manner of Madden’s demise was similar to that of Arthurs and the wounds suggested the use in each killing of a nine-inch double-bladed knife. There was undoubtedly a lot of blood spilled in both instances, and this was to become a feature of killings by the Shankill Butchers, and particularly by Lenny Murphy. It begs the question whether these two ‘romperings’ were designed to extract information from the victim or simply to provide sadistic pleasure for the murderers. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that Lenny Murphy committed the crimes firstly for pleasure and secondly for information. The amount of time taken in torturing Madden supports the thesis that his killing was for pleasure, because he was stripped and almost every part of his body was abused or cut with a knife. The nature of his wounds and the obvious care taken to inflict them does not imply a frenzied attack but, instead, a clinical act.

  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.

  Murphy’s career in terror had certainly begun and it was soon to lead him into the hands of the police. On the evening of 28 September he set out on a murder mission with an accomplice, twenty-year-old Mervyn John Connor, who lived at Mayo Street not far from Murphy’s home. They were travelling on a motorcycle with orders to kill a thirty-two-year-old Protestant, William Edward Pavis, who lived at Glenvarlock Street in the east of the city. Murphy was armed with a pistol and was under orders from the UVF leadership to carry out the hit personally. Pavis had been sent to prison a year earlier for illegally possessing firearms. It was not the offence which concerned the UVF but the fact that the person who appeared alongside him in court was a Roman Catholic priest, Father Eamon Corrigan. In court it was revealed that Pavis had taken a keen interest in firearms and was willing to handle them and sell them to anyone. He received a three-year sentence which was considered lenient because, though there was no evidence to connect him with paramilitary involvement, the guns he was willing to sell could have ended up in paramilitary hands. Father Corrigan, who had bought a shotgun from Pavis, was fined £20 for possessing an unlicensed weapon.

  It was a strange case that unfolded in court, especially when one appreciates that Pavis, a flautist, not only played in an Orange band but also played in a Catholic hall, and went shooting with a Catholic priest. The unusual pact between the priest and Pavis had its origins in the 1960s and developed with their common interest in guns and game shooting. When it was revealed that Pavis had sold a shotgun to the priest, suspicions were aroused in the UVF that perhaps he was also selling guns to the IRA. Unfortunately, after his trial, he was described in the press as an arms dealer, which he was not, but this description of him may well have sealed his fate. In prison, Pavis was threatened by UVF inmates, became depressed and was sent for treatment to Purdysburn Mental Institution on the outskirts of Belfast. There he was examined and treated with drugs. He was found to have an IQ of 150 but was said to be suffering from delusions that someone was going to kill him. The psychiatrist who treated him says that Pavis was not believed when he expressed this constant fear of assassination. Armed guards were eventually placed outside his private ward but this did not relieve his anxiety. Pavis knew what the psychiatrist did not know and the authorities did not suspect: that he should have been classified as a high-risk prisoner. In September 1972 he was released on parole and word was sent out immediately from Crumlin Road prison that he was on the outside. On the evening of 26 September, the day before Pavis was due to return to prison, Lenny Murphy arrived at his home and engaged his intended target in casual conversation during which he enquired whether Pavis had any guns for sale. Pavis assured Murphy that he did not and that he was returning to prison the following day. As the conversation drew to a close Murphy placed an arm round Pavis and accompanied him to the hallway of the house and finally to the doorstep. Murphy withdrew his arm and indicated that he was leaving but on good terms. As Pavis stood, hands by his side, Murphy pulled a pistol from inside his leather jacket and shot Pavis at close range before escaping with Connor on the motorcycle watched by several passers-by. They drove to the Glencairn housing estate, where they had stolen the bike earlier that day, and abandoned it.

  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. While Murphy was content to think he had escaped any connection with the Pavis killing, detectives were busy encouraging the eye witnesses to the shooting to cooperate in identifying Pavis’s killers. Eventually, both Murphy and Connor were arrested and made available for an identification parade, where 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 and who made the comment: ‘We suddenly realized that we had one cunning little bastard in our midst. I said to myself, “We haven’t seen the end of this guy.”’

  The police realized that in Murphy’s case they would have difficulty making the charge stick because he proved impossible to break under interrogation. He refused to answer questions put to him, would not make a statement and simply told the police that they would have to prove the charge. He added that it was unlikely to stick because the witnesses had only pointed him out in the station because of his behaviour. Mervyn Connor was a different proposition and the police knew it. Initially, however, his fear of Murphy prevented him telling the truth. While he was in prison detectives decided it was worth presenting Connor with a deal in return for his cooperation in convicting Murphy since, of the two, Murphy was the one whose cunning and cold method of killing indicated he was the seasoned terrorist. Two detectives visited Connor in January 1973 in his prison cell with tight security provided so that knowledge of their presence would not reach other Loyalist paramilitary prisoners. But Crumlin Road Prison was like a sieve and Murphy and other UVF men knew about the police visit within twenty-four hours. Several prison warders were under the control of the Loyalist paramilitaries and whether they leaked information, due to fear or blackmail, has to be a matter for speculation. The police were aware of this problem but were unable to counter it, short of removing Connor to a police station for interview which would, in its own way, have had the same effect. Connor agreed to give evidence against Murphy in return for a lenient approach to his case by the police but he also demanded that he be given special attention to guarantee his security while he remained in Crumlin Road Prison. The detectives spoke to the prison governor and requested that Connor be treated as a high-risk prisoner and that he be kept in a wing with ordinary prisoners, well away from members of the UDA and UVF. An assurance was given that two warders would guard Connor round the clock, remaining outside his cell, and that at meal times he would be closely scrutinized, but he would have his meals with other prisoners. The rationale for this decision was that if Connor did not eat with other prisoners he would be virtually in solitary confinement which could lead to a weakening of his resolve to testify against Murphy.

  At this time Crumlin Road Prison was a difficult place in which to provide the kind of protection sometimes necessary to keep a prisoner alive. An example of organizations going to amazing lengths to kill their enemies was illustrated by the Provisionals in respect of a UVF man named McKee, from the town of Larne in County Antrim. A Provisional IRA prisoner ground a light bulb into powder, put the substance in a bottle of orange juice and replaced the cap perfectly. McKee was given the bottle of juice, drank some and was rushed to the prison hospital suffering from severe stomach cramps. He survived only because the powdered light bulb was a heavy substance which sank to the bottom of the bottle and thus McKee drank only a small quantity of ground glass. News of this attempt on McKee spread throughout the prison and one man who was impressed by the technique used by the Provos was Lenny Murphy.

  He resolved to hatch a plan to kill his accomplice, Mervyn Connor, but he was faced not just with the security obstacle but also with the fact that even at mealtimes Connor was seated at a table surrounded by other prisoners. Murphy at this time was working in the prison hospital, well away from the wing which housed Connor. In the hospital Murphy had access to various medicines and, more disturbingly, substances such as cyanide. His first idea was that if h
e could only get to Connor during a meal break he could administer a dose of cyanide. The problem was getting close to him. Murphy’s ruthlessness was soon displayed in a fashion which frightened even his own colleagues in the UVF: he decided that if he had to kill more than one person to get at Connor, he would do it. A course of action open to him was to poison some of the food served at the table where Connor always sat. This would result in the death of other prisoners at the table but this was of no concern to Murphy in his single-minded desire to murder Connor. During a lunchtime in the last week of March 1973 Murphy placed a large dose of cyanide in a pot of custard which was marked for serving at Connor’s table. However, the poison changed the colour of the custard, which was then casually rejected by Connor and his fellow diners. The prison staff and the men at Connor’s table were unaware of what had happened, and Murphy took great delight in telling this story after he left prison. However, this foiled plan did not dissuade him from his course of action and he set about developing another strategy.