Lenny Murphy
Lenny Murphy | |
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Ulster Volunteer Force officer |
Hugh Leonard Thompson Murphy (2 March 1952 – 16 November 1982) was a Northern Irish loyalist and UVF officer. As leader of the Shankill Butchers gang, Murphy was responsible for the murders of mainly Catholic civilians, often first kidnapping and torturing his victims. Due to a lack of evidence, Murphy was never brought to trial for these killings, for which some of his followers had already received long sentences in 1979. In the summer of 1982, Murphy was released just over half-way through a 12-year sentence for other offences. He returned to the Shankill Road, where he embarked on a murder spree.
Details of his movements were apparently passed by rival loyalist paramilitaries
Early life
Murphy was the youngest of three sons of William and Joyce Murphy from the loyalist
His character was marked by a hatred of Catholics, which he brought into all his conversations, often referring to them as "scum and animals".[4] He held a steady job as a shop assistant, although his increasing criminal activities enabled him to indulge in a flamboyant lifestyle which involved socialising with an array of young women and heavy drinking.[5]
Dillon wrote that it is "incredible to think that Murphy was in fact a murderer at the age of twenty" (1972). Physically Murphy was below average height, of slim build and
First crimes
According to Dillon, Murphy was involved in the torture and murder of four Catholic men as early as 1972. On 28 September of that year, a Protestant man named William Edward Pavis, who had gone bird shooting with a Catholic priest, was killed at his home in East Belfast. Pavis had been threatened by loyalists, who accused him of selling firearms to the IRA. Murphy and an accomplice, Mervyn Connor, were arrested for this crime. During pre-trial investigations, Murphy was placed in a line-up for possible identification by witnesses to Pavis' shooting. Before the process began formally, he created a disturbance and stepped out of the line-up. However, two witnesses picked him out when order was restored.[8]
Connor and Murphy were held in prison together but, in April 1973, before the trial, Connor died after ingesting cyanide in his cell. He had written a suicide note in which he confessed to the crime and exonerated Murphy. It is believed Connor was forced to write the note and take the cyanide. Murphy was sent to trial for the murder of Pavis in June 1973. Although two witnesses identified him as the gunman, he was acquitted on the basis that their evidence may have been contaminated by the disturbance during the police line-up inquiry. However, Murphy was re-arrested and jailed for attempted escapes.[9]
By May 1975, Murphy, now aged twenty-three, was back on the streets of Belfast. On 5 May 1973, inside
Shankill Butchers murders
The gang shot dead four Catholics (two men and two women) during a robbery at a warehouse in October 1975. Over the next few months, the gang began abducting, torturing and murdering random Catholic men they dragged off the streets late at night. Murphy regarded the use of a blade as the "ultimate way to kill", ending the torture by hacking each victim's throat open with a butcher's knife. By February 1976 the gang had killed three Catholic men in this manner. Murphy achieved status through his paramilitary activity and was widely known in the Shankill. Many regarded his crimes as shaming the community but feared the consequences of testifying against him.[13][14] None of the victims had any connection to the IRA, and there was suspicion among some of their families that the murders were not properly investigated because those being killed were Catholics.[15]
The Butchers were also involved in the murder of Noel Shaw, a loyalist from a rival UVF unit, who had shot dead Butcher gang-member Archie Waller in Downing Street, off the Shankill Road, in November 1975. Four days before his death, Waller had been involved in the abduction and murder of the Butchers' first victim, Francis Crossen. One day after Waller's death, Shaw was beaten and pistol-whipped by Murphy while strapped to a chair, then shot. His body was later dumped in a back street off the Shankill.[16]
By the end of 1975, the UVF Brigade Staff had a new leadership of "moderates", but Murphy refused to submit to their authority, preferring to carry out attacks by his own methods. Dillon suggested that despite some Brigade Staff knowing about Murphy's activities (albeit not the precise details), they were too frightened to put a stop to it.[17] This suggestion was given further credibility by Gusty Spence, when he was asked by BBC journalist Peter Taylor in a 1998 interview why the leadership of the UVF failed to stop the Butchers. "I don't think they had the bottle to stop them", was Spence's reply.[15] On 10 January 1976, Murphy and Moore killed a Catholic man, Edward McQuaid (25), on the Cliftonville Road. Murphy, alighting from Moore's taxi in the small hours, shot the man six times at close range.[citation needed]
Imprisonment
Early on 11 March 1976, Murphy shot and injured a young Catholic woman, once again on the Cliftonville Road. Arrested the next day after attempting to retrieve the gun used, Murphy was charged with attempted murder and remanded in custody for a prolonged period. However, he was able to plea bargain whereby he was allowed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of a firearms offence, and received twelve years' imprisonment on 11 October 1977. Dillon notes that the police believed Murphy was involved in the Shankill Butcher murders. To divert suspicion from himself Murphy ordered the rest of the gang to continue the cut-throat murders while he was in prison. The Butchers, now under the operational command of William Moore, went on to kill and mutilate at least three more Catholics.
The team of
Last months on the Shankill
On completing his sentence for the firearms charge, Lenny Murphy walked out of the
Murphy killed at least four more people over the next four months. He beat a partially disabled man to death one day after returning to the Shankill. Another victim sold him a car and was shot dead after demanding full payment.[18] Murphy also attempted to extort money from local businessmen who had been sympathetic in the past, however this encroached on other loyalist paramilitaries with established protection rackets.[19]
In late August 1982, Murphy killed a part-time Ulster Defence Regiment soldier from the lower Shankill area who was closely involved with the UVF in Ballymena and was allegedly an informer. The man's body was not discovered for almost a year.[20][21] In mid-October, Murphy and several associates kidnapped a Catholic man who was then tortured and beaten to death in Murphy's own house (temporarily vacated due to renovations). Murphy, who had left the house strewn with the victim's blood and teeth, was arrested for questioning the next morning but later released. The sadism of the widely publicised killing led to loyalism receiving a great deal of bad publicity and leading UVF figures concluded that Murphy's horrific methods had made him too much of a liability.[8]
Assassination
On 16 November 1982, Murphy had just pulled up outside the rear of his girlfriend's house on the Forthriver Road area of Glencairn, a part of the Greater Shankill Area, when two
Murphy was given a large paramilitary funeral by the UVF with a guard of honour wearing the UVF uniform and balaclavas. A volley of three shots was fired over his coffin as it was brought out of his house and a piper played "Abide With Me". He was buried in Carnmoney Cemetery; on his tombstone the following words were inscribed: "Here Lies a Soldier".[26] May Blood, Baroness Blood, a Shankill Road community representative, said: "My father was a soldier. My father fought in two World Wars. They were real heroes. Lenny Murphy wasn't a hero; he was a murdering thug."[27] The tombstone was smashed in 1989.[28] His photograph was displayed inside "The Eagle", the UVF Brigade Staff's headquarters over a chip shop in the Shankill Road. According to investigative journalist Paul Larkin, it graced the walls as a "fallen officer" up until the late 1990s.[29]
References
- ISBN 0-415-92231-3.
- ^ Dillon, pp. 1–2
- ^ Dillon, Shankill Butchers, pp 4–9
- ^ Dillon, p. 8
- ISBN 0-415-92231-3
- ^ Dillon, p. 20
- ^ Dillon, p. 21
- ^ ISBN 0-415-92231-3
- ^ Dillon and Lehane, Political Murder in Northern Ireland (1973), pp. 125–27
- ^ Dillon, p. 54
- ^ Dillon, p. 7
- ^ Stevenson, Jonathan (1996). We Wrecked the Place: contemplating an end to the Northern Irish Troubles. Free Press. p. 54
- ^ BBC TV programme, 2011, Shankill Butchers, 60 mins,
- ^ Dillon, Martin (1989). Shankill Butchers. pp 66–69, 115–31
- ^ a b BBC TV programme, 1998, Loyalists, 60 mins,
- ^ Jordan, Milestones in Murder (centre pages with image of Shaw's body in basket)
- ^ Dillon, pp. 53–54
- ^ Dillon, p. 291
- ^ a b Dillon, p. 263
- ^ McKittrick et al. Lost Lives, p. 912
- ^ "Murdered Man was not the Shankill Butcher, says mother", News Letter, 18 November 1982.
- ^ 'IRA hitman who killed Shankill Butcher Lenny Murphy found dead'. Sunday Life, 24 March 2024. Retrieved 25 March 2024
- ^ McKittrick, David & McVea, David (2002). Making Sense of the Troubles: the story of the conflict in Northern Ireland. New Amsterdam Books. p. 149
- ^ Dillon, pp 312–16
- ^ Hugh Jordan, 'Loyalist gun was used to kill "Shankill Butcher" Lenny Murphy, claims ex UFF hitman. Sunday World, 5 August 2022, retrieved 8 August 2022
- ^ Moloney, Ed (2010). Voices From the Grave: Two men's war in Ireland. Faber & Faber. pp. 381–82
- YouTube
- ^ McKittrick et al. Lost Lives, p. 924
- ^ Larkin, Paul (2004). A Very British Jihad: collusion, conspiracy and cover-up in Northern Ireland. Belfast: Beyond the Pale publications. p. 124
See also
- "Through a Veil of Blood and Tears", crimelibrary.com
- Political Murder in Northern Ireland Martin Dillon and Denis Lehane (Penguin, 1973)