We take a look at some of Ireland's most notorious serial killers, some of whom will be in prison until they die, with no chance of parole.
This is a list of notable serial killers from the Ireland, ranked by number of proven victims (deadliest):
| # | Name: | Number of victims: |
| 1. | John Bodkin Adams | 0 – 163+ |
| 2. | Catherine Flannagan and Margaret Higgins | 1 – 8 |
| 3. | Geoffrey Evans and John Shaw | 2 |
| 4. | Patrick Dunphy | 2 |
| 5. | John Duffy and David Mulcahy | 3 |
| 6. | Dorcas "Darkey" Kelly | 5 |
| 7. | Kieran Kelly | 5 – 24+ |
| 8. | William Burke and William Hare | 16 – 16+ |
| 9. | The Shankill Butchers | 23 – 23+ |
(See also 7 Myths About Serial Killers)
(See also The Last Words of 30 Famous Serial Killers)
(See also Top 30 Serial Killers By Number of Victims (20th century))
(See also Top 30 Intelligent Serial Killers With Highest IQ)
1. John Bodkin Adams (0 – 163+)
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| (John Bodkin Adams) |
John Bodkin Adams (21 January 1899 – 4 July 1983) was an Irish general practitioner, convicted fraudster and suspected serial killer. Acquitted in a highly unusual trial in 1957 of murder but later found guilty of fraud. Archive evidence shows that he was almost certainly a killer but that his prosecution was botched for political reasons.
Span of killings: 1935 – 1956
Date of arrest: December 19, 1956
A.K.A.: Doctor Death
Born: 21 January 1899, Randalstown, County Antrim, Ireland
Died: 4 July 1983 (aged 84), Eastbourne, East Sussex, England
Number of victims: 0 – 163 +
Classification: Serial killer ?
Characteristics: Poisoner ? - General practitioner beneficiary of 132 patients' wills
Victims profile: Elderly women (patients)
Method of murder: Poisoning
Location: Eastbourne, East Sussex, England, United Kingdom
Status: Acquitted of murder on April 15, 1957. Died on July 4, 1983
John Bodkin Adams (21 January 1899 – 4 July 1983) was an Irish general practitioner, convicted fraudster and suspected serial killer. Between 1946 and 1956, more than 160 of his patients died in suspicious circumstances. Of these, 132 left him money or items in their wills. He was tried and acquitted for the murder of one patient in 1957. Another count of murder was withdrawn by the prosecution in what was later described as "an abuse of process" by the presiding judge Patrick Devlin, causing questions to be asked in Parliament about the prosecution's handling of events. The trial was featured in headlines around the world and was described at the time as "one of the greatest murder trials of all time" and "murder trial of the century". It was also described at the time as "unique" because, in the words of the judge, "the act of murder" had "to be proved by expert evidence."
The trial had several important legal ramifications. It established the doctrine of double effect, whereby a doctor giving treatment with the aim of relieving pain may, as an unintentional result, shorten life. Secondly, because of the publicity surrounding Adams's committal hearing, the law was changed to allow defendants to ask for such hearings to be held in private. Finally, though a defendant had never been required to give evidence in his own defence, the judge underlined in his summing-up that no prejudice should be attached by the jury to Adams not doing so.
The case, and the inability to convict Adams of murder, is also known for widely suspected political interference from Sir Roland Gwynne, ex-Attorney-General Hartley Shawcross, and various members of the Harold Macmillan government.
Adams was found guilty in a subsequent trial of 13 offences of prescription fraud, lying on cremation forms, obstructing a police search and failing to keep a dangerous drugs register. He was removed from the Medical Register in 1957 and reinstated in 1961 after two failed applications.
Scotland Yard's files on the case were initially closed to the public for 75 years, which would have been until 2033. However, following a request by historian Pamela Cullen, special permission was granted in 2003 to reopen the files.
The trial had several important legal ramifications. It established the doctrine of double effect, whereby a doctor giving treatment with the aim of relieving pain may, as an unintentional result, shorten life. Secondly, because of the publicity surrounding Adams's committal hearing, the law was changed to allow defendants to ask for such hearings to be held in private. Finally, though a defendant had never been required to give evidence in his own defence, the judge underlined in his summing-up that no prejudice should be attached by the jury to Adams not doing so.
The case, and the inability to convict Adams of murder, is also known for widely suspected political interference from Sir Roland Gwynne, ex-Attorney-General Hartley Shawcross, and various members of the Harold Macmillan government.
Adams was found guilty in a subsequent trial of 13 offences of prescription fraud, lying on cremation forms, obstructing a police search and failing to keep a dangerous drugs register. He was removed from the Medical Register in 1957 and reinstated in 1961 after two failed applications.
Scotland Yard's files on the case were initially closed to the public for 75 years, which would have been until 2033. However, following a request by historian Pamela Cullen, special permission was granted in 2003 to reopen the files.
2. Catherine Flannagan and Margaret Higgins (1 – 8)
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| (Catherine Flannagan (left) and Margaret Higgins (right)) |
Catherine Flannagan (1829 – 3 March 1884) and Margaret Higgins (1843 – 3 March 1884) were Irish sisters who were convicted of poisoning and murdering one person in Liverpool, Lancashire, England and suspected of more deaths. The women collected a burial society payout, a type of life insurance, on each death, and it was eventually found that they had been committing murders using arsenic to obtain the insurance money.
Though Catherine Flannagan evaded police for a time, both sisters were eventually caught and convicted of one of the murders; they were both hanged on the same day at Kirkdale Prison. Modern investigation of the crime has raised the possibility that Flannagan and Higgins were known or believed by investigators to be only part of a larger conspiracy of murder-for-profit—a network of "black widows"—but no convictions were ever obtained for any of the alleged conspiracy members other than the two sisters.
Span of killings: 1880 - 1883
A.K.A.: Black Widows of Liverpool
Born: Catherine Flannagan (1829, Ireland, United Kingdom), Margaret Higgins (1843, Ireland, United Kingdom)
Died: Catherine Flannagan (1884 (aged 54–55), Kirkdale Prison, Liverpool, England, United Kingdom), Margaret Higgins (1884 (aged 40–41), Kirkdale Prison, Liverpool, United Kingdom)
Cause of death: Hanging
Occupation: Landlady
Proven victims: 1
Possible victims: 8
Victim profile: Thomas Higgins, 45 (her brother-in-law)
Characteristics: Poisoner - To collect insurance money
Method of murder: Poisoning (arsenic)
Location: Liverpool, Merseyside, England, United Kingdom
Date apprehended: October 1883
Status: Executed by hanging at Kirkdale Prison on March 3, 1884
Deaths
In the early 1880s, unmarried sisters Catherine and Margaret Flannagan ran a rooming house at 5 Skirving Street, Liverpool. The household in the final months of 1880 consisted of the two sisters, Catherine's son John, and two lodger families - hod carrier Thomas Higgins and his daughter Mary, and Patrick Jennings and his daughter Margaret. John Flannagan, 22 and previously healthy, died suddenly in December 1880. His death did not raise any particular comment; Catherine collected £71 (worth roughly £5242 in 2012 pounds) from the burial society with which he had been registered and he was interred shortly thereafter.
By 1882, a romance had sprung up between Margaret and lodger Thomas Higgins. The pair married in October of that year. Thomas's daughter Mary, 8, died within months of the wedding after a short illness. Once again, the burial society payout was collected upon death, this time by Margaret Higgins.
In January 1883, Margaret Jennings, 19, died. Her burial payout was collected by Catherine.
In the face of neighborhood gossip about the death rate in the home, Catherine, Margaret, and Thomas moved their household to 105 Latimer Street and then again to 27 Ascot street. In September of 1883, Thomas Higgins, then 45, became yet another member of the household to fall mysteriously ill. His stomach pains were severe enough that Doctor Whitford was called; the doctor attributed Higgins's illness to dysentery related to drinking cheap whiskey and prescribed opium and castor oil. Higgins died after two days of illness. Days later, the same doctor was contacted and asked to provide a death certificate. He did so, attributing the death to dysentery.
Investigation
Though Thomas Higgins's death by apparent dysentery raised no questions for the attending doctor, Higgins's brother Patrick was surprised to hear that his brother, who had been strong and in good general health, could have succumbed so easily to illness. When he also discovered that his brother has been insured with five different burial societies, which left his widow with a profit of around £100, he pursued the matter with the authorities. A postmortem examination was ordered on Higgins's body. To the surprise of mourners, the coroner arrived at the home to perform the examination during the wake being held there for Higgins. Catherine Flannagan, upon hearing that a full autopsy was to be performed, fled the home.
When a full autopsy of Higgins's body was carried out, evidence of arsenic poisoning was found: Higgins's organs showed traces of arsenic, in quantities indicating the poisoning had taken place over several days. Evidence from the home, including "a bottle containing a mystery white substance and a market pocket worn by [Margaret]" was examined by poison expert Dr Campbell Brown, who verified the presence of arsenic - dust in Margaret's pocket, and an arsenic solution (containing unusual adulterants) in the bottle.
Margaret Higgins was arrested immediately; Catherine, after moving from one boarding house to another to avoid police for nearly a week, was taken into custody in Wavertree. On October 16, 1883, the sisters were formally charged with the murder of Thomas Higgins.
Orders for the bodies of the previously-deceased members of the household to be exhumed were issued when it became clear that arsenic was the mechanism of Thomas Higgins's death. The bodies of John Flannagan, Mary Higgins, and Margaret Jennings all showed evidence of minimal deterioration - a quality associated with arsenic poisoning - and traces of arsenic were found in the remains of all three.
Investigators initially assumed that the arsenic used to poison the victims had come from rat poison, but when common adulterants used in rat poison failed to show up in autopsies, they were forced to come up with a new theory. It was unlikely that the illiterate sisters would have been able to acquire arsenic through the usual method of visiting a chemist, a route more open to doctors than spinsters. Eventually it was discovered that common flypaper at the time contained arsenic, and that by soaking the flypaper in water, a solution substantially identical - including the same adulterants - to that found in a bottle at the Higgins residence could be obtained.
Aftermath
At the time of her arrest, Catherine claimed to her solicitor that the murders the sisters committed were not isolated, and provided a list of six or seven other deaths that she claimed to be murders related to burial society fraud, as well as a list of five other women who had either perpetrated those murders or provided insurance to those who did.
Alleged conspiracy
Catherine Flannagan's list of alleged conspirators to the arsenic deaths contained three poisoners other than herself, one accomplice, and three agents of the insuring groups who had provided payouts upon the deaths. Margaret Evans, Bridget Begley, and Margaret Higgins were named as the poisoners; Margaret Potter, a Mrs Fallon, and a Bridget Stanton were the insurers; and Catherine Ryan was alleged to have obtained the arsenic needed by one of the poisoners. According to Flannagan, Margaret Evans had been the instigator of the crime ring, beginning with the murder of a mentally-handicapped teenager in which Ryan obtained the poison and Evans administered it. Though Evans did not personally receive an insurance payout from this death, there were implications that she had dealings with the boy's father and may have profited from those. The women Flannagan alleged to have been involved in the conspiracy all appear often in accounts of suspicious deaths in this period; Mrs Stanton, for example, was linked to the insurance policies of three of the deaths, and groups of two or more of the involved women were seen visiting those who died shortly before their deaths. In one case, when an insurance company supervisor requested to meet Thomas Higgins in the course of issuing the insurance on him, he was greeted at the Higgins home by a woman who was neither Flannagan nor Higgins, who presented to him a "Thomas" who he later realized, upon seeing the deceased Thomas Higgins, was not Thomas Higgins at all.
Flannagan's testimony was sometimes contradictory to both herself and to what seemed to be obvious facts of the conspiracy, however; in one case, despite Mrs Stanton's close links to the insurance payouts of murder victims and Flannagan's identification of her as part of the conspiracy, Flannagan "exonerated" Stanton after police arrested the woman. Ultimately it was decided by the Prosecuting Solicitor for Liverpool that while the additional deaths were, indeed, likely to be murder, it would be difficult to prove that anyone other than Higgins or Flannagan had committed them, especially considering that the primary evidence against the other women was being provided by Flannagan, who had every reason to attempt to minimise her own responsibility in such crimes. As a result, only Flannagan and Higgins were tried for the crime of murdering Thomas Higgins, despite continuing suspicion by all investigating parties that there had been more deaths than just the four household ones, and more murderers than just the two sisters.
Trial
At the trial in 1884, prosecutors implicated the sisters in the three other deaths in their household, as well as that of Thomas Higgins, with which they were officially charged. Catherine Flannagan's offer to provide evidence against other conspirators for the prosecution in exchange for leniency was refused.
The sisters were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. The sentence was carried out on 3 March 1884 at Kirkdale Prison, with the sisters attended to by a Roman Catholic priest. The deaths were witnessed by a reported one thousand people.
In media
Contemporary accounts of the Flannagan sisters referred to them as "disciple[s] of Lucrezia Borgia" or as "the Borgias of the Slums", in reference to their use of poison and the tales of how Borgia had been known to do the same. Modern accounts of the Flannagan sisters, such as those by Angela Brabin and the television series Deadly Women, have focused more on the cooperative aspect of the crimes rather than the poison aspect, and tend to refer to them as "black widows" or "The Black Widows of Liverpool", particularly in reference to the allegation that the Flannagan sisters were part of a larger murder ring. Wax effigies of Flannagan and Higgins were placed in Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors after their executions.
In the early 1880s, unmarried sisters Catherine and Margaret Flannagan ran a rooming house at 5 Skirving Street, Liverpool. The household in the final months of 1880 consisted of the two sisters, Catherine's son John, and two lodger families - hod carrier Thomas Higgins and his daughter Mary, and Patrick Jennings and his daughter Margaret. John Flannagan, 22 and previously healthy, died suddenly in December 1880. His death did not raise any particular comment; Catherine collected £71 (worth roughly £5242 in 2012 pounds) from the burial society with which he had been registered and he was interred shortly thereafter.
By 1882, a romance had sprung up between Margaret and lodger Thomas Higgins. The pair married in October of that year. Thomas's daughter Mary, 8, died within months of the wedding after a short illness. Once again, the burial society payout was collected upon death, this time by Margaret Higgins.
In January 1883, Margaret Jennings, 19, died. Her burial payout was collected by Catherine.
In the face of neighborhood gossip about the death rate in the home, Catherine, Margaret, and Thomas moved their household to 105 Latimer Street and then again to 27 Ascot street. In September of 1883, Thomas Higgins, then 45, became yet another member of the household to fall mysteriously ill. His stomach pains were severe enough that Doctor Whitford was called; the doctor attributed Higgins's illness to dysentery related to drinking cheap whiskey and prescribed opium and castor oil. Higgins died after two days of illness. Days later, the same doctor was contacted and asked to provide a death certificate. He did so, attributing the death to dysentery.
Investigation
Though Thomas Higgins's death by apparent dysentery raised no questions for the attending doctor, Higgins's brother Patrick was surprised to hear that his brother, who had been strong and in good general health, could have succumbed so easily to illness. When he also discovered that his brother has been insured with five different burial societies, which left his widow with a profit of around £100, he pursued the matter with the authorities. A postmortem examination was ordered on Higgins's body. To the surprise of mourners, the coroner arrived at the home to perform the examination during the wake being held there for Higgins. Catherine Flannagan, upon hearing that a full autopsy was to be performed, fled the home.
When a full autopsy of Higgins's body was carried out, evidence of arsenic poisoning was found: Higgins's organs showed traces of arsenic, in quantities indicating the poisoning had taken place over several days. Evidence from the home, including "a bottle containing a mystery white substance and a market pocket worn by [Margaret]" was examined by poison expert Dr Campbell Brown, who verified the presence of arsenic - dust in Margaret's pocket, and an arsenic solution (containing unusual adulterants) in the bottle.
Margaret Higgins was arrested immediately; Catherine, after moving from one boarding house to another to avoid police for nearly a week, was taken into custody in Wavertree. On October 16, 1883, the sisters were formally charged with the murder of Thomas Higgins.
Orders for the bodies of the previously-deceased members of the household to be exhumed were issued when it became clear that arsenic was the mechanism of Thomas Higgins's death. The bodies of John Flannagan, Mary Higgins, and Margaret Jennings all showed evidence of minimal deterioration - a quality associated with arsenic poisoning - and traces of arsenic were found in the remains of all three.
Investigators initially assumed that the arsenic used to poison the victims had come from rat poison, but when common adulterants used in rat poison failed to show up in autopsies, they were forced to come up with a new theory. It was unlikely that the illiterate sisters would have been able to acquire arsenic through the usual method of visiting a chemist, a route more open to doctors than spinsters. Eventually it was discovered that common flypaper at the time contained arsenic, and that by soaking the flypaper in water, a solution substantially identical - including the same adulterants - to that found in a bottle at the Higgins residence could be obtained.
Aftermath
At the time of her arrest, Catherine claimed to her solicitor that the murders the sisters committed were not isolated, and provided a list of six or seven other deaths that she claimed to be murders related to burial society fraud, as well as a list of five other women who had either perpetrated those murders or provided insurance to those who did.
Alleged conspiracy
Catherine Flannagan's list of alleged conspirators to the arsenic deaths contained three poisoners other than herself, one accomplice, and three agents of the insuring groups who had provided payouts upon the deaths. Margaret Evans, Bridget Begley, and Margaret Higgins were named as the poisoners; Margaret Potter, a Mrs Fallon, and a Bridget Stanton were the insurers; and Catherine Ryan was alleged to have obtained the arsenic needed by one of the poisoners. According to Flannagan, Margaret Evans had been the instigator of the crime ring, beginning with the murder of a mentally-handicapped teenager in which Ryan obtained the poison and Evans administered it. Though Evans did not personally receive an insurance payout from this death, there were implications that she had dealings with the boy's father and may have profited from those. The women Flannagan alleged to have been involved in the conspiracy all appear often in accounts of suspicious deaths in this period; Mrs Stanton, for example, was linked to the insurance policies of three of the deaths, and groups of two or more of the involved women were seen visiting those who died shortly before their deaths. In one case, when an insurance company supervisor requested to meet Thomas Higgins in the course of issuing the insurance on him, he was greeted at the Higgins home by a woman who was neither Flannagan nor Higgins, who presented to him a "Thomas" who he later realized, upon seeing the deceased Thomas Higgins, was not Thomas Higgins at all.
Flannagan's testimony was sometimes contradictory to both herself and to what seemed to be obvious facts of the conspiracy, however; in one case, despite Mrs Stanton's close links to the insurance payouts of murder victims and Flannagan's identification of her as part of the conspiracy, Flannagan "exonerated" Stanton after police arrested the woman. Ultimately it was decided by the Prosecuting Solicitor for Liverpool that while the additional deaths were, indeed, likely to be murder, it would be difficult to prove that anyone other than Higgins or Flannagan had committed them, especially considering that the primary evidence against the other women was being provided by Flannagan, who had every reason to attempt to minimise her own responsibility in such crimes. As a result, only Flannagan and Higgins were tried for the crime of murdering Thomas Higgins, despite continuing suspicion by all investigating parties that there had been more deaths than just the four household ones, and more murderers than just the two sisters.
Trial
At the trial in 1884, prosecutors implicated the sisters in the three other deaths in their household, as well as that of Thomas Higgins, with which they were officially charged. Catherine Flannagan's offer to provide evidence against other conspirators for the prosecution in exchange for leniency was refused.
The sisters were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. The sentence was carried out on 3 March 1884 at Kirkdale Prison, with the sisters attended to by a Roman Catholic priest. The deaths were witnessed by a reported one thousand people.
In media
Contemporary accounts of the Flannagan sisters referred to them as "disciple[s] of Lucrezia Borgia" or as "the Borgias of the Slums", in reference to their use of poison and the tales of how Borgia had been known to do the same. Modern accounts of the Flannagan sisters, such as those by Angela Brabin and the television series Deadly Women, have focused more on the cooperative aspect of the crimes rather than the poison aspect, and tend to refer to them as "black widows" or "The Black Widows of Liverpool", particularly in reference to the allegation that the Flannagan sisters were part of a larger murder ring. Wax effigies of Flannagan and Higgins were placed in Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors after their executions.
3. Geoffrey Evans and John Shaw (2)
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| (Geoffrey Evans (and possibly John Shaw)) |
John Shaw and Geoffrey Evans became notorious when they abducted, tortured and killed two women during a crime a spree in Ireland.
With his accomplice and fellow Englishman, John Shaw (70), Evans was convicted in 1978 of the rape and murder of two women, Elizabeth Plunkett and Mary Duffy, and sentenced to life.
Shaw is still behind bars in Castlerea Prison in Co Roscommon. The pair -- who confessed to the killings when arrested -- were among the longest-serving prisoners in the State. Geoffrey Evans died in hospital from an infection after spending more than three years in a vegetative state, an inquest heard.
Span of killings: August 1976 – 27 September, 1976
Date of arrest: 27 September, 1976
A.K.A.: The Brittas Bay Killers
Born: Geoffrey Evans (1940); John Shaw (1942)
Died: Geoffrey Evans (20 May, 2012, Dublin)
Number of victims: 2
Classification: Serial killers
Location: Ireland, United Kingdom
Back in 1974 both men, who were in their 30’s at the time, left England and fled to Ireland after building up a string of criminal convictions for burglary and theft – and were also wanted by the police in connection with three rapes – in England.
Two ladies fell into the hands of these criminals before their own suspicious behaviour got them caught.
On 27 September, 1976, two officers were on duty near a nightclub, when they saw the car parked in a nearby car park. When Evans and Shaw left the nightclub and returned to the car, they were arrested after a struggle, and when back at the station, eventually confessed to the murders.
Following their arrest, Shaw received an attack of “Catholic Guilt” and told the officers in charge of him “I’m glad you got me, we were going to kill one a week.”
Geoffrey Evans underwent heart surgery in 2008. Due to complications, he fell into a coma, in which he stayed for the next 4 years, dying in May 2012, age 69. His accomplish, John Shaw, is still in prison serving his life sentence.
Two ladies fell into the hands of these criminals before their own suspicious behaviour got them caught.
On 27 September, 1976, two officers were on duty near a nightclub, when they saw the car parked in a nearby car park. When Evans and Shaw left the nightclub and returned to the car, they were arrested after a struggle, and when back at the station, eventually confessed to the murders.
Following their arrest, Shaw received an attack of “Catholic Guilt” and told the officers in charge of him “I’m glad you got me, we were going to kill one a week.”
Geoffrey Evans underwent heart surgery in 2008. Due to complications, he fell into a coma, in which he stayed for the next 4 years, dying in May 2012, age 69. His accomplish, John Shaw, is still in prison serving his life sentence.
4. Patrick Dunphy (2)
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| (No Photo Available) |
Patrick Dunphy was a farmer convicted of the murder of his two sons, Eddie who was nine and John who was eleven.
On the 27th September 1899, he poisoned one son with strychnine; and on 17th December, he despatched the other in a similar fashion. He committed the crimes in order to claim a small amount of insurance money.
There was a widespread belief that Dunphy would be reprieved because the execution coincided with a visit to the country by Queen Victoria, but the Home Secretary refused because of the cold-blooded nature of the crime.
Hanged by Thomas Scott; it was the first execution in Waterford for 36 years. The execution of thirty four year old Dunphy took place on the 10th April 1900.
Span of killings: September/December 1899
Born: 1865
Died: April 10, 1900
Number of victims: 2
Classification: Murderer (Serial killer)
Characteristics: Parricide - Poisoner
Victims profile: His two sons, Eddie, 9, and John, 11
Method of murder: Poisoning (strychnine)
Location: Waterford County, Munster, Ireland, United Kingdom
Status: Executed by hanging in Waterford on April 10, 1900
5. John Duffy and David Mulcahy (3)
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| (John Duffy (left) and David Mulcahy(right)) |
John Duffy (born 29 November 1958 in Northern Ireland) and David Mulcahy (born 1959) are two British rapists and serial killers who together attacked numerous women at railway stations in the south of England through the 1980s. They are known as the Railway Rapists and the Railway Killers.
Span of killings: 29 December 1985–18 May 1986
Date of arrest: John Duffy (November 23, 1986); David Mulcahy (February 3, 1999)
A.K.A.: The Railway Killers, The Railway Rapists
Born: John Duffy (29 November 1958 in Northern Ireland); David Mulcahy (1959)
Number of victims: John Duffy (2–3) and David Mulcahy (3)
Classification: Serial killer
Criminal penalty: Life imprisonment (both Duffy and Mulcahy)
Location: North London, England, United Kingdom
Status: Duffy (Convicted of two murders and four rapes. Sentenced to life in prison (minimum 30 years) in February 1988); Mulcahy (Sentenced to three life sentences, with a 30-year recommendation, on February 1, 2001)
The first attacks
In 1982 a woman (KJ) was raped by two men near Hampstead station and subsequently eighteen more were attacked over the next year. More occurred through 1984 and then three were raped on the same night in 1985 in Hendon. Police set up an urgent workshop to try to find the perpetrators, called Operation Hart.
The name of Duffy, a martial arts instructor, was touted as a suspect among thousands of other names as he was on the sex offenders register following conviction for the rape of his wife. Rope found in his parents house linked him to the second murder victim. Mulcahy was also questioned due to his close friendship with Duffy but victims were still traumatised and unable to pick him out of an identity parade. Mulcahy was released for lack of evidence.
The switch to murder
On 29 December 1985, Alison Day, 19, was dragged off a train at Hackney Wick station by Duffy and Mulcahy and repeatedly raped. She was then strangled with a piece of string.
Police further stepped up their search for the attacker who had been coined by the press as the Railway Rapist. The death of Alison Day changed this moniker to the Railway Killer, a tag reinforced by the rape and murder of 15-year-old Maartje Tamboezer in West Horsley on 17 April 1986. As well as rape and strangulation, Maartje's body was set on fire. A month later on 18 May 1985, local TV presenter Anne Locke, 29, was abducted and murdered as she dismounted a train in Brookmans Park, Hertfordshire.
New methods
Police brought in a psychologist from the University of Surrey, Dr. David Canter, to help their inquiries. There had been no previous use of "psychological offender profiling" as it was known, but something fresh was required as three women had been murdered and numerous more raped, with little progress being made. Canter examined the details of each crime and built up a profile of the attacker's personality, habits and traits. While this continued, another attack took place as a 14-year-old girl was raped in a park (David Canter was a psychologist working in the field of geographical psychology at the time). This enquiry led him to set up Investigative Psychology in which he has become an acknowledged expert in the field.
The breakthrough
As well as working together Duffy had started to rape alone and he was arrested while following a woman in a secluded park, he was questioned also about the spate of rapes and murders, and the next day charged on all counts. Police knew he had not committed the offences alone, but Duffy was not forthcoming about his accomplice.
Guilty
Duffy went on trial in February 1988 and was convicted of two murders and four rapes, although he was acquitted of raping and killing Anne Locke. He was given a minimum tariff of 30 years by the judge, later extended to a whole life tariff by the Home Secretary. A European Court of Human Rights ruling later removed the right of politicians to reset sentence tariffs, and so Duffy's stay in prison was reverted to the original 30 years. He will be in prison until at least 2018 and the age of 69.
Much was made of the psychological profile constructed by Canter after the trial, as Duffy fitted 13 of the 17 observations made about the attacker's lifestyle and habits. Such profiling became immediately commonplace in policing thereafter.
The accomplice is found
Following his conviction, Duffy revealed to a forensic psychologist what the police knew already - that he had not attacked the women alone. However, he chose to reveal no more until 1997 when he implicated Mulcahy, a lifelong friend with whom Duffy had been inseparable since their days together at school in Haverstock, North London. Duffy also admitted his involvement in the attack on Anne Locke, although couldn't be re-tried for this under the double jeopardy rule.
However, Mulcahy - a married father of four - could still be implicated and following Duffy's claims, he was tracked for several months by police prior to his arrest and DNA-tests (which were not yet in use during the original investigation) also proved his involvement conclusively. In 2000, Duffy appeared at the Old Bailey as a witness against Mulcahy and gave detailed evidence over 14 days. It was the first time a highest-category prisoner had ever given evidence against an accomplice.
Mulcahy emerged through the trial from prosecution evidence as the chief perpetrator and the first to decide that sexual stimulation wasn't enough of a thrill any more, so turning to murder.
Mulcahy was convicted of three murders and seven rapes and handed 3 life sentences, with a 30-year recommendation. He was not later given a whole life tariff, as the ruling barring politically-set tariffs had been made by the time his case was due for review.
Duffy was convicted of 17 more rapes and received a further 12 years. Neither man is expected to ever be released from prison alive. Police suspect them of countless other sex attacks, some dating back to the mid-1970s, while Mulcahy is also suspected of attacks which took place after Duffy was jailed.
There has been occasional publicity for the pairing since Mulcahy's imprisonment, including newspaper claims that Duffy was paid 20,000 pounds in return for information about his accomplice; and that Mulcahy has become a feared loan shark from his prison cell.
In 2001, a television movie Witness of Truth: The Railway Murders was released, starring Huw Higginson and Nicholas Marchie as Duffy and Mulcahy, respectively.
In 1982 a woman (KJ) was raped by two men near Hampstead station and subsequently eighteen more were attacked over the next year. More occurred through 1984 and then three were raped on the same night in 1985 in Hendon. Police set up an urgent workshop to try to find the perpetrators, called Operation Hart.
The name of Duffy, a martial arts instructor, was touted as a suspect among thousands of other names as he was on the sex offenders register following conviction for the rape of his wife. Rope found in his parents house linked him to the second murder victim. Mulcahy was also questioned due to his close friendship with Duffy but victims were still traumatised and unable to pick him out of an identity parade. Mulcahy was released for lack of evidence.
The switch to murder
On 29 December 1985, Alison Day, 19, was dragged off a train at Hackney Wick station by Duffy and Mulcahy and repeatedly raped. She was then strangled with a piece of string.
Police further stepped up their search for the attacker who had been coined by the press as the Railway Rapist. The death of Alison Day changed this moniker to the Railway Killer, a tag reinforced by the rape and murder of 15-year-old Maartje Tamboezer in West Horsley on 17 April 1986. As well as rape and strangulation, Maartje's body was set on fire. A month later on 18 May 1985, local TV presenter Anne Locke, 29, was abducted and murdered as she dismounted a train in Brookmans Park, Hertfordshire.
New methods
Police brought in a psychologist from the University of Surrey, Dr. David Canter, to help their inquiries. There had been no previous use of "psychological offender profiling" as it was known, but something fresh was required as three women had been murdered and numerous more raped, with little progress being made. Canter examined the details of each crime and built up a profile of the attacker's personality, habits and traits. While this continued, another attack took place as a 14-year-old girl was raped in a park (David Canter was a psychologist working in the field of geographical psychology at the time). This enquiry led him to set up Investigative Psychology in which he has become an acknowledged expert in the field.
The breakthrough
As well as working together Duffy had started to rape alone and he was arrested while following a woman in a secluded park, he was questioned also about the spate of rapes and murders, and the next day charged on all counts. Police knew he had not committed the offences alone, but Duffy was not forthcoming about his accomplice.
Guilty
Duffy went on trial in February 1988 and was convicted of two murders and four rapes, although he was acquitted of raping and killing Anne Locke. He was given a minimum tariff of 30 years by the judge, later extended to a whole life tariff by the Home Secretary. A European Court of Human Rights ruling later removed the right of politicians to reset sentence tariffs, and so Duffy's stay in prison was reverted to the original 30 years. He will be in prison until at least 2018 and the age of 69.
Much was made of the psychological profile constructed by Canter after the trial, as Duffy fitted 13 of the 17 observations made about the attacker's lifestyle and habits. Such profiling became immediately commonplace in policing thereafter.
The accomplice is found
Following his conviction, Duffy revealed to a forensic psychologist what the police knew already - that he had not attacked the women alone. However, he chose to reveal no more until 1997 when he implicated Mulcahy, a lifelong friend with whom Duffy had been inseparable since their days together at school in Haverstock, North London. Duffy also admitted his involvement in the attack on Anne Locke, although couldn't be re-tried for this under the double jeopardy rule.
However, Mulcahy - a married father of four - could still be implicated and following Duffy's claims, he was tracked for several months by police prior to his arrest and DNA-tests (which were not yet in use during the original investigation) also proved his involvement conclusively. In 2000, Duffy appeared at the Old Bailey as a witness against Mulcahy and gave detailed evidence over 14 days. It was the first time a highest-category prisoner had ever given evidence against an accomplice.
Mulcahy emerged through the trial from prosecution evidence as the chief perpetrator and the first to decide that sexual stimulation wasn't enough of a thrill any more, so turning to murder.
Mulcahy was convicted of three murders and seven rapes and handed 3 life sentences, with a 30-year recommendation. He was not later given a whole life tariff, as the ruling barring politically-set tariffs had been made by the time his case was due for review.
Duffy was convicted of 17 more rapes and received a further 12 years. Neither man is expected to ever be released from prison alive. Police suspect them of countless other sex attacks, some dating back to the mid-1970s, while Mulcahy is also suspected of attacks which took place after Duffy was jailed.
There has been occasional publicity for the pairing since Mulcahy's imprisonment, including newspaper claims that Duffy was paid 20,000 pounds in return for information about his accomplice; and that Mulcahy has become a feared loan shark from his prison cell.
In 2001, a television movie Witness of Truth: The Railway Murders was released, starring Huw Higginson and Nicholas Marchie as Duffy and Mulcahy, respectively.
6. Dorcas "Darkey" Kelly (5)
 |
| (Dorcas "Darkey" Kelly) |
Dorcas "Darkey" Kelly (died 7 January 1761) was an Irish brothel-keeper and serial killer who was burned at the stake in Dublin in 1761. Kelly was executed for the murder of at least five men. Their bodies were found in a brothel she owned in Dublin.
Born: ???, Dorcas Kelly
Died: January 7, 1761, Dublin, Ireland
A.K.A.: Darkey, Darky, Dorcas Stuart
Criminal penalty: Death by burning
Location: Dublin, Ireland, United Kingdom
Biography
Dorcas Kelly was a madam who operated the Maiden Tower brothel on Copper Alley, off Fishamble Street in the southwest part of Dublin, Ireland. Accused of killing shoemaker John Dowling on St. Patrick's Day 1760, her brothel was investigated by the authorities. Investigators then found the corpses of five men hidden in the vaults of her brothel. Kelly was executed by partial hanging and burning at the stake on Gallows Road (modern Baggot Street). After her execution she was waked by prostitutes on Copper Alley; thirteen of them were arrested for disorder and sent to Newgate Prison, Dublin.
An account of the 1773 execution of the murderess Mrs Herring on St. Stephen's Green, Dublin, gives an idea of what Kelly's execution may have been like:
Legend
Various legends grew up around Kelly after her execution. The most common story is that she became pregnant with the child of Dublin’s Sheriff Simon Luttrell, 1st Earl of Carhampton, a member of the Hellfire Club. She demanded financial support from him. He responded by accusing her of witchcraft, and killed their baby in a Satanic ritual. The body was never found. Darkey was then burnt at the stake.
This story may have its origin in one told about Luttrell's son Henry, who supposedly raped a girl in a brothel, and then had the girl and her family imprisoned under false charges.
Legacy
A pub on Fishamble Street, near where her brothel once stood, is named Darkey Kelly's.
Dorcas Kelly was a madam who operated the Maiden Tower brothel on Copper Alley, off Fishamble Street in the southwest part of Dublin, Ireland. Accused of killing shoemaker John Dowling on St. Patrick's Day 1760, her brothel was investigated by the authorities. Investigators then found the corpses of five men hidden in the vaults of her brothel. Kelly was executed by partial hanging and burning at the stake on Gallows Road (modern Baggot Street). After her execution she was waked by prostitutes on Copper Alley; thirteen of them were arrested for disorder and sent to Newgate Prison, Dublin.
 |
| (Dorcas "Darkey" Kelly) |
An account of the 1773 execution of the murderess Mrs Herring on St. Stephen's Green, Dublin, gives an idea of what Kelly's execution may have been like:
She was placed on a stool something more than two feet high, and, a chain being placed under her arms, the rope round her neck was made fast to two spikes, which, being driven through a post against which she stood, when her devotions were ended, the stool was taken from under her, and she was soon strangled. When she had hung about fifteen minutes, the rope was burnt, and she sunk till the chain supported her, forcing her hands up to a level with her face, and the flame being furious, she was soon consumed. The crowd was so immensely great that it was a long time before the faggots could be placed for the execution.
— Edward Cave ("Sylvanus Urban"), The gentleman’s magazine, and historical chronicle, Volume 43, London, 1773
Legend
Various legends grew up around Kelly after her execution. The most common story is that she became pregnant with the child of Dublin’s Sheriff Simon Luttrell, 1st Earl of Carhampton, a member of the Hellfire Club. She demanded financial support from him. He responded by accusing her of witchcraft, and killed their baby in a Satanic ritual. The body was never found. Darkey was then burnt at the stake.
This story may have its origin in one told about Luttrell's son Henry, who supposedly raped a girl in a brothel, and then had the girl and her family imprisoned under false charges.
Legacy
A pub on Fishamble Street, near where her brothel once stood, is named Darkey Kelly's.
7. Kieran Kelly (5 – 24+)
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| (Kieran Kelly) |
An Irish native, born in 1928, Kelly migrated to London at age 25, working odd jobs and spending most of his money on liquor while launching a one-man war against "poofters." He slaughtered an uncertain number of gays over the next three decades, clearly recalling five victims at his arrest in 1983.
Considering that he had killed those five in eight years time -- and two within a three-month period preceding his incarceration -- it is possible that Kelly murdered dozens in his thirty years at large.
Span of killings: 1975 – 1983
Born: 1928
Proven victims: 5
Possible victims: 24+
Classification: Serial killer
Characteristics: Homophobic - Mutilation
Victims profile: Gay males
Method of murder: Stabbing with knife
Location: London, England, United Kingdom
Status: Sentenced to life imprisonment, 1984
Between 1953 and 1983 when he was finally sent to prison for life, he committed at least 18 murders and probably as many as 24.
Kelly's first known victim, elderly panhandler Hector Fisher, was found in a Clapham churchyard on Christmas Day 1975, stabbed repeatedly about the head and neck. Last seen alive on Christmas Eve, Fisher had been loitering with several men dressed up as "Father Christmas."
Homicide investigators grilled a dozen suspects in the case -- including Kieron Kelly -- but they found no evidence that would support a murder charge.
Eighteen months later, on June 2, 1977, 68-year-old Maurice Weighly was found dead in Soho, his face and genitals mutilated, the neck of a broken bottle thrust up his rectum. Constables found Kelly and another transient in the neighborhood, with bloodstains on their clothing, and Kelly was charged with the murder, his companion describing the crime in grisly detail.
Six months passed before the trial, and Kelly was acquitted after his lawyer branded the state's key witness an alcoholic, "blind drunk" at the time of the murder. (The witness subsequently vanished and was never seen again. In 1983, Kieron Kelly confessed to his murder.)
In May 1983, an elderly panhandler was pushed onto the tracks at London's Kensington Station, saved when the driver managed to stop his train in time. Witnesses fingered Kelly in the attack, prompting his arrest on charges of attempted murder, but jurors failed to reach a verdict in his first trial, and he was acquitted the second time around.
By August 4, Kelly was back in jail, charged with robbery and public drunkenness. Locked in the drunk tank with transients, he crushed the skull of inmate William Boyd, finishing his victim off with a garrote fashioned from stockings and shoelaces. When tea was delivered next morning, Kelly's surviving cellmate begged for protection, ignoring dire threats in his eagerness to testify.
Under close interrogation, Kelly confessed to five remembered slayings. William Boyd aside, he now admitted killing Hector Fisher and Maurice Weighly, protected from further charges in the latter case by his previous acquittal.
Other victims included the missing witness from his first murder trial, and an elderly transient, shoved beneath a train days after the Kensington Station attack. Authorities confirmed a fatal "accident" at Oval Station on the date in question, but they had no firm corroborating evidence.
Convicted of the Fisher homicide in June 1984, Kelly was sentenced to life imprisonment. A few days later, he received an identical term for William Boyd's murder, departing the courtroom with a cheerful "Happy Christmas to you all!"
Kelly's first known victim, elderly panhandler Hector Fisher, was found in a Clapham churchyard on Christmas Day 1975, stabbed repeatedly about the head and neck. Last seen alive on Christmas Eve, Fisher had been loitering with several men dressed up as "Father Christmas."
Homicide investigators grilled a dozen suspects in the case -- including Kieron Kelly -- but they found no evidence that would support a murder charge.
Eighteen months later, on June 2, 1977, 68-year-old Maurice Weighly was found dead in Soho, his face and genitals mutilated, the neck of a broken bottle thrust up his rectum. Constables found Kelly and another transient in the neighborhood, with bloodstains on their clothing, and Kelly was charged with the murder, his companion describing the crime in grisly detail.
Six months passed before the trial, and Kelly was acquitted after his lawyer branded the state's key witness an alcoholic, "blind drunk" at the time of the murder. (The witness subsequently vanished and was never seen again. In 1983, Kieron Kelly confessed to his murder.)
In May 1983, an elderly panhandler was pushed onto the tracks at London's Kensington Station, saved when the driver managed to stop his train in time. Witnesses fingered Kelly in the attack, prompting his arrest on charges of attempted murder, but jurors failed to reach a verdict in his first trial, and he was acquitted the second time around.
By August 4, Kelly was back in jail, charged with robbery and public drunkenness. Locked in the drunk tank with transients, he crushed the skull of inmate William Boyd, finishing his victim off with a garrote fashioned from stockings and shoelaces. When tea was delivered next morning, Kelly's surviving cellmate begged for protection, ignoring dire threats in his eagerness to testify.
Under close interrogation, Kelly confessed to five remembered slayings. William Boyd aside, he now admitted killing Hector Fisher and Maurice Weighly, protected from further charges in the latter case by his previous acquittal.
Other victims included the missing witness from his first murder trial, and an elderly transient, shoved beneath a train days after the Kensington Station attack. Authorities confirmed a fatal "accident" at Oval Station on the date in question, but they had no firm corroborating evidence.
Convicted of the Fisher homicide in June 1984, Kelly was sentenced to life imprisonment. A few days later, he received an identical term for William Boyd's murder, departing the courtroom with a cheerful "Happy Christmas to you all!"
8. William Burke and William Hare (16 – 16+)
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| (William Hare (left) and William Burke (right)) |
The Burke and Hare murders, or West Port murders, were a series of murders committed in Edinburgh, Scotland, over a period of about ten months in 1828. The killings were attributed to Irish immigrants William Burke and William Hare, who sold the corpses of their 16 victims to Doctor Robert Knox as dissection material for his well-attended anatomy lectures. Burke and Hare's alleged accomplices were Burke's mistress, Helen McDougal, and Hare's wife, Margaret Laird.
From their acts came the now archaic British word "burking", originally meaning to smother a victim or to commit an anatomy murder but which later passed into general use as a word for any suppression or cover-up.
Span of killings: November 1827 - October 1828
Date of arrest: November 1, 1828
A.K.A.: West Port murders
Born: Burke (1792); Hare (1792 or 1804)
Died: Burke (January 28, 1829); Hare (His date of death is uncertain)
Proven victims: 16
Possible victims: 16+
Classification: Serial killers
Method of murder: Suffocation
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
Status: Burke (Executed by hanging in Edinburgh on January 28, 1829); Hare (Immunity from prosecution if he confessed and agreed to testify against Burke. Released in February 1829, and many popular tales tell of him as a blind beggar on the streets of London, having been mobbed and thrown in a lime pit. His date of death is uncertain)
Hard working Irish immigrants by day, scheming murderers by night - William Burke and William Hare were a unique pair of criminals who made a profit from providing dead bodies to the anatomy students of 19th century Edinburgh.
Edinburgh's population of university students and practicing anatomists created a unique market for fresh corpses that prompted Burke and Hare to enter into an illegal trade.
Acting on a strict code of 'no questions asked', the financial rewards of Burke and Hare's crimes led to a series of 16 murders spanning a period of just under a year. And had the two criminals not allowed their greed to consume them, they may never have been caught.
Murder for money
In early 19th century Britain, the law stated that only the bodies of executed criminals could be used for autopsy purposes. But with the ever-growing popularity of anatomy studies, the demand for fresh corpses soon outstripped the supply and grave robbing became common practice among criminals who wanted to earn an easy pound.
Murder for money is not an original concept by any means, but Burke and Hare had a new perspective on killing for financial gain. Unusually, they had little interest in the wealth of their victims, all they needed was a fresh corpse to sell.
Burke and Hare are reported to have first met in Edinburgh, after both men had left their native Ireland to work on the Union Canal in Scotland. However, it was not until Burke moved from Leith to West Port, with his partner Helen McDougal, that he and Hare actually met.
Hare had settled at a boarding lodge with a recently widowed woman named Margaret, the two had struck up a relationship soon after her husband's death and they ran the lodge as if they were a married couple.
After a chance meeting, it was Margaret who introduced Helen and Burke to her partner and the couple soon became paying lodgers. The two couples were never the best of friends, but their love for drinking and easy moneymaking schemes made them a murderous match. Ultimately, their real dislike for one another would lead to their downfall.
A cunning plan
In 1827, one of Hare's lodgers, an old man named Donald, fell ill and died. His death was of no real concern to Hare except that Donald owed him £4 in rent. Such was Hare's anger that he began to consider how the dead man could pay off his debt. Aware of the demand for corpses by anatomists, Hare hatched a plan.
On the day of the funeral, Burke and Hare took Donald's body from the coffin and replaced it with a sack of bark. Later in the day they removed the body from the house and took it to the anatomy offices of Professor Robert Knox. They were asked to return after nightfall and on doing so, they were paid 7 pounds 10 shillings for their efforts.
This ready cash made the pair contemplate a risky, but ultimately effortless, moneymaking scheme. Grave robbing was labour intensive and the quality or freshness of a corpse was not guaranteed. However, committing the murder themselves would be an easy way to ensure the supply of fresh quality corpses for sale.
They didn't have to look very far for their first victim.
Another of Hare's lodgers, a miller named Joseph, had fallen ill not long after Donald's death. Though he was not seriously ill, Burke and Hare took it upon themselves to put an end to his suffering.
After several glasses of whiskey with the two men, Joseph passed out. And by holding his nose and mouth closed whilst the other restrained him, Burke and Hare had, by chance, discovered their very own signature murder method. By suffocating the victim, they provided the anatomy students with the fresh, undamaged cadavers that they needed.
From then on, their victims ranged from sickly lodgers to old prostitutes and in the first four months of 1828 their killings were limited to nameless individuals that would cause no questions to be asked.
A close call
However, in April 1828, local prostitutes Mary Paterson and Janet Brown were out drinking and met up with Burke. He invited them back to his brother's where they continued to drink.
While Mary slept off her excessive drinking, an argument broke out causing Janet to leave. She told Burke that she would return for Mary later and went to visit her old landlady Mrs Lawrie. After relaying the morning's events to her old friend, Mrs Lawrie became seriously concerned for Mary's safety and told Janet to return for her at once.
A servant accompanied Janet to the Burke's, but on arrival they were told that both Burke and Mary had gone out. Janet insisted on waiting at the lodgings and asked the servant to return to Mrs Lawrie and tell her the news.
Still suspicious of the whole affair, Mrs Lawrie sent the servant straight back to the Burke's and suggested that Janet must leave. By this time Mary's body was already on the way to Dr. Knox, but thanks to Mrs Lawrie's warning, Janet had escaped a similar fate.
Familiar and unfamiliar faces
Following Mary and Janet's visit to the Burke's house, the next five victims were deliberately chosen so that they wouldn't be recognised by the students and the local community. And it was around this time that the two couples fell out. Burke (pictured right) accused Hare of supplying Knox with bodies behind his back and it was agreed that Helen and Burke would move out on their return from visiting Helen's relatives.
Once they returned, Burke and Hare's greed and apparent laziness drove them to kill much closer to home, this time they picked Ann McDougal, a relative of Helen's, who was lured to the lodging house and killed. Whilst Burke had no qualms about Ann's final demise, he did ask Hare to carry out the killing.
Carelessly, their next three victims were central to the local community and therefore easily recognised by the paying students who attended Dr. Knox's classes.
Mary Haldane was an ageing local prostitute who agreed to partake of a dram at Hare's lodgings. On being told that her mother had been seen with Hare, Mary's daughter Peggy decided to pay his lodgings a visit. On arrival, Hare said that Mary had visited, but had left. He then invited Peggy in for a drink and before long she joined her mother at Dr. Knox's. Both bodies fetched £10 each.
The neighbourhood grew suspicious at these disappearances. Mary and Peggy were familiar faces, but the risk taking didn't end there. Known as 'Daft Jamie', James Wilson was a local entertainer and extremely popular with children. Easily recognised by his deformed foot, he caused quite a stir at Dr Knox's class, yet despite several enquiries, Dr Knox strongly denied that the body was that of James Wilson.
The beginning of the end
The events proceeding their final killing undoubtedly led to the downfall of Burke and Hare. And had their new lodgers James and Ann Gray been of a similar moral disposition, they may have joined the foursome in their criminal careers.
Mary Docherty met with Burke by chance on the morning of Halloween 1828, having convinced her that she and his mother were related to Mary, she returned to the lodgings with Burke for a drink. Burke offered her a room and the Grays were moved out and given a room at the Hare's.
Late that night after drinking and dancing, the Burke's neighbours claimed they heard arguments at the Burke's and a voice calling 'murder'. They set off in search of a policeman, but having no luck and hearing no more shouting, they decided to go home.
The next morning the Grays returned to the lodgings to find Mary gone. Helen claimed that she had been overly friendly towards Burke and they had kicked her out. In truth, Mary was yet to leave the building, as her body was laid under the spare bed and covered in straw.
During the day, Ann approached the spare room and was sternly warned to stay away.
Suspicious of why Burke should be so defensive, James and Ann waited until they were alone in the house and after a brief investigation they found Mary's body.
The Grays immediately confronted Helen, who panicked and offered them £10 a week to keep quiet. The Grays refused and left the house to get a policeman.
Sketchy stories and a seasonal trial
Burke and Helen were taken to the police station for questioning and when interviewed separately their stories didn't match up.
At the same time, an anonymous tip led the police to Dr.Knox's classrooms. Mary Docherty's body was found and later identified by James Gray.
The Hare's were also arrested and slowly the police began to uncover the real reason for the sudden disappearances in West Port. Unsurprisingly, none of the four had the chance to go over their story and Burke blamed Hare for the murders; claiming he knew nothing of what had been happening.
After a month of indecision, the police offered Hare immunity if he testified against Burke and Helen. And on agreement, Burke and Helen were charged with Mary Docherty's murder and Burke with the murders of James Wilson and Mary Paterson.
The trial began on Christmas Eve 1828. Both the Hares testified against the Burkes and several witnesses told of victims they had seen with Helen or Burke prior to their disappearance.
On Christmas Morning, after just 50 minutes of consideration by the jury, Burke was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging and Helen was freed. During the month between Burke’s sentencing and his execution, he made two thorough confessions detailing 16 murders that he and Hare had committed, though the order was inconsistent.
Contrary to popular belief, Burke and Hare were not infamous grave robbers, in fact there is no proof to suggest they ever robbed a single grave.
Hare was released in February 1829 and many popular tales tell of him as a blind beggar on the streets of London having been mobbed and thrown in a lime pit. However, none of these reports were ever confirmed. The last known sighting of him was in the English town of Carlisle.
Helen travelled south, but she never managed to escape her past. According to rumour she moved to Australia where she died in 1868. Margaret is believed to have returned to Ireland, though like Helen she was mobbed wherever she went.
Edinburgh's population of university students and practicing anatomists created a unique market for fresh corpses that prompted Burke and Hare to enter into an illegal trade.
Acting on a strict code of 'no questions asked', the financial rewards of Burke and Hare's crimes led to a series of 16 murders spanning a period of just under a year. And had the two criminals not allowed their greed to consume them, they may never have been caught.
Murder for money
In early 19th century Britain, the law stated that only the bodies of executed criminals could be used for autopsy purposes. But with the ever-growing popularity of anatomy studies, the demand for fresh corpses soon outstripped the supply and grave robbing became common practice among criminals who wanted to earn an easy pound.
Murder for money is not an original concept by any means, but Burke and Hare had a new perspective on killing for financial gain. Unusually, they had little interest in the wealth of their victims, all they needed was a fresh corpse to sell.
Burke and Hare are reported to have first met in Edinburgh, after both men had left their native Ireland to work on the Union Canal in Scotland. However, it was not until Burke moved from Leith to West Port, with his partner Helen McDougal, that he and Hare actually met.
Hare had settled at a boarding lodge with a recently widowed woman named Margaret, the two had struck up a relationship soon after her husband's death and they ran the lodge as if they were a married couple.
After a chance meeting, it was Margaret who introduced Helen and Burke to her partner and the couple soon became paying lodgers. The two couples were never the best of friends, but their love for drinking and easy moneymaking schemes made them a murderous match. Ultimately, their real dislike for one another would lead to their downfall.
A cunning plan
In 1827, one of Hare's lodgers, an old man named Donald, fell ill and died. His death was of no real concern to Hare except that Donald owed him £4 in rent. Such was Hare's anger that he began to consider how the dead man could pay off his debt. Aware of the demand for corpses by anatomists, Hare hatched a plan.
On the day of the funeral, Burke and Hare took Donald's body from the coffin and replaced it with a sack of bark. Later in the day they removed the body from the house and took it to the anatomy offices of Professor Robert Knox. They were asked to return after nightfall and on doing so, they were paid 7 pounds 10 shillings for their efforts.
This ready cash made the pair contemplate a risky, but ultimately effortless, moneymaking scheme. Grave robbing was labour intensive and the quality or freshness of a corpse was not guaranteed. However, committing the murder themselves would be an easy way to ensure the supply of fresh quality corpses for sale.
They didn't have to look very far for their first victim.
Another of Hare's lodgers, a miller named Joseph, had fallen ill not long after Donald's death. Though he was not seriously ill, Burke and Hare took it upon themselves to put an end to his suffering.
After several glasses of whiskey with the two men, Joseph passed out. And by holding his nose and mouth closed whilst the other restrained him, Burke and Hare had, by chance, discovered their very own signature murder method. By suffocating the victim, they provided the anatomy students with the fresh, undamaged cadavers that they needed.
From then on, their victims ranged from sickly lodgers to old prostitutes and in the first four months of 1828 their killings were limited to nameless individuals that would cause no questions to be asked.
A close call
However, in April 1828, local prostitutes Mary Paterson and Janet Brown were out drinking and met up with Burke. He invited them back to his brother's where they continued to drink.
While Mary slept off her excessive drinking, an argument broke out causing Janet to leave. She told Burke that she would return for Mary later and went to visit her old landlady Mrs Lawrie. After relaying the morning's events to her old friend, Mrs Lawrie became seriously concerned for Mary's safety and told Janet to return for her at once.
A servant accompanied Janet to the Burke's, but on arrival they were told that both Burke and Mary had gone out. Janet insisted on waiting at the lodgings and asked the servant to return to Mrs Lawrie and tell her the news.
Still suspicious of the whole affair, Mrs Lawrie sent the servant straight back to the Burke's and suggested that Janet must leave. By this time Mary's body was already on the way to Dr. Knox, but thanks to Mrs Lawrie's warning, Janet had escaped a similar fate.
Familiar and unfamiliar faces
Following Mary and Janet's visit to the Burke's house, the next five victims were deliberately chosen so that they wouldn't be recognised by the students and the local community. And it was around this time that the two couples fell out. Burke (pictured right) accused Hare of supplying Knox with bodies behind his back and it was agreed that Helen and Burke would move out on their return from visiting Helen's relatives.
Once they returned, Burke and Hare's greed and apparent laziness drove them to kill much closer to home, this time they picked Ann McDougal, a relative of Helen's, who was lured to the lodging house and killed. Whilst Burke had no qualms about Ann's final demise, he did ask Hare to carry out the killing.
Carelessly, their next three victims were central to the local community and therefore easily recognised by the paying students who attended Dr. Knox's classes.
Mary Haldane was an ageing local prostitute who agreed to partake of a dram at Hare's lodgings. On being told that her mother had been seen with Hare, Mary's daughter Peggy decided to pay his lodgings a visit. On arrival, Hare said that Mary had visited, but had left. He then invited Peggy in for a drink and before long she joined her mother at Dr. Knox's. Both bodies fetched £10 each.
The neighbourhood grew suspicious at these disappearances. Mary and Peggy were familiar faces, but the risk taking didn't end there. Known as 'Daft Jamie', James Wilson was a local entertainer and extremely popular with children. Easily recognised by his deformed foot, he caused quite a stir at Dr Knox's class, yet despite several enquiries, Dr Knox strongly denied that the body was that of James Wilson.
The beginning of the end
The events proceeding their final killing undoubtedly led to the downfall of Burke and Hare. And had their new lodgers James and Ann Gray been of a similar moral disposition, they may have joined the foursome in their criminal careers.
Mary Docherty met with Burke by chance on the morning of Halloween 1828, having convinced her that she and his mother were related to Mary, she returned to the lodgings with Burke for a drink. Burke offered her a room and the Grays were moved out and given a room at the Hare's.
Late that night after drinking and dancing, the Burke's neighbours claimed they heard arguments at the Burke's and a voice calling 'murder'. They set off in search of a policeman, but having no luck and hearing no more shouting, they decided to go home.
The next morning the Grays returned to the lodgings to find Mary gone. Helen claimed that she had been overly friendly towards Burke and they had kicked her out. In truth, Mary was yet to leave the building, as her body was laid under the spare bed and covered in straw.
During the day, Ann approached the spare room and was sternly warned to stay away.
Suspicious of why Burke should be so defensive, James and Ann waited until they were alone in the house and after a brief investigation they found Mary's body.
The Grays immediately confronted Helen, who panicked and offered them £10 a week to keep quiet. The Grays refused and left the house to get a policeman.
Sketchy stories and a seasonal trial
Burke and Helen were taken to the police station for questioning and when interviewed separately their stories didn't match up.
At the same time, an anonymous tip led the police to Dr.Knox's classrooms. Mary Docherty's body was found and later identified by James Gray.
The Hare's were also arrested and slowly the police began to uncover the real reason for the sudden disappearances in West Port. Unsurprisingly, none of the four had the chance to go over their story and Burke blamed Hare for the murders; claiming he knew nothing of what had been happening.
After a month of indecision, the police offered Hare immunity if he testified against Burke and Helen. And on agreement, Burke and Helen were charged with Mary Docherty's murder and Burke with the murders of James Wilson and Mary Paterson.
The trial began on Christmas Eve 1828. Both the Hares testified against the Burkes and several witnesses told of victims they had seen with Helen or Burke prior to their disappearance.
On Christmas Morning, after just 50 minutes of consideration by the jury, Burke was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging and Helen was freed. During the month between Burke’s sentencing and his execution, he made two thorough confessions detailing 16 murders that he and Hare had committed, though the order was inconsistent.
Contrary to popular belief, Burke and Hare were not infamous grave robbers, in fact there is no proof to suggest they ever robbed a single grave.
Hare was released in February 1829 and many popular tales tell of him as a blind beggar on the streets of London having been mobbed and thrown in a lime pit. However, none of these reports were ever confirmed. The last known sighting of him was in the English town of Carlisle.
Helen travelled south, but she never managed to escape her past. According to rumour she moved to Australia where she died in 1868. Margaret is believed to have returned to Ireland, though like Helen she was mobbed wherever she went.
9. The Shankill Butchers (23 – 23+)
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| (The Shankill Butchers) |
The Shankill Butchers was an Ulster loyalist gang—many of whom were members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF)—that was active between 1975 and 1982 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It was based in the Shankill area and was responsible for the deaths of at least 23 people, most of whom were killed in sectarian attacks. The gang was notorious for kidnapping and murdering random Catholic and suspected Catholic civilians; each was beaten ferociously and had his throat hacked with a butcher's knife. Some were also tortured and attacked with a hatchet. The gang also killed six Ulster Protestants over personal disputes, and two other Protestants mistaken for Catholics. Most of the gang were eventually caught and, in February 1979, received the longest combined prison sentences in United Kingdom legal history.
However, gang leader Lenny Murphy and his two chief "lieutenants" escaped prosecution. Murphy was killed in November 1982 by the Provisional IRA, likely acting with loyalist paramilitaries who perceived him as a threat. The Butchers brought a new level of paramilitary violence to a country already hardened by death and destruction. The judge who oversaw the 1979 trial described their crimes as "a lasting monument to blind sectarian bigotry".
Gang members
The following were members of the gang and were convicted of various crimes.
Background
Much of what is known about the Butchers came first from Martin Dillon's The Shankill Butchers: A Case Study of Mass Murder (1989 and 1998). In compiling this detailed work, Dillon was reportedly given unlimited access to the case files of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC, now the Police Service of Northern Ireland), which eventually caught the gang. The commander of the Shankill Butchers gang was Lenny Murphy. Murphy was the youngest of three sons of Joyce (née Thompson) and William Murphy from the loyalist Shankill Road area of Belfast. At school he was known as a bully and would threaten other boys with a knife or with retribution from his two older brothers. Soon after leaving school at 16, he joined the UVF. Murphy often attended the trials of people accused of paramilitary crimes, to become well acquainted with the laws of evidence and police procedure.
On 28 September 1972, Murphy (aged 20), shot and killed William Edward "Ted" Pavis (32) at the latter's home in East Belfast. Pavis was a Protestant whom the UVF claimed had been selling weapons to the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). Murphy and an accomplice, Mervyn Connor, were arrested shortly afterwards and held on remand in Belfast's Crumlin Road prison. After a visit by police to Connor, fellow inmates suspected that he might cut a deal with the authorities with regard to the Pavis killing. On 22 April 1973, Connor died by ingesting a large dose of cyanide. Before he died he wrote a confession to the Pavis murder, reportedly under duress from Murphy. Murphy was brought to trial for the Pavis murder in June 1973. The court heard evidence from two witnesses who had seen Murphy pull the trigger and had later picked him out of an identification parade. The jury acquitted him due in part to Murphy's disruption of the line-up. Murphy's freedom was short-lived: he was re-arrested immediately for a number of escape attempts and imprisoned, then interned, for three years.
Formation
In May 1975, Murphy was released from prison, where he had married Margaret Gillespie. During his imprisonment a daughter had been born to the couple. He spent much of his time frequenting pubs on the Shankill Road and assembling a paramilitary team that would enable him to act with some freedom at a remove from the UVF leadership (Brigade Staff). Murphy's inner circle consisted of two people whom Dillon was unable to name for legal reasons but whom he called Murphy's "personal friends". These were a "Mr A" and John Murphy, one of Lenny's brothers (referred to as "Mr B"). Further down the chain of command were Lenny Murphy's "sergeants" William Moore and Bobby "Basher" Bates, a UVF man and former prisoner. Moore, formerly a worker in a meat-processing factory, had stolen several large knives and meat-cleavers from his old workplace, tools that would later be used in more murders. Another prominent figure was Sam McAllister, who used his physical presence to intimidate others. On 2 October 1975, the gang raided a drinks premises in nearby Millfield. On finding that its four employees (two females and two males) were Catholics, Murphy shot three of them dead and ordered an accomplice to kill the fourth. By now Murphy was using the upper floor of the Brown Bear pub, at the corner of Mountjoy Street and the Shankill Road near his home, as an occasional meeting-place for his unit.
Cut-throat killings
On 24–25 November 1975, Murphy adopted the method that gained the Butchers infamy far beyond Belfast. Using the city's sectarian geography (which remains to this day) to identify likely targets, Murphy roamed the areas nearest the Catholic New Lodge in the hope of finding someone (likely to be Catholic) to abduct. Francis Crossen (34), a Catholic man and father of two, was walking towards the city centre at approximately 12:40am when four of the Butchers, in Moore's taxi, spotted him. As the taxi pulled alongside Crossen, Murphy jumped out and hit the man with a wheel brace to disorientate him. He was dragged into the taxi by Benjamin Edwards and Archie Waller, two of Murphy's gang. As the taxi returned to the safety of the nearby Shankill area, Crossen suffered a ferocious beating. It is clear that he was subjected to a high level of violence, including a beer glass being shoved into his head. Murphy repeatedly told Crossen: "I'm going to kill you, you bastard", before the taxi stopped at an entry off Wimbledon Street. Crossen was dragged into an alleyway and Murphy, brandishing a butcher's knife, cut his throat almost through to the spine. The gang dispersed. Crossen, whose body was found the next morning (Tuesday) by an elderly woman, was the first of three Catholics to be killed by Murphy in this "horrific and brutal manner". "Slaughter in back alley" was the headline in the city's major afternoon newspaper that day. A relative of Crossen said that his family was unable to have an open coffin at his wake because the body was so badly mutilated.
A few days later, on 30 November 1975, an internal feud led to the deaths of two members of a rival UVF company on the Shankill and to that of Archibald Waller, who had been involved in the Crossen murder. On 14 October of that year, Waller had killed Stewart Robinson in a punishment shooting that went wrong. With the sanction of the UVF Brigade Staff, he in turn was gunned down by one of Robinson's comrades in the UVF team based in the Windsor Bar, a quarter of a mile from the Brown Bear pub. Enraged, Murphy had the gunman, former loyalist prisoner Noel "Nogi" Shaw, brought before a kangaroo court in the Lawnbrook Club, one of his Shankill drinking-dens. After pistol whipping Shaw, Murphy shot him in front of his whole unit of about twenty men and returned to finish his drink at the bar. John Murphy and William Moore put Shaw's body in a laundry basket, and Moore dumped it half a mile away.
Murphy's other cut-throat victims were Thomas Quinn (55) and Francis Rice (24). Both were abducted late at night, at the weekend, in the same area as Crossen. Quinn was murdered in the Glencairn district of the Upper Shankill in the early hours of 7 February 1976 and Rice a few streets from Murphy's home at about 1:30am on 22 February 1976, after a butcher's knife had been collected from a loyalist club. Quinn's body was not found until mid-evening, after a phone call to a Belfast newspaper, while Rice's was found about six hours after his murder. Murphy's main accomplices on both occasions were Moore and Bates, while Edwards was party to the killing of Quinn. Another man and two women, whom Dillon did not name, were accessories to Murphy in the murder of Rice.
By this time the expression "the Butchers" had appeared in media coverage of these killings, and many Catholics lived in fear of the gang. Detective Chief Inspector Jimmy Nesbitt, head of the CID Murder Squad in Tennent Street RUC base and the man charged with tracking down the Butchers, was in no doubt that the murders of Crossen, Quinn and Rice were the work of the same people. Other than that he had little information, although a lead was provided by the woman who found Rice's body. The previous night she had heard voices in the entry where the body was later found and what she thought might have been a local taxi (those in Belfast being ex-London type black cabs). This had led to William Moore's taxi being examined for evidence, as were all other Shankill taxis; however, the Butchers had cleaned the vehicle thoroughly and nothing incriminating was found. Under Murphy's orders, Moore destroyed the taxi and bought a yellow Ford Cortina, which was to be used in subsequent murders.
Early on 11 March 1976, Murphy tried to kill a Catholic woman in a drive-by shooting; arrested later that day, he was put on remand on an attempted murder charge. Shortly after Murphy's arrest, he began to receive visits from "Mr A" and "Mr B". He told "Mr A" that the cut-throat murders should continue in due course, partly to divert suspicion from himself. In a subsequent plea bargain, Murphy pleaded guilty to a firearms charge and was sentenced on 11 October 1977 to twelve years' imprisonment. Another Catholic man killed by the gang was Cornelius "Con" Neeson (49), attacked with a hatchet by Moore and McAllister on the Cliftonville Road late on 1 August 1976. He died a few hours later. One of Neeson's brothers, speaking in 1994, declared: "I saw the state of my brother's body after he was butchered on the street. I said, 'That is not my brother'. Even our mother would not have recognised him".
Later that year "Mr A" informed Moore, now the Butchers' de facto commander, of Murphy's orders to resume the throat-slashings. Three more Catholic men from North Belfast were subsequently kidnapped, tortured and hacked to death in the same way as before. The victims were: Stephen McCann (21), a Queen's University student murdered on 30 October 1976; Joseph Morrissey (52), killed on 3 February 1977; and Francis Cassidy (43), a dock-worker who was killed on 30 March 1977. Moore proved himself an able deputy to Murphy, committing the throat-cuttings himself and encouraging the gang to use extreme violence on the victims beforehand. In particular, Arthur McClay attacked Morrissey with a hatchet; Moore had promoted McClay after Murphy had been jailed. The three victims were dumped in various parts of the greater Shankill area. The other gang members involved in one or more of these cut-throat murders were McAllister, John Townsley, David Bell and Norman Waugh. "Mr A" played a prominent part in the planning of Moore's activities.
Capture and imprisonment
Late on Tuesday, 10 May 1977, Gerard McLaverty, a young Belfast man whose family had recently left the city, was walking down the Cliftonville Road. Two members of the Butchers approached him and, posing as policemen, forced him into a car where two of their comrades were seated. The gang, who had spent the day drinking, drove McLaverty to a disused doctor's surgery on the corner of Emerson Street and the Shankill Road where he was beaten with sticks. He was stabbed, had his wrists slashed a number of times by Moore and McAllister, using a smallish knife, and was dumped in a back entry. Uncharacteristically, he had been left for dead by the gang but survived until early morning, when a woman heard his cries for help and called the police. In compliance with previous orders, news of the assault was given to Inspector Nesbitt. At first he did not attribute particular significance to this message, as the Butchers had left no one alive before; but on discovering the nature of the assault and the use of a knife, he came up with an idea that was to permanently change the course of his inquiries.
Taking advantage of the aftermath of a loyalist paramilitary strike and local elections, Nesbitt had the recovered McLaverty disguised and driven by police around the Shankill area on Wednesday 18 May to see if he could spot the men who had abducted or attacked him. Within a short time he identified McAllister and Edwards, and Nesbitt had a breakthrough that enabled him to widen his net. The next morning he initiated a large arrest operation and many of McAllister's associates, including Moore, were taken into custody. At first under intense interrogation, the suspects admitted only to their involvement in the McLaverty abduction but Nesbitt, seizing on McAllister's references to the size of a knife used on McLaverty, had his team of detectives press the case, and eventually most of the gang admitted their part in the activities of the Butchers. Further arrests followed and the overall picture became clearer. The salient point emerging was that Murphy, the commander of the unit, was the driving force behind the cut-throat murders and other criminal activities. A number of the Butchers implicated him and his close associates "Mr A" and "Mr B" (John Murphy) in numerous paramilitary activities but later retracted these claims for fear of retribution from the UVF Brigade Staff. Lenny Murphy, in prison, and Messrs "A" and "B" were interviewed several times in connection with the Butchers' inquiry but revealed nothing during interviews. Without corroborative or forensic evidence, the state prosecution service decided that they would not face charges.
The rest of the Butchers came to trial during 1978 and early 1979. On 20 February 1979, eleven men were convicted of a total of 19 murders, and the 42 life sentences handed out were the most ever in a single trial in British criminal history. Moore pleaded guilty to 11 counts of murder and Bates to 10. The trial judge, Lord Justice O'Donnell, said that he did not wish to be cast as "public avenger" but felt obliged to sentence the two to life imprisonment with no chance of release. However, Bates was freed two years after the paramilitary ceasefires of 1994, and Moore released under the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Martin Dillon's own investigations suggest that a number of other individuals (whom he was unable to name for legal reasons) escaped prosecution for participation in the crimes of the Butchers and that the gang were responsible for a total of at least 30 murders. In summing-up, Lord O'Donnell stated that their crimes, "a catalogue of horror", were "a lasting monument to blind sectarian bigotry". After the trial, Jimmy Nesbitt's comment was: "The big fish got away", a reference to Murphy (referred to in court as "Mr X" or the "Master Butcher") and to Messrs "A" and "B". At this time McLaverty lived under police protection in Dublin, where he had been given a covername.
Murphy's release and death
His sentence for the firearms conviction complete, Murphy was released from prison on 16 July 1982. One day later, his killing spree resumed when he beat to death a local Protestant man with a learning disability in the Loyalist Club in Rumford Street. His body was dumped in a back alley over a mile away. Murphy began to assemble a new gang. On 29 August 1982, Murphy killed Jim Galway (33), a part-time Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldier from the Lower Shankill area, who had been passing information to the UVF and was involved with its Ballymena units. When suspicions of being an informer fell upon Galway, Murphy decided to kill him. Galway was shot in the head at a building site in the village of Broughshane near Ballymena and buried on the spot. His decayed body was not found until November 1983. The location of the body was pointed out in 1983 by a person in custody for other charges. On 5 September, Murphy killed a former UVF prisoner, Brian Smyth (30), in a dispute over money owed for a car. Murphy poisoned the man in a Shankill club before shooting him from the rear of a passing motorcycle as he sat in a car driven by Murphy's friend, and leading Red Hand Commando member, Sam "Mambo" Carroll.
Early on Friday 22 October, UDR soldier Thomas Cochrane was kidnapped by the IRA. The next evening, although he had been warned by the UVF Brigade Staff against abducting anyone, Murphy decided to kidnap a Catholic, ostensibly to demand Cochrane's release in exchange for the Catholic hostage. He hijacked a black taxi, which one of his men drove to the Falls Road. Joseph Donegan, a middle-aged Catholic on his way home, hailed the vehicle and got in. Murphy immediately attacked the man as the taxi was driven back to the safety of the Shankill area. At a house owned by Murphy in Brookmount Street, Donegan was tortured sadistically by Murphy, who according to Dillon, pulled out all but three of his teeth with pliers. Murphy's associate, Tommy Stewart, battered Donegan to death with a shovel. "Mr A" was party to these events. Murphy telephoned a prominent Catholic politician, Cormac Boomer, to demand that Cochrane be set free. Murphy ordered that Donegan's body be removed from his house, but the plan was disturbed by passers-by and the victim had to be dumped in an entry behind the house. After discovery of the body on the morning of Monday 25 October, Murphy and two others were arrested; but without evidence that Murphy had been party to this crime, it was not possible to charge him. Cochrane's body was found a week later.
Murphy was assassinated by a Provisional IRA hit squad early in the evening of Tuesday 16 November 1982 outside the back of his girlfriend's house in the Glencairn estate (where four of the Butchers' cut-throat victims had been dumped). No sooner had he parked his car than two gunmen emerged from a van that had been following him and fired a hail of more than twenty bullets, killing him instantly. After several days' speculation as to those responsible for the shooting, the IRA issued a statement claiming responsibility for what it termed Murphy's "execution":
Murphy's family denied he had had a violent nature or was involved with the Butchers: "My Lenny could not have killed a fly", said his mother Joyce. She accused the police of continual harassment of her son since his recent release from prison and said that he was planning to leave the country as soon as his divorce came through. The UVF gave Murphy a paramilitary funeral attended by thousands of loyalists and several unionist politicians, at which Mr A and John Murphy played prominent roles. On his gravestone in Carnmoney cemetery were inscribed the words: "Here lies a soldier". Murphy's headstone was smashed in 1989 and had to be replaced.
Other activities
Moore, Bates and McAllister shot and wounded a member of the Windsor Bar UVF unit a few hours after the murder of Noel Shaw in November 1975. Murphy and Moore shot dead Edward McQuaid, a Catholic man, on the Cliftonville Road on 10 January 1976. On 9 February 1976, Murphy and three of his gang shot and killed two Protestant men, Archibald Hanna and Raymond Carlisle, wrongly believing that they were Catholics on their way to work across the Shankill. Bates was involved in a gun attack on a bar in Smithfield, not far from the Shankill, that killed several people, both Catholics and Protestants, on 5 June 1976. Other Protestants who met their deaths at the hands of the gang included two UDA men. The first was Thomas Easton, who made the mistake of becoming involved in an argument with McAllister, and died after being hit by falling beer-barrels on 21 December 1976. McAllister's guilty plea to a manslaughter charge was accepted by the Crown. The second was James Moorehead, a former police reservist, beaten to death by McAllister, Bates and Moore in the toilets of the Windsor Bar on 29 January 1977. McAllister received a minor punishment shooting for the murder of Easton. Members of the gang also carried out a bombing mission on the Falls Road that killed a 10-year-old Catholic boy on 10 April 1977. Murphy's brother John was heavily involved in the latter incident, along with "Mr A". The gang used the services of the UVF's leading bomb expert James "Tonto" Watt to plant the device, although Watt was not a member of the Brown Bear platoon. Several of the Butchers, including John Murphy, were questioned about a serious assault in April 1977 in Union Street, near Belfast city centre, on a man they believed wrongly was a Catholic. John Murphy received three years' imprisonment for his part in this incident.
Aftermath
Several sources indicate that Mid-Ulster UVF's brigadier, Robin "The Jackal" Jackson from Donaghcloney (now deceased) contacted members of the gang in the Shankill, "Mr A" in particular, and had them make an attempt on the life of journalist Jim Campbell, northern editor of the Sunday World newspaper, in May 1984. Campbell, whose investigations put the spotlight on Jackson's activities, was seriously wounded but survived.
All members of the Butchers gang were released a number of years ago. The first to be freed was John Townsley, who had been only 14 when he became involved with the gang and 16 when arrested. In October 1996, Bates was released; he had reportedly "found religion" behind bars. Bates was shot and killed in the upper Shankill area on 11 June 1997 by the son of the UDA man he had killed in the Windsor Bar. "Mr B", John Murphy, died in a car accident in Belfast in August 1998. In July 2000, Sam McAllister was injured in an attack during a loyalist feud.
William Moore was the final member of the gang to be released from prison in August 1998, after over twenty-one years behind bars. He died on 17 May 2009, from a suspected heart attack at his home and was given a paramilitary funeral by the UVF. With Moore now deceased, the only senior figure still alive is "Mr A".
In November 2004, the Serious Crime Review Team in Belfast said they were looking into the unsolved death of Rosaleen O'Kane, aged 33 at the time of her death, who was found dead in her home in September 1976. Her family and authorities believe the Shankill Butchers may have been involved in her death.
The following were members of the gang and were convicted of various crimes.
- Lenny Murphy (1952–1982)
- John Murphy (1950–1998)
- William Moore (1949–2009)
- Robert Bates (1948–1997)
- Sam McAllister (1955–)
- Benjamin Edwards (1951–)
- John Townsley (1961–)
- Norman Waugh (1952–)
- Arthur McClay (1953–)
- David Bell (1953–)
- Edward McIlwaine (1953–)
- Edward Leckey
Background
Much of what is known about the Butchers came first from Martin Dillon's The Shankill Butchers: A Case Study of Mass Murder (1989 and 1998). In compiling this detailed work, Dillon was reportedly given unlimited access to the case files of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC, now the Police Service of Northern Ireland), which eventually caught the gang. The commander of the Shankill Butchers gang was Lenny Murphy. Murphy was the youngest of three sons of Joyce (née Thompson) and William Murphy from the loyalist Shankill Road area of Belfast. At school he was known as a bully and would threaten other boys with a knife or with retribution from his two older brothers. Soon after leaving school at 16, he joined the UVF. Murphy often attended the trials of people accused of paramilitary crimes, to become well acquainted with the laws of evidence and police procedure.
On 28 September 1972, Murphy (aged 20), shot and killed William Edward "Ted" Pavis (32) at the latter's home in East Belfast. Pavis was a Protestant whom the UVF claimed had been selling weapons to the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). Murphy and an accomplice, Mervyn Connor, were arrested shortly afterwards and held on remand in Belfast's Crumlin Road prison. After a visit by police to Connor, fellow inmates suspected that he might cut a deal with the authorities with regard to the Pavis killing. On 22 April 1973, Connor died by ingesting a large dose of cyanide. Before he died he wrote a confession to the Pavis murder, reportedly under duress from Murphy. Murphy was brought to trial for the Pavis murder in June 1973. The court heard evidence from two witnesses who had seen Murphy pull the trigger and had later picked him out of an identification parade. The jury acquitted him due in part to Murphy's disruption of the line-up. Murphy's freedom was short-lived: he was re-arrested immediately for a number of escape attempts and imprisoned, then interned, for three years.
Formation
In May 1975, Murphy was released from prison, where he had married Margaret Gillespie. During his imprisonment a daughter had been born to the couple. He spent much of his time frequenting pubs on the Shankill Road and assembling a paramilitary team that would enable him to act with some freedom at a remove from the UVF leadership (Brigade Staff). Murphy's inner circle consisted of two people whom Dillon was unable to name for legal reasons but whom he called Murphy's "personal friends". These were a "Mr A" and John Murphy, one of Lenny's brothers (referred to as "Mr B"). Further down the chain of command were Lenny Murphy's "sergeants" William Moore and Bobby "Basher" Bates, a UVF man and former prisoner. Moore, formerly a worker in a meat-processing factory, had stolen several large knives and meat-cleavers from his old workplace, tools that would later be used in more murders. Another prominent figure was Sam McAllister, who used his physical presence to intimidate others. On 2 October 1975, the gang raided a drinks premises in nearby Millfield. On finding that its four employees (two females and two males) were Catholics, Murphy shot three of them dead and ordered an accomplice to kill the fourth. By now Murphy was using the upper floor of the Brown Bear pub, at the corner of Mountjoy Street and the Shankill Road near his home, as an occasional meeting-place for his unit.
Cut-throat killings
On 24–25 November 1975, Murphy adopted the method that gained the Butchers infamy far beyond Belfast. Using the city's sectarian geography (which remains to this day) to identify likely targets, Murphy roamed the areas nearest the Catholic New Lodge in the hope of finding someone (likely to be Catholic) to abduct. Francis Crossen (34), a Catholic man and father of two, was walking towards the city centre at approximately 12:40am when four of the Butchers, in Moore's taxi, spotted him. As the taxi pulled alongside Crossen, Murphy jumped out and hit the man with a wheel brace to disorientate him. He was dragged into the taxi by Benjamin Edwards and Archie Waller, two of Murphy's gang. As the taxi returned to the safety of the nearby Shankill area, Crossen suffered a ferocious beating. It is clear that he was subjected to a high level of violence, including a beer glass being shoved into his head. Murphy repeatedly told Crossen: "I'm going to kill you, you bastard", before the taxi stopped at an entry off Wimbledon Street. Crossen was dragged into an alleyway and Murphy, brandishing a butcher's knife, cut his throat almost through to the spine. The gang dispersed. Crossen, whose body was found the next morning (Tuesday) by an elderly woman, was the first of three Catholics to be killed by Murphy in this "horrific and brutal manner". "Slaughter in back alley" was the headline in the city's major afternoon newspaper that day. A relative of Crossen said that his family was unable to have an open coffin at his wake because the body was so badly mutilated.
A few days later, on 30 November 1975, an internal feud led to the deaths of two members of a rival UVF company on the Shankill and to that of Archibald Waller, who had been involved in the Crossen murder. On 14 October of that year, Waller had killed Stewart Robinson in a punishment shooting that went wrong. With the sanction of the UVF Brigade Staff, he in turn was gunned down by one of Robinson's comrades in the UVF team based in the Windsor Bar, a quarter of a mile from the Brown Bear pub. Enraged, Murphy had the gunman, former loyalist prisoner Noel "Nogi" Shaw, brought before a kangaroo court in the Lawnbrook Club, one of his Shankill drinking-dens. After pistol whipping Shaw, Murphy shot him in front of his whole unit of about twenty men and returned to finish his drink at the bar. John Murphy and William Moore put Shaw's body in a laundry basket, and Moore dumped it half a mile away.
Murphy's other cut-throat victims were Thomas Quinn (55) and Francis Rice (24). Both were abducted late at night, at the weekend, in the same area as Crossen. Quinn was murdered in the Glencairn district of the Upper Shankill in the early hours of 7 February 1976 and Rice a few streets from Murphy's home at about 1:30am on 22 February 1976, after a butcher's knife had been collected from a loyalist club. Quinn's body was not found until mid-evening, after a phone call to a Belfast newspaper, while Rice's was found about six hours after his murder. Murphy's main accomplices on both occasions were Moore and Bates, while Edwards was party to the killing of Quinn. Another man and two women, whom Dillon did not name, were accessories to Murphy in the murder of Rice.
By this time the expression "the Butchers" had appeared in media coverage of these killings, and many Catholics lived in fear of the gang. Detective Chief Inspector Jimmy Nesbitt, head of the CID Murder Squad in Tennent Street RUC base and the man charged with tracking down the Butchers, was in no doubt that the murders of Crossen, Quinn and Rice were the work of the same people. Other than that he had little information, although a lead was provided by the woman who found Rice's body. The previous night she had heard voices in the entry where the body was later found and what she thought might have been a local taxi (those in Belfast being ex-London type black cabs). This had led to William Moore's taxi being examined for evidence, as were all other Shankill taxis; however, the Butchers had cleaned the vehicle thoroughly and nothing incriminating was found. Under Murphy's orders, Moore destroyed the taxi and bought a yellow Ford Cortina, which was to be used in subsequent murders.
Early on 11 March 1976, Murphy tried to kill a Catholic woman in a drive-by shooting; arrested later that day, he was put on remand on an attempted murder charge. Shortly after Murphy's arrest, he began to receive visits from "Mr A" and "Mr B". He told "Mr A" that the cut-throat murders should continue in due course, partly to divert suspicion from himself. In a subsequent plea bargain, Murphy pleaded guilty to a firearms charge and was sentenced on 11 October 1977 to twelve years' imprisonment. Another Catholic man killed by the gang was Cornelius "Con" Neeson (49), attacked with a hatchet by Moore and McAllister on the Cliftonville Road late on 1 August 1976. He died a few hours later. One of Neeson's brothers, speaking in 1994, declared: "I saw the state of my brother's body after he was butchered on the street. I said, 'That is not my brother'. Even our mother would not have recognised him".
Later that year "Mr A" informed Moore, now the Butchers' de facto commander, of Murphy's orders to resume the throat-slashings. Three more Catholic men from North Belfast were subsequently kidnapped, tortured and hacked to death in the same way as before. The victims were: Stephen McCann (21), a Queen's University student murdered on 30 October 1976; Joseph Morrissey (52), killed on 3 February 1977; and Francis Cassidy (43), a dock-worker who was killed on 30 March 1977. Moore proved himself an able deputy to Murphy, committing the throat-cuttings himself and encouraging the gang to use extreme violence on the victims beforehand. In particular, Arthur McClay attacked Morrissey with a hatchet; Moore had promoted McClay after Murphy had been jailed. The three victims were dumped in various parts of the greater Shankill area. The other gang members involved in one or more of these cut-throat murders were McAllister, John Townsley, David Bell and Norman Waugh. "Mr A" played a prominent part in the planning of Moore's activities.
Capture and imprisonment
Late on Tuesday, 10 May 1977, Gerard McLaverty, a young Belfast man whose family had recently left the city, was walking down the Cliftonville Road. Two members of the Butchers approached him and, posing as policemen, forced him into a car where two of their comrades were seated. The gang, who had spent the day drinking, drove McLaverty to a disused doctor's surgery on the corner of Emerson Street and the Shankill Road where he was beaten with sticks. He was stabbed, had his wrists slashed a number of times by Moore and McAllister, using a smallish knife, and was dumped in a back entry. Uncharacteristically, he had been left for dead by the gang but survived until early morning, when a woman heard his cries for help and called the police. In compliance with previous orders, news of the assault was given to Inspector Nesbitt. At first he did not attribute particular significance to this message, as the Butchers had left no one alive before; but on discovering the nature of the assault and the use of a knife, he came up with an idea that was to permanently change the course of his inquiries.
Taking advantage of the aftermath of a loyalist paramilitary strike and local elections, Nesbitt had the recovered McLaverty disguised and driven by police around the Shankill area on Wednesday 18 May to see if he could spot the men who had abducted or attacked him. Within a short time he identified McAllister and Edwards, and Nesbitt had a breakthrough that enabled him to widen his net. The next morning he initiated a large arrest operation and many of McAllister's associates, including Moore, were taken into custody. At first under intense interrogation, the suspects admitted only to their involvement in the McLaverty abduction but Nesbitt, seizing on McAllister's references to the size of a knife used on McLaverty, had his team of detectives press the case, and eventually most of the gang admitted their part in the activities of the Butchers. Further arrests followed and the overall picture became clearer. The salient point emerging was that Murphy, the commander of the unit, was the driving force behind the cut-throat murders and other criminal activities. A number of the Butchers implicated him and his close associates "Mr A" and "Mr B" (John Murphy) in numerous paramilitary activities but later retracted these claims for fear of retribution from the UVF Brigade Staff. Lenny Murphy, in prison, and Messrs "A" and "B" were interviewed several times in connection with the Butchers' inquiry but revealed nothing during interviews. Without corroborative or forensic evidence, the state prosecution service decided that they would not face charges.
The rest of the Butchers came to trial during 1978 and early 1979. On 20 February 1979, eleven men were convicted of a total of 19 murders, and the 42 life sentences handed out were the most ever in a single trial in British criminal history. Moore pleaded guilty to 11 counts of murder and Bates to 10. The trial judge, Lord Justice O'Donnell, said that he did not wish to be cast as "public avenger" but felt obliged to sentence the two to life imprisonment with no chance of release. However, Bates was freed two years after the paramilitary ceasefires of 1994, and Moore released under the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Martin Dillon's own investigations suggest that a number of other individuals (whom he was unable to name for legal reasons) escaped prosecution for participation in the crimes of the Butchers and that the gang were responsible for a total of at least 30 murders. In summing-up, Lord O'Donnell stated that their crimes, "a catalogue of horror", were "a lasting monument to blind sectarian bigotry". After the trial, Jimmy Nesbitt's comment was: "The big fish got away", a reference to Murphy (referred to in court as "Mr X" or the "Master Butcher") and to Messrs "A" and "B". At this time McLaverty lived under police protection in Dublin, where he had been given a covername.
Murphy's release and death
His sentence for the firearms conviction complete, Murphy was released from prison on 16 July 1982. One day later, his killing spree resumed when he beat to death a local Protestant man with a learning disability in the Loyalist Club in Rumford Street. His body was dumped in a back alley over a mile away. Murphy began to assemble a new gang. On 29 August 1982, Murphy killed Jim Galway (33), a part-time Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldier from the Lower Shankill area, who had been passing information to the UVF and was involved with its Ballymena units. When suspicions of being an informer fell upon Galway, Murphy decided to kill him. Galway was shot in the head at a building site in the village of Broughshane near Ballymena and buried on the spot. His decayed body was not found until November 1983. The location of the body was pointed out in 1983 by a person in custody for other charges. On 5 September, Murphy killed a former UVF prisoner, Brian Smyth (30), in a dispute over money owed for a car. Murphy poisoned the man in a Shankill club before shooting him from the rear of a passing motorcycle as he sat in a car driven by Murphy's friend, and leading Red Hand Commando member, Sam "Mambo" Carroll.
Early on Friday 22 October, UDR soldier Thomas Cochrane was kidnapped by the IRA. The next evening, although he had been warned by the UVF Brigade Staff against abducting anyone, Murphy decided to kidnap a Catholic, ostensibly to demand Cochrane's release in exchange for the Catholic hostage. He hijacked a black taxi, which one of his men drove to the Falls Road. Joseph Donegan, a middle-aged Catholic on his way home, hailed the vehicle and got in. Murphy immediately attacked the man as the taxi was driven back to the safety of the Shankill area. At a house owned by Murphy in Brookmount Street, Donegan was tortured sadistically by Murphy, who according to Dillon, pulled out all but three of his teeth with pliers. Murphy's associate, Tommy Stewart, battered Donegan to death with a shovel. "Mr A" was party to these events. Murphy telephoned a prominent Catholic politician, Cormac Boomer, to demand that Cochrane be set free. Murphy ordered that Donegan's body be removed from his house, but the plan was disturbed by passers-by and the victim had to be dumped in an entry behind the house. After discovery of the body on the morning of Monday 25 October, Murphy and two others were arrested; but without evidence that Murphy had been party to this crime, it was not possible to charge him. Cochrane's body was found a week later.
Murphy was assassinated by a Provisional IRA hit squad early in the evening of Tuesday 16 November 1982 outside the back of his girlfriend's house in the Glencairn estate (where four of the Butchers' cut-throat victims had been dumped). No sooner had he parked his car than two gunmen emerged from a van that had been following him and fired a hail of more than twenty bullets, killing him instantly. After several days' speculation as to those responsible for the shooting, the IRA issued a statement claiming responsibility for what it termed Murphy's "execution":
"Lenny Murphy (master butcher) has been responsible for the horrific murders of over 20 innocent Nationalists in the Belfast area and a number of Protestants. The IRA has been aware for some time that since his release recently from prison, Murphy was attempting to re-establish a similar murder gang to that which he led in the mid-1970s and, in fact, he was responsible for a number of the recent sectarian murders in the Belfast area. The IRA takes this opportunity to restate its policy of non-sectarian attacks, while retaining its right to take unequivocal action against those who direct or motivate sectarian slaughter against the Nationalist population".The location of the murder, in a loyalist stronghold, and the timing of the shooting to coincide with Murphy's movements suggested the IRA received help from UVF members who deemed Murphy "out of control" or, equally plausibly, that information had been given by an enemy of Murphy. Dillon suggests that Jim Craig, a leading Ulster Defence Association (UDA) godfather whose protection rackets had made him rich and feared in equal measure, fit the description. He was known to have clashed with Murphy on the latter's release from prison earlier that year and may have wanted him out of the picture. In support of this theory, Craig was later executed by his UDA colleagues for "treason", an inquiry having found some evidence of his part in the murder of other top loyalists by the IRA.
Murphy's family denied he had had a violent nature or was involved with the Butchers: "My Lenny could not have killed a fly", said his mother Joyce. She accused the police of continual harassment of her son since his recent release from prison and said that he was planning to leave the country as soon as his divorce came through. The UVF gave Murphy a paramilitary funeral attended by thousands of loyalists and several unionist politicians, at which Mr A and John Murphy played prominent roles. On his gravestone in Carnmoney cemetery were inscribed the words: "Here lies a soldier". Murphy's headstone was smashed in 1989 and had to be replaced.
Other activities
Moore, Bates and McAllister shot and wounded a member of the Windsor Bar UVF unit a few hours after the murder of Noel Shaw in November 1975. Murphy and Moore shot dead Edward McQuaid, a Catholic man, on the Cliftonville Road on 10 January 1976. On 9 February 1976, Murphy and three of his gang shot and killed two Protestant men, Archibald Hanna and Raymond Carlisle, wrongly believing that they were Catholics on their way to work across the Shankill. Bates was involved in a gun attack on a bar in Smithfield, not far from the Shankill, that killed several people, both Catholics and Protestants, on 5 June 1976. Other Protestants who met their deaths at the hands of the gang included two UDA men. The first was Thomas Easton, who made the mistake of becoming involved in an argument with McAllister, and died after being hit by falling beer-barrels on 21 December 1976. McAllister's guilty plea to a manslaughter charge was accepted by the Crown. The second was James Moorehead, a former police reservist, beaten to death by McAllister, Bates and Moore in the toilets of the Windsor Bar on 29 January 1977. McAllister received a minor punishment shooting for the murder of Easton. Members of the gang also carried out a bombing mission on the Falls Road that killed a 10-year-old Catholic boy on 10 April 1977. Murphy's brother John was heavily involved in the latter incident, along with "Mr A". The gang used the services of the UVF's leading bomb expert James "Tonto" Watt to plant the device, although Watt was not a member of the Brown Bear platoon. Several of the Butchers, including John Murphy, were questioned about a serious assault in April 1977 in Union Street, near Belfast city centre, on a man they believed wrongly was a Catholic. John Murphy received three years' imprisonment for his part in this incident.
Aftermath
Several sources indicate that Mid-Ulster UVF's brigadier, Robin "The Jackal" Jackson from Donaghcloney (now deceased) contacted members of the gang in the Shankill, "Mr A" in particular, and had them make an attempt on the life of journalist Jim Campbell, northern editor of the Sunday World newspaper, in May 1984. Campbell, whose investigations put the spotlight on Jackson's activities, was seriously wounded but survived.
All members of the Butchers gang were released a number of years ago. The first to be freed was John Townsley, who had been only 14 when he became involved with the gang and 16 when arrested. In October 1996, Bates was released; he had reportedly "found religion" behind bars. Bates was shot and killed in the upper Shankill area on 11 June 1997 by the son of the UDA man he had killed in the Windsor Bar. "Mr B", John Murphy, died in a car accident in Belfast in August 1998. In July 2000, Sam McAllister was injured in an attack during a loyalist feud.
William Moore was the final member of the gang to be released from prison in August 1998, after over twenty-one years behind bars. He died on 17 May 2009, from a suspected heart attack at his home and was given a paramilitary funeral by the UVF. With Moore now deceased, the only senior figure still alive is "Mr A".
In November 2004, the Serious Crime Review Team in Belfast said they were looking into the unsolved death of Rosaleen O'Kane, aged 33 at the time of her death, who was found dead in her home in September 1976. Her family and authorities believe the Shankill Butchers may have been involved in her death.