Trollheart's Most Evil

[Trollheart]

Where Everyone Knows Your Name and Ignores Your Cries

At approximately 2:30 AM on March 13 1964 Kitty Genovese locked up the bar and climbed into her red FIAT, heading home to her apartment in Kew Gardens. She arrived about 3:15, having been spotted by Winson Moseley at a traffic light as he sat in his car awaiting a victim. He followed her, and sticking to his MO, when she parked he did too and approached her. She naturally got spooked and was heading for a telephone box to call the police when he grabbed her and stabbed her. With her first scream, a light went on in one of the apartments in the block opposite the bookstore where she had been attacked. A man shouted out at the assailant who walked off, but the caller shut his window and turned his lights back off. Moseley returned and stabbed Kitty again.

Screaming out that she had been mortally wounded, Kitty struggled along the street as lights went on in the apartments around her, but nobody else shouted or looked out. Moseley, seeing the unwelcome interest being taken in his activities, went to his car and drove off, but when the lights all went out and nobody offered any help to the dying woman, he returned, found Kitty slumped near her door, stabbed her again, finishing the job. He took her money and left. He was so unconcerned about what he had done that he committed another three burglaries before the police caught him.

This is his testimony, taken from the police interview after he was arrested, and reprinted in the book Thirty-Eight Witnesses:

Q: Now, on this night did you intend killing?
A: Yes.
Q: What if anything did you do to prepare for that?
A: Well, I had a hunting knife that I had taken from a previous burglary, and I took that with me.
Q: Had you any specific type of individual in mind?
A: Well, I knew it would be a woman.
Q: Is there any reason why now you intended to kill a white woman as distinguished from the two prior times that you thought you killed colored?
A: No, unless perhaps I might have been thinking there might have been some difference between them.
Q: Now tell us what you did, please.
A: Well, I left the house about one-thirty or two o'clock, and it took me until about three o'clock to find one that was driving where I could actually catch up with her. . . . I followed [her red car] for about ten blocks, and then it pulled into what I thought was a parking lot.
Q: Did you make your mind up to kill her?
A: Yes.
Q: Can you tell us any reasons why?
A: No, I can't give you any reasons why.
The court: Was [money] one of the factors?
A: It possibly was, but it was not a primary factor.
Q: You tell us exactly what happened, Winston.
A: As soon as she got out of the car she saw me and ran. I ran after her and I had a knife in my hand, then I caught up with her and I stabbed her twice in the back.

He testified that he stabbed her in the chest and stomach as well as the back, that somebody called out the window, but that he "did not think that person would come down to help her."
 Moseley also testified that later he had heard somebody open an apartment door and shout down, but he "didn't feel these people" were coming down the stairs. So he lifted her skirt, cut off her under-clothes, including her brassiere. After he had stabbed her repeatedly he began to worry that somebody might have seen his car and noted the color, make, or license. So he walked back to the outdoor parking lot where he had left it to stalk her on foot. He moved the car around the corner. Then he took off his hat, a stocking cap, and put on a fedora he had in the car.

Q: [from the prosecutor] Why?
A: Well, I felt that perhaps if I had not killed the  girl and had to leave what I started unfinished, she would have only seen the bottom half of my face.
Q: In other words, you thought you could disguise your face better by putting on a different hat.
A: That's right.
Q: Now, when you came back, you were thinking, weren't you, about what you were going to do?
A: That's right.
Q: What?
A: That's right.

Moseley said he heard some yelling from windows, but it had stopped by the time he got back to Catherine Genovese, whom he had left lying in the street. He did not think that anybody would come down "regardless to the fact that she had screamed. So I came back but I didn't see her. . . . I tried the first door in the row of those back houses, which was locked. The second door was open and she was in there. As soon as she saw me she started screaming so I stabbed her a few other times . . . once in the neck. . . . She only moaned after that."

Q: You also knew that people at three o'clock in the morning on a cold morning would not take the trouble to even come down and investigate if someone had been killed?
A: I thought that way, yes. Q: And as she started to scream, you stabbed her, didn't you?
A: Yes, I did.
Q: You stabbed her in the throat?
A: Right.
Q: That is where the voice was coming from, isn't that right?
A: That's right.

Moseley testified that he saw that she was exposed, decided to rape her, stabbed her again, that she kept moaning, that he took off one of his gloves to pull down his zipper, took out his penis, laid on top of her but could not attain—"What was the word?" he asked the judge. "Erection," said the court. Did he have an orgasm, the court asked. Moseley said yes. He also said she was menstruating at the time. He took the money from her wallet.

Q: Forty-nine dollars you put in your pocket, hah?
A: That's being practical.
Q: Being practical?
A: Yes. Why would I throw money away?

The Aftermath

I think that last line speaks very well to Moseley's state of mind. Is there any of us who - assuming we were able to murder and rape a woman - would even think of robbing her too? It shows, for me, the attempt, even if unconscious, to depersonalise his victim. She is nobody's sister, nobody's mother (well, she wasn't either of these things, but he didn't know that), nobody's lover, nobody's wife, nobody's daughter. Just a corpse, a victim, a mound of flesh he could use to satisfy his evil urges having deprived the woman it was of life, and in that frame of mind, I suppose, why not take her money? It's not as if she was going to be needing it.

But no matter how horrified we might feel at this killer's cold attitude towards the woman who was only moments ago  a living and breathing human being with hopes and desires and fears,  and dreams, that can be put down to the fact that he was a sociopath and a killer, and did in fact plead insanity at his trial. The attitude of the onlookers, however, those people, those thirty-eight men and women, all of whom could have been in the same position as Kitty Genovese, who watched and listened to the attack and did nothing, that is harder to explain away.

But before I get to that, what of the killer?

Well, he was indeed apprehended. He doesn't come across as a man who took any particular care to disguise his crimes; he killed Kitty Genovese out in the open, and it's only due to the apathy of New Yorkers, or those ones anyway, that he wasn't interrupted and caught. Did he know they wouldn't interfere or investigate? Was he banking on that, or was it just, for him, a welcome happenstance? Whatever the case, he was caught but not before the New York Police went the usual route of checking Kitty's lover out. Being 1964, though lesbianism was known of it would hardly have been that much in the mainstream, and as ever, those who are different are frowned upon by those who consider themselves "normal" or "straight", with the result that Mary Ann Zielonko was questioned by the cops as a suspect, the idea being, I assume, that they believed some sort of lovers' tiff was responsible. This, of course, despite Kitty screaming "He stabbed me!"

For over six hours Zielonko was interrogated, with I would imagine the minimum of finesse and sensitivity, and almost certainly by male cops, as I doubt too many female police were in the ranks at this time, certainly no detectives. A very large percentage of men seem to have an even bigger grudge against lesbians, as if they are somehow reducing the pool from which straight men have to pick women. Also, if a lesbian is good-looking or pretty, the oft-used and bitter comment of "what a waste!" tends to paint these women as going against nature, almost deliberately to deny men their god-given right over women. Yeah, I see now that it was all male cops.

Six days later, and having had no luck with the case (with presumably Mary Ann exonerated or at least unable to be tied to the crime) the cops had the blindest bit of luck when Moseley, in the commission of a robbery, was stopped by a neighbour who then called the police. His car was identified as the one seen at the murder scene, and he quickly confessed. This is insane. Sure it was night, but thirty-eight people witnessed the attack and yet the cops could not find, and seemingly did not even look for (no mention of an APB) a white Chevy Corvair, not exactly an inconspicuous car. Had it not been for the robbery attempt and a neighbour - ironically - actually taking an interest in the theft and calling the police - they might still have been looking. Or even not looking: I don't know how much if any priority was given to this case, and I suspect little really.

Moseley's trial took just over a week. His initial plea of not guilty was changed to not guilty by reason of insanity. He pled guilty to two other murders, that of already mentioned Anna May Johnson and another girl, Barbara Kralik, though another man, already charged with this murder, was later convicted of it, despite Moseley's later testimony in his defence. After seven hours the jury brought in a verdict of guilty and Moseley was sentenced to death. This sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment, due to the issue of his being insane not having been taken into account at the trial.

Wait, what? He pled not guilty by reason of insanity, didn't he? So how could it be said he was not... oh. Apparently the idea was that he was convicted as a sane man and the insanity plea was not taken into account. Fucking appeal court. Well, he did die eventually, having been refused parole a staggering eighteen times, never showing any remorse for the murders and pretending now that he had never meant to kill Kitty, which clearly his interview shows he had. After serving a total of fifty-two years in prison, he died at the age of 81.

They Also (De)Serve Who Only Stand and Watch

So one stain was removed from the world, but another, deeper one remains. What of the people who stood idly by while a young woman was killed only yards from their doors? When questioned, most of these mumbled hard-to-accept excuses, such as "didn't want to get involved", "was afraid" or even, in one really incredibly selfish case, "too tired." Some of them professed they could offer no explanation for why they did not intervene, or at least make a call, while others closed the door in the faces of enquiries. Poor explanations such as the belief that it could be a domestic incident (sure: where someone stabs someone) or that they didn't really hear don't wash with me. Even the idea that perhaps the fact that Kitty was a lesbian feeding into a general poor opinion of the woman makes little sense: nobody could see or hear enough to know who was being attacked, just that someone was.

The police groaned that had just one person called them sooner - someone did eventually call, but it was after the attack, and too later, as Kitty died on the way to hospital - her life could have been saved. There is evidence to suggest that much of the reluctance to call the police stemmed from either a distrust of the force or the feeling that the caller would be dealt with in a less than polite manner. Reactions all more or less along the lines of "don't bother us" and "what do you expect us to do?" seem to have been common, and the idea that people would open themselves up to ridicule and even abuse seems to have some basis in truth. As well as this, the dearth of patrol cars cruising New York seems to have been an issue, as does the often inordinately long wait time to get through to the police (911 had not yet been instigated in New York, so callers had to go through the operator) - often up to forty-five minutes. Based on that, if someone had called the moment Kitty had first screamed, the killer would have had time to finish her off and rape her and vanish before the call had even been answered!

The incident attained a certain notoriety, turning from a "simple, commonplace" murder to a question of citywide and then national proportions, the troubling syndrome of the uncaring neighbours. In a world where people used to be able to call on those they lived nearby for help, the world had turned one-eighty and now people shut themselves in and metaphorically put their fingers in their ears, not wanting to hear anything that might require them to take action, even if that action did not involve any danger to themselves. In the six days between the murder and the apprehension of Moseley, I wonder did many of those people consider what might happen if the killer struck again? What would they feel like if their wife or girlfriend, or they themselves were the one bleeding out in the dark, crying in the night, hearing nothing but silence and seeing nothing but dark windows?

Mention must be made of four people: one, the man who at least opened his window and shouted at Moseley to leave "that girl alone", even if all he did was that, and then went back to bed. It has to be allowed that at least he spooked the killer sufficiently to have him walk off, even if he swiftly returned when it was clear the man was not coming down nor had phoned the police. Second is Sophia Farrar, a neighbour and close friend of Kitty's, who found her after the second attack and stayed with her until the ambulance arrived. The man who did - eventually, and too late - phone the cops, and finally, perhaps most damningly of all, Karl Ross, who was so unsure and scared of what to do - including whether or not he should call the police - that he delayed and wasted precious minutes while he debated his decision with friends on the phone he could have been using to alert the police. There's no record as to whether he actually grew a pair and made the call, but he certainly made sure to protect himself first.

[Trollheart]

The Rest is Silence: Apathy and Antipathy

In the aftermath of the murder, and as it grew to become much more than that, a symbol, if you like, of man's apathy, of city living, of isolationism and insulation, of, as UB40  once sang, "a reminder of a world that doesn't care", the usual talking heads appeared out of the woodwork, like, um, well, let's be nice and say bees to honey, but you know what I mean. Psychiatrists, priests, talk show hosts, doctors, professors all tried to explain - as they could not - the reason that thirty-eight people had stood metaphorically with their hands in their pockets while below them in the unforgiving dark streets a woman was cruelly robbed of her life. The words "shame", "fear" and "disbelief" were bandied about, but the real buzz-word that stuck, and which came to forever crystallise the feelings behind this incident, was apathy. Quite literally, and I have no intention of being as forgiving and understanding as Mr. Rosenthal seems to be in his book, nobody gave a fuck. Deep in their hearts, somewhere in their souls, did they know a woman was being murdered? I think they did, but they convinced themselves either that it was not that bad, or that if it was, it was nothing to do with them.

I wonder how they lived with themselves? Some are likely still alive. I was born in 1963 and some of these neighbours may have been young enough, so do they think about their shared act of cowardice and inaction even now? Does it still haunt them? Have they encountered, in their lives, similar incidents, opportunities where they could speak up, intervene, make a difference, maybe save a life, and if so, have they? Or have they again turned away, having learned nothing from the past, again thinking, selfishly, cowardly, nothing to do with me, don't want to get involved? And has society progressed any further in the intervening sixty years? Is it likely that, should some girl - or man - be murdered in plain view of witnesses, anywhere in the world, not just New York, the same apathy, irrational fear and desire to stay out of it would prevail? Most likely, the best you'd get these days is people studiously videoing it with their phones, maybe putting that footage online. Might help the police to track down the killer, but it wouldn't do much for the victim.

It seems the answer is no, it didn't change anything. Ten years later, in the same apartment complex - but inside this time - a woman was battered to death on Christmas morning. Again, neighbours heard the violent beating but did nothing. Sandra Zahler however would not become the Kitty Genovese for the 1970s as her predecessor had been the tragic poster girl for public apathy and cold-heartedness and selfish self-interest of the 1960s. I don't quite know why, unless it's the old "second-time syndrome", that something shocking happens and everyone takes notice, but if and when it happens again, the impact is somehow lessened, maybe because it's no longer a complete surprise. It could also be due to there being a subtle difference in her death, in that it took place in an apartment, and so the witnesses would have had more of a case by claiming they believed it to be domestic violence, which the police would be probably reluctant to get involved in. At any rate, no stories seem to have persisted about Ms. Zahler and her name has not gone down in history as has that of Kitty Genovese. That doesn't mean it's any less a crime, but like I say, it had happened before.

The fact that it did happen again, and in the same area, for me points a constant and unwavering finger at these residents. In some way, maybe you could say anyone might have done what they did - or in fact didn't do - in the early  hours of  March 13 1964, but to have it happen a second time, with the same result is I think stretching their excuse a little thin. These were clearly people - possibly the same people; we're only talking about ten years later - who simply had no intention of getting "involved", and obviously whatever mark, if any, had been left on them by the Genovese killing had either worn off by now or had never had any real effect anyway.

The overall reaction, perhaps oddly, perhaps not, certainly among the inhabitants of Queens, to the Kitty Genovese murder was to "just forget it" and "what happened, happened." Rather than, as you might expect, exhibiting shame or remorse or guilt, these people all seemed, if you can believe it, angry. Not angry at the murderer. Not angry that a young woman lost her life. Not angry at themselves. But angry at two selected targets: the police, whom they claimed "did nothing anyway so why bother calling" - an attitude you'd have to wonder if they would retain should they be in need of assistance themselves? - and the newspapers, who were "making things hard for them."

Good. So they should have. It should be hard. It should always be hard. Shame and self-doubt and remorse won't come if things like this - a crime, virtually, as far as I'm concerned, and this one perpetrated by Kitty Genovese's neighbours in all but an attempt at cover up of her murder - are quietly swept under the rug and let fade away. It has to be hard. It should never be easy to turn away, to hear the scream in the night, the cry for help, the plea for aid and close the window, settling back gruffly as the shiver of unregarded guilt travels down the shoulders and back, trying to urge us to action, as we open our newspaper or return to the television, deploring the news stories.

Once it becomes easy, even normal, to avoid the suffering and refuse to help our fellow human beings, it's over. We are no longer, as Dickens once put it, a single race of men, all passengers on the same journey to the grave, but are self-isolated watchers who will be happy to witness a murder and lift not a finger to help. Our humanity will be gone, and though she did not choose to die for this reason, or any reason, Kitty Genovese's brutal and sad and shocking death will no longer have any  meaning, and will have been for nothing.

We can't allow that to happen.

What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?

That is, indeed, the question.

[grindy]

The whole thing about people ignoring Genovese's murder has been pretty much debunked later and it was mostly based on sensationalised news reports at the time. Most people really did not see anything. Some people did and tried to get help but this was before an emergency police line existed. I think your information might be outdated.

[Trollheart]

Even though you're spoiling my story, thanks for at least proving to me that someone is reading. As was said by Godfrey Jones in The Simpsons, sometimes in our rush to uncover the truth we ignore some inconvenient facts. Trollheart's Most Evil would like to add the following information, and allow readers to make up their own minds.


Inaccuracy of original reports

More recent investigations have questioned the original version of events.[58][25][67] A 2004 article in the Times by Jim Rasenberger, published on the fortieth anniversary of Genovese's murder, raised numerous questions about claims in the original Times article. A 2007 study (confirmed in 2014[25]) found many of the purported facts about the murder to be unfounded, stating there was "no evidence for the presence of 38 witnesses, or that witnesses observed the murder, or that witnesses remained inactive".[7] After Moseley's death in March 2016, the Times called their second story "flawed", stating:[8]

While there was no question that the attack occurred, and that some neighbors ignored cries for help, the portrayal of 38 witnesses as fully aware and unresponsive was erroneous. The article grossly exaggerated the number of witnesses and what they had perceived. None saw the attack in its entirety. Only a few had glimpsed parts of it, or recognized the cries for help. Many thought they had heard lovers or drunks quarreling. There were two attacks, not three. And afterward, two people did call the police. A 70-year-old[fn 2] woman ventured out and cradled the dying victim in her arms until they arrived. Ms. Genovese died on the way to a hospital.

Because of the layout of the apartment building and the fact that the attacks took place in different locations, no witness saw the entire sequence of events. Investigation by police and prosecutors showed that approximately a dozen individuals had heard or seen portions of the attack, though none saw or were aware of the entire incident.[68] Only one witness, Joseph Fink, was aware Genovese was stabbed in the first attack, and only Karl Ross was aware of it in the second attack. Many were entirely unaware that an assault or homicide had taken place; some thought what they saw or heard was a domestic quarrel, a drunken brawl or a group of friends leaving the bar when Moseley first approached Genovese.[7] After the initial attack punctured her lungs, leading to her eventual death from asphyxiation, it is unlikely that Genovese was able to scream at any volume.[69]

A 2015 documentary, featuring Genovese's brother William, discovered that other crime reporters knew of many problems with the story even in 1964. Immediately after the story broke, WNBC police reporter Danny Meehan discovered many inconsistencies in the original Times article, asking Gansberg why his article failed to reveal that witnesses did not feel that a murder was happening. Gansberg replied, "It would have ruined the story." Not wishing to jeopardize his career by attacking a powerful figure like Rosenthal, Meehan kept his findings secret and passed his notes to fellow WNBC reporter Gabe Pressman. As a journalism instructor, Pressman taught a course in which some of his students called Rosenthal and confronted him with the evidence. Rosenthal was irate that his editorial decisions were being questioned by journalism students and angrily berated Pressman in a phone call.[70]

On October 12, 2016, the Times appended an Editor's Note to the online version of its 1964 article, stating that, "Later reporting by The Times and others has called into question significant elements of this account."[5]

[grindy]

Sorry for spoiling, looks like I misunderstood your approach. Feel free to delete my post if you want, so as not to disturb the flow of this thread. I can also delete it myself.

[Trollheart]

Sorry for spoiling, looks like I misunderstood your approach. Feel free to delete my post if you want, so as not to disturb the flow of this thread. I can also delete it myself.

Ah Christ no, it's fine honestly. As I say, good or bad, any comment is always welcome and I'm always glad to see someone reading. That you'd take the time to question the facts and set the record straight is actually a compliment to me, so don't worry aboutit. Don't think you'll find anything wrong with the next one though!

[Trollheart]

Death on the Border: The Night the Music Died
The Murder of the Miami Showband

Timeline: 1975

Okay, fine, we're back to murder again, and I said I wouldn't be doing only murder. Though technically, the last article really concentrated more on the apathy of bystanders and the murder was almost a side-issue, though not quite. This time, though, it's pure murder, pure evil, pure and simple. But not only that. It's perhaps the worst kind of murder, that of innocents. The flames of sectarian hatred and bigotry have been burning in Ireland, on both sides of the religious divide, for well over a thousand years now. Think about that for a moment. Just let it sink in. For half of Christianity, Ireland has been at war with itself, or to be more accurate, with the invaders. In the 12th century King Henry II arrived in Ireland to put down a rebellion, and since then, though the British presence has left our country relatively recently (end of last century) the abiding and eternal distrust, fear and hatred between Catholics and Protestants goes on, mostly across the border, and not with quite as much vehemence and far less violence than it used to, but the march of the Twelfth, when Protestants through the Orange Order celebrate the victory of William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne, is still a sore point for Republicans, the fact that the route of the march is through staunchly nationalist areas not helping.

The IRA, though technically disbanded, have resurfaced since the Good Friday Agreement, and most recently are being seen in a new, splinter group calling itself, um, the New IRA. Very original. Bombs and shootings and kidnappings are no longer the order of the day in Northern Ireland, and "The Troubles", as over three decades of virtual civil war in the North is referred to, are over. But old enmities die hard, and there are still those who wish to continue the struggle for Irish independence, though that once noble goal has long, long ago ceased to have any meaning and is now just used as an excuse to kill "Brits and Prods", and was, for a very long time, also responsible for very indiscriminate bombings and shootings which invariably took the lives of Catholics as well as Protestants, just about all of them innocent.

Like the five lads from Dublin who came up for a gig across the border, and most of whom returned in wooden boxes, the others shaken, shocked and changed forever. I suppose it could be said, in hindsight, why did they drive over the border, knowing the state of things there? Was their music that important? Maybe ask Rory Gallagher, who never failed to play the Belfast Queens Hall whenever he toured, even at the height of The Troubles. But sure, you could say, naive to believe they would not attract unwelcome attention. Can you say though that they deserve to die for that?

Which Side Are You On: A Brief History of the Troubles

Always amazes me how low-key and understated we are. Others might have called this a period of civil war, guerilla warfare, maybe the Struggle? But we go with the bland-sounding Troubles, which hardly conjures up the kind of images we would get sadly used to seeing certainly in my lifetime: bombed-out buildings, shops, burned, twisted wreckage of cars, dark stains on the street, ribbons wound round lampposts and bins, flowers left at the scenes of too many deaths. We became so used to it that even on the Irish news, nuacht, which was in Irish, I came to know a phrase - "pleasch buma" (flay-isk booma) which was almost always in the reports. It meant, a bomb exploded. It was so commonplace to hear of deaths, maimings and explosions in "the North" that we, to our shame, shrugged and said, oh, another one.

As I already said, and as you'll see if you read or have read my History of Ireland journal, the occupation of Ireland by the English goes back over 800 years, but always the main target for what became known as the Ascendancy - Protestant settlers from England and Scotland - was the North, the province of Ulster. Originally the fiercest hold-out against the English, it later became, in the wake of Irish independence and the perceived rise to power of the Catholic majority in the south, the new Republic of Ireland, the remaining bastion of English, now British, power. Mostly because the Ascendancy were all Protestants, and they had no wish for a united Ireland, so when the Republic was declared - originally the Free State, but let's not get into that now - they voted to remain staunchly loyal to the Crown.

After the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, which created the Free State of Ireland, and the ensuing two years of civil war, Ulster exercised its option not to join, and to remain part of the United Kingdom. Catholics would have had little input into this decision, as the parliament was run by Protestants, despite Catholic Emancipation having been achieved a hundred years earlier. Traditionally, Catholics had been treated as second-class citizens in Ulster, and now with the emergence of the Free State, the Ascendancy feared they were about to take their revenge and join with their brothers and sisters in the South. This also stemmed in part from the fact that, after much to-ing and fro-ing, and a lot of gerrymandering, the six counties which would - and still do - comprise Northern Ireland were deliberately skewed so as to provide the largest Unionist majority possible, resulting in Catholics making up less than 35% of the new region.

But that was still too large a Catholic population for their liking, and with campaigns by the IRA (Irish Republican Army duh) across the border in the late 50s and early 60s, and violence exploding with the formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force, who declared "war" on the IRA and its supporters (basically any Catholics), battle lines were drawn. Both sides engaged in atrocities, from the killing of civilians to the bombing of police barracks, to indiscriminate attacks on peaceful marches by the RUC, or Royal Ulster Constabulary, almost all of whom were Protestant, so guess what march they attacked?

Things began to seriously escalate when RUC officers entered and attacked without any provocation the Catholic area of Bogside in Derry, and the resignation of Prime Minister Terence O'Neill, seen by hardline Unionists as being too soft on Catholics. Back in Dublin, the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising saw the destruction of a hated British landmark, as Nelson's Column in O'Connell Street was blown up by the IRA, and not a tear shed I would think. However all of this led to increased fear across the border that the IRA were preparing for a new offensive in an attempt to force Ulster into the Republic.


The Battle of the Bogside: Brothers and Sisters of Ireland! To the Barricades!

The Battle of the Bogside took place on August 12 1969 when loyalist marchers passing by the Bogside area of Derry were attacked, and the RUC responded with disproportionate force, resulting in over 1,000 people being wounded, and over 490 of their own. As it became clear the police had no real training to prosecute such a riot as the Bogside was becoming - with the place being pronounced "Free Derry" (as opposed to the British/Unionist Londonderry) and standing as a symbol of nationalist resistance to the UK Government and to the Unionists - the British Army were sent in. Initially they acted more as observers, refusing to cross the barricades that had been set up by the Bogside residents, and patrolling the border of "Free Derry" only, making it a no-go area as the RUC withdrew. This of course would not last, and marked the arrival of British troops in Northern Ireland, spelling very bad news for Catholics.

It should be noted that though the Irish Taoiseach (tee-shock; Prime Minister) at the time, Jack Lynch, warned of the Republic getting involved and threatened to send the Irish Army in (I'm sure the Brits were quaking!) nothing came of his threats, which turned out to be bluster. Lynch knew the last thing the new Republic, barely twenty years old at the time, needed was to attempt to take on the might of the British Army and the Crown, so he paid lipservice to support for the Bogside and Catholics in Northern Ireland, but basically shuffled away with his hands in his pockets, unwilling to commit Ireland to a full-scale war in which she would have been very quickly annihilated and no doubt reabsorbed back into the United Kingdom.

The riot in Derry had of course found itself mirrored by its contemporaries throughout nationalist Ulster, and though the Battle of the Bogside ended after four days, the unrest resulted in over 1,500 Catholic families being forced or deciding to flee to the border, where the Irish Army set up a camp at Gormanston for what could only then be described as refugees in their own country. The two opposing areas of the Falls Road (Republican) and Shankill (Loyalist) were divided by an actual wall, constructed by the newly-arrived British Army, laughingly called the Peace Wall, so as to keep the two fierce enemy communities separate.

In October, when a report recommended disarming the RUC and disbanding the hated B-Specials, the Ulster Special Constabulary, loyalists rioted and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) carried out a series of bombings across the border in the Republic. The British Army would soon find its role as impartial peacekeepers would have to change, and they would be forced to take a side, this inevitably being on that of the Unionists. When the government introduced internment without trial, over 350 Catholics were imprisoned in what would today be considered a police state; no due process, no evidence, no presumption of innocence, a real case of "Catholic as charged", and of course this led to many non-violent people who had been imprisoned becoming radicalised and ready to fight for the nationalist cause. By 1975 the number of detainees would reach almost 2,000. Attacks by loyalist paramilitaries on Catholics were completely ignored by the British Army, and internment was supported by the British government.

And then came Bloody Sunday.

Bloody Sunday: January 30 1972

Also known as the Bogside Massacre, but generally recognised as Bloody Sunday, if there was a nadir in the relationship between the British Army and the nationalist population of Northern Ireland, there could not be a more striking delineator. The chances are that perhaps, even if you live in the States, you've seen footage of this: a man in a black suit - a priest - with a hat crouching down and waving a white handkerchief as he attempts to lead other unarmed Catholics to safety. For us, this image became as iconic, as emblematic of the Troubles as, say, the raising of the US flag on Iwo Jima, or the lone man standing facing the Chinese tank in Tiananmen Square, or the painting of the last stand of General Custer at the Little Big Horn. In that one image is encapsulated all the brutality, senselessness and sectarianism of the Troubles. A moment caught forever in time, it freezes the blood when you know the story behind it.

And here it is.

To some extent I guess you can say it sort of went back to where it all began. The Bogside in Derry had been, as already outlined, the turning point for the British Government, when the then-Prime Minister had requested military assistance to deal with the riots which had broken out between residents and the RUC, and the Army had once again come to Northern Ireland. Since then, Derry, or "Free Derry" had become a hotbed of Republican resistance to Unionist rule and a vocal - and physical - opponent of internment. Daily clashes took place between British Army soldiers and nationalists at the barricades previously erected by the residents, which had made "Free Derry" a no-go area both for the RUC and the Army.

As usual, the problem had its roots in a march, but that's only half the story.

As one of his last acts as the final Northern Ireland Prime Minister, Brian Faulkner banned all marches through the province for the year of 1972. This was mostly due to the perceived provocation of the Apprentice Boys who marched on the Twelfth of August (known simply as "The Twelfth") to commemorate the victory at the Battle of the Boyne. However with internment disproportionately aimed at Catholics, a march was planned in defiance of the ban, and went ahead, resulting in major injuries to the protesters, mostly unarmed but throwing stones and bottles, as the British paratroopers fired rubber bullets at them and then waded in. Allegations of brutality and overzealous violence were levelled at the paratroopers, but who was going to stop them?

Undaunted - certainly bloodied but unbowed - the protesters set up a second march, this to take place on the last day of January. This was given reluctant approval, given the events of the previous fortnight, but with restrictions. The commander of the Army in Northern Ireland, General Robert Ford, decided - poorly, it would seem, considering how violent they had already been - to use the paratroopers from the same regiment (1 Para) that had stopped the march on January 18, to arrest anyone seen to be trying to go past the limit, set as Guildhall Square, where Parliament sat. The crowd has been estimated to have been between 10,000 and 15,000.

On seeing their route to the city hall blocked, leader Ivan Hall MP diverted the march, heading towards Free Derry Corner, but some of the marchers began throwing stones at the soldiers. When paratroopers began opening fire from an abandoned building, in response to missiles thrown up at them, it wasn't rubber bullets they were using. Just after four o'clock the order was given to arrest the rioters, but contrary to what he had been told, the commander of the paras made no distinction between peaceful marchers and rioters, and as they chased everyone through the streets in armoured cars and on foot, the same brutality was in evidence as the troopers made it clear they were not in any way impartial, and took their anger out on the marchers.

As the routed marchers reached the barricades at the Bogside, the paratroopers opened fire, killing six people - all unarmed - and wounding another. The picture which commemorates the attack shows Jackie Duddy, who had been sheltering alongside a priest, and was shot in the back, as the priest, Father Edward Daly, tries to get him and the others with him to safety, his flag of surrender and his status as a priest, both clearly visible, ignored by the army. In the space of ten minutes, thirteen people had been shot dead (a fourteenth would die of his wounds a few months later) and twelve injured (not counting the man who later died). None were armed, and so it will come as no surprise that the paratroopers sustained no injuries, and certainly none of them were killed.

After what can only be described as the massacre, and surely bringing to mind the one which became known as Peterloo a century previously, the bodies of the dead were callously and unceremoniously dumped into armoured personnel carriers by the paratroopers, with no more regard than if they had been the corpses of animals.

As expected, the British Parliament backed up the paratroopers' story that they had fired at armed men, despite much photographic evidence confirming the opposite, and the fact that almost every fatality on Bloody Sunday had been shot in the back, and therefore hardly a threat if running away, while two people were - surely deliberately and with great callousness - shot in the face as they went to the aid of a third. To nobody's surprise, Commander Lifford, who had directed the massacre, far from being removed from command or censured, was awarded the OBE by the Queen. In Ireland, a national day of mourning was observed and during a furious protest outside the British Embassy in Dublin the place was burned to the ground, though not with anyone in it. Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Patrick Hillary (later to be President of Ireland) went to the United Nations Security Council, demanding a UN peacekeeping force be deployed to Northern Ireland. Never happened of course.

An initial, rushed, and certainly whitewashed enquiry a few months later supported the actions of the paratroopers, but everyone in Ireland knew this was bollocks, however the British would not acknowledge the truth for another forty years, when in 2010 the results of the later, Saville Enquiry, were made public. This report was damning against the paratroopers, supporting the contention that everyone killed was unarmed, shot while running away, and further, that evidence that had been given to the original Widgery Enquiry had been false, and that the Ministry of Defence had done all they could to impede the Saville Enquiry.

In response to both the violence of Bloody Sunday and the subsequent IRA reprisals, including an attack on an army barracks that killed seven soldiers, and believing Stormont (the Northern Irish Parliament) incapable of maintaining order and dealing with the situation, the British Government dissolved it and ruled direct from Westminster, installing a Secretary of State for Northern Ireland In Belfast. This was the first time any part of the island had come under direct British rule since the Treaty in 1921, and represented a tightening of the grip on power of hardline Unionists, and the further disenfranchisement of Catholics, as history went backwards for them; Daniel O'Connell need not have been born. The barricades at "Free Derry", a direct challenge to the new total British rule, were dismantled and the Bogside ceased to be a no-go area.

In 1973 the new Northern Ireland Assembly was created, a supposedly bipartisan parliament which would allow "power-sharing", proportionate representation from both Unionists and nationalists, but of course, put two lions in the one cage and you're asking for trouble. The Unionists saw the new Stormont as nothing more than a veiled attempt to move towards their most feared result, a united Ireland, while the nationalists were not interested in dealing with their hated enemy, and anyway a united Ireland was their stated goal, and always had be. The word compromise was not in the dictionary of either side. The agreement was dead within the year, on the back of, among other things, a general strike by Unionists and a concerted campaign of bombing attacks by the UVF in the Republic.

[Trollheart]

Meanwhile, the IRA continued their bombing of the UK, even carrying out a bombing of that bastion of British power, the Houses of Parliament. The bombing of four pubs, two each in Guildford and Birmingham resulted in the infamous kangaroo court which would end up convicting ten innocent men in two separate trials for the bombings. A month later, the IRA declared a ceasefire which lasted into 1975. This was about the worst and most ironic misnomer there could be, as 1975 turned out to be the bloodiest year of the Troubles to that point, with sectarian killings and bombings escalating and nobody paying a blind bit of notice to the ceasefire. According to the timeline I read though, the majority of the attacks were carried out by loyalist paramilitaries against Catholic targets, with the IRA too busy with in-fighting and feuding, killing each other and trying to assert their dominance.

By now, Harold Wilson desperately wanted to withdraw British troops from a conflict which seemed completely unwinnable (England's Vietnam?), the soldiers themselves wanted to leave, fed up of being wounded and seeing their mates killed for a country they had no interest in, but there was stalemate, as if the troops were withdrawn the likelihood was that Ireland - perhaps all of Ireland but certainly Northern Ireland - would descend once again into bloody civil war. So he was forced to conclude that the troops must remain, as the IRA and the UVF fought it out, both in the six counties and in his own country as well as over the border in the Republic.

It is against this backdrop, and now that we have reached the appropriate place on the timeline, that our story begins.

Murdered Musicians: The Faces Behind the Massacre

Before we do though, it's probably fair to say that the Miami Showband Massacre has gone down as something of a watershed moment in the Troubles and in Irish history, and marks one of the, unfortunately many, low points of the period. But it's almost treated now as just the event, not fair to call it impersonal, but like the Birmingham pub bombings, the Omagh bombings or indeed the IRA Hunger Strikes, the faces behind the massacre are almost blank to us. Those of us who know about the atrocity know the guys were in a band, it was called the Miami Showband, and that they were Catholics from Dublin, but other than that, not much really. And nor do I. I've watched programmes on it and also unsuccessfully tried to find a book on it, but I couldn't tell you who was in the Miami Showband, and I think it's unfair to just categorise them as a "moment" in the Troubles without trying to find out who these young men were.

First then, a quick explanation. For those who are unaware, the band were not called the Miami Show Band, as in, they did a show as a band, or were from or pretending to be from Miami. A showband (one word) was something of a dreaded entity in Ireland, the kind of thing only we could come up with. Showbands, which evolved out of orchestras and big bands, basically played the hits of the day and yesteryear, dressed in suits and played dance halls and cabarets. They were, for most aspiring musicians, the only path to fame and a stepping-stone to getting their own band either formed or noticed. Rory Gallagher played in a showband, as did Van Morrison and most Irish musicians, because there really was no other route to the big time. Before his breakthrough with Thin Lizzy, Phil Lynott was heard to remark in frustration of the showband scene "How the fuck do you get off this circuit?"

Few boys grew up with dreams of being in a showband (although I'm sure there were some for whom it was the career of choice) but everyone knew this was how you paid your dues. In an era long before even television chart shows and not much in the way of live band performances or agents, and with the record labels maintaining a stranglehold over contracts, and doling them out like a miser grudgingly giving a penny to a charity, bands had to prove themselves, show they were popular and could draw the crowds before they would be signed. Often, record executives and promoters would go to showband gigs to check out the talent and see if there was anyone worthy of being signed. With the rise of disco in the 1970s the popularity of showbands began to decrease, and the events of which we will now speak hastened that decline.

The band was formed in 1962 and went through two different singers before the last one. With their first gig to be in Dublin's Portmarnock at the Palm Beach Hotel, the band chose the name Miami, due to the fact that Palm Beach is in Miami, and so became the Miami Showband. They went on to have six number one singles in Ireland, becoming one of the most popular and successful showbands in the country, and even represented Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1966. They were not unknown in Britain, having appeared on the highly popular Sunday Night at the London Palladium variety show, and reports are that in Northern Ireland they were popular with both sides of the divide, earning the epithet "The Irish Beatles."

At the time of the massacre, the band had changed members and so when they headed across the border on July 30 1975 the Miami Showband consisted of:

Fran O'Toole, vocalist and keyboard player; married with two children
Tony Geraghty, guitarist (?); not sure
Steve Travers, bass player; married
Des Lee, vocalist and saxophone player
Ray Millar, drummer; engaged
Brian McCoy, trumpet player; married, two children

(Note: Anyone whose marital status I haven't noted is someone I couldn't find out about)

The new line-up had been together barely a year when they played the Castle Ballroom in Banbridge, Co. Down. Four of the band came from Northern Ireland, split equally along religious lines. Having played a gig earlier in the day in Galway, in the west of Ireland, the band headed across the border on July 30 to Co. Down, where they were rapturously received. At around 2 AM they loaded up the van for the journey home; drummer Ray Millar had decided to go see his parents in Antrim . This decision ended up saving his life.

Just short of the border at Newry, at a small town called Buskhill, the band's van was flagged down by what appeared to be British Army soldiers, around 2:30 AM. Seeing nothing particularly unusual or worrying about this - checkpoints were a way of life during the Troubles, especially near the border - the boys stopped and, ordered out of the van, faced away while giving details of their names and addresses. Things seemed easy-going enough, as the men asked the band about their performance and bantered with them, but unbeknownst to the boys other armed men had arrived, melting out of the darkness. There were now about ten gunmen in total. A moment later a car arrived and a man in a British Army uniform, speaking in a crisp, cultured English accent got out. He swiftly began directing operations. The banter ceased and things got a lot more serious.

On realising though that the "soldiers" were interfering with their gear in the back of the van, one of the members, Des McAlea,  turned and asked if he could remove his saxophone, in case it got damaged. The gunmen agreed, but ran out of patience when Steve Travers also requested his bass guitar be moved, and they punched him in the back and sent him back into the lineup. Just then there was an almighty explosion.

And all Hell broke loose.

Two of the bombers had been killed in the explosion, blasted to ribbons, while the band members had all been blown into a nearby ditch. The gunmen began shooting - it doesn't make it clear if there was any order to shoot or if they just began firing as a direct response to the unexpected explosion and the deaths of their comrades. Brian McCoy was the first shot, taking nine bullets in the back while Fran O'Toole was chased across the field and pumped full of machine-gun fire, mostly in his face, which all but destroyed his head entirely. I'm not disputing the account here, but I do wonder how you can be shot in the face while running away? I imagine either he turned to plead for his life and was shot, or it happened when he fell on the ground. Horrible way to die. Tony Geraghty was shot multiple times in the back.

Having been hit by the door of the van when it exploded and knocked into the long grass, Des McAlea remained there, unseen by the gunmen, playing dead. He would later hitch-hike into Newry to alert the RUC. Steve Travers also played dead, wounded with a dum-dum bullet in his leg. Dum-dum bullets are thick, designed to fragment once they enter the body, causing much more damage than the initial entry wound. The bullet that struck Travers exploded and collapsed one of his lungs, tearing through his intestines.

When McAlea later returned with the RUC, they found Travers badly wounded but alive. He was transported to hospital. The official opinion of the RUC was that the bomb had been intended to have been carried into the Republic, where it would explode, killing all band members and also "proving" that the Miami Showband had been carrying explosives for the IRA. This would weaken the Irish government's stance on border crossings, embarrass Dublin and surely lead to tighter security at the border, making it harder for IRA attack squads to cross over into Ulster.

Specially-made glasses found at the scene were traced back to James McDowell, who is alleged to have been the one in charge, the one who ordered the shooting. Travers' account of the British officer was not accepted by the RUC, most likely as he was one of their agents, as we will see. Fingerprints on a silencer found to fit the Luger pistol that had killed Brian McCoy, though proven to be those of Robin Jackson, said later to have been the architect of the killings, were dismissed as evidence by the trial judge, as it could not be proven that Jackson had not inadvertently touched the silencer on a different occasion.

The command of the UVF, of course, had a different version of events, and released a statement that tried to accomplish the image they had been attempting to create when their bomb had gone off prematurely. Their statement went thus:

A UVF patrol led by Major Boyle was suspicious of two vehicles, a minibus and a car parked near the border. Major Boyle ordered his patrol to apprehend the occupants for questioning. As they were being questioned, Major Boyle and Lieutenant Somerville began to search the minibus. As they began to enter the vehicle, a bomb was detonated and both men were killed outright. At the precise moment of the explosion, the patrol came under intense automatic fire from the occupants of the other vehicle. The patrol sergeant immediately ordered the patrol to shoot back. Using self-loading rifles and sub-machine guns, the patrol shot back, killing three of their attackers and wounding another. The patrol later recovered two Armalite rifles and a pistol. The UVF maintains regular border patrols due to the continued activity of the Provisional IRA. The Mid-Ulster Battalion has been assisting the South Down-South Armagh units since the IRA Forkhill boobytrap which killed four British soldiers. Three UVF members are being treated for gunshot wounds after last night but not in hospital.

The statement also said:

It would appear that the UVF patrol surprised members of a terrorist organisation transferring weapons to the Miami Showband minibus and that an explosive device of some description was being carried by the Showband for an unlawful purpose. It is obvious, therefore, that the UVF patrol was justified in taking the action it did and that the killing of the three Showband members should be regarded as justifiable homicide. The Officers and Agents of the Ulster Central Intelligence Agency commend the UVF on their actions and tender their deepest sympathy to the relatives of the two Officers who died while attempting to remove the bomb from the minibus.

As you might expect, the Miami Showband killing brought retaliation from the IRA, who attacked a pub on the Shankill Road two weeks later, and killed a local DJ who was known to have been a friend of Harris Boyle, one of the UVF gunmen, and said to have been linked with one of the British soldiers. A minibus was also attacked, though nobody can say for certain whether this was the UVF or the IRA; there is a belief the latter mistook it for a police bus, though it was actually carrying pensioners back from bingo. Five out of the nine passengers - all Catholic - were killed.

Arrested for the Miami Showband murders were Lance-Corporal Thomas Crozier and Sergeant James McDowell, both UDR (Ulster Defence Regiment, another loyalist paramilitary group) members, and John Somerville (brother of Wesley), a former UDR man, who received four consecutive life sentences, the other two receiving life sentences.  both of whom were released under the terms of the Belfast Agreement, having served twelve years in the case of Crozier and McDowell and a mere seven in the case of Somerville.

A report issued in 2011 by the Historical Enquiries Team drew a clear link between the UVF, the British Military and an RUC Special Agent named Robin Jackson, believed by many to be the mastermind behind the attack. He was however never charged and died of cancer in 1998.It dismissed entirely the claim that the Miami Showband were working with the IRA to bring bombs across the border. Sentencing the original two perpetrators at the time, and handing down what was the longest and stiffest sentence in Northern Ireland's history, the judge noted that if the death penalty still applied he would have sentenced both men to death for their heinous crime. To date, none of the surviving members of the Miami Showband have ever received any apology from anyone connected with the UVF or the loyalist hierarchy.

Before we go further though, let's look at the other side of the equation, the men who were involved, or believed to have been involved, in the massacre.

[Trollheart]

William Henry Wilson "Billy" Hanna (1929 - 1975)

Founder of the feared Mid-Ulster Brigade of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), proscribed by, but tacitly supported and endorsed by the British Government, Hanna served in the British military in the Korean War and later joined the Ulster Special Constabulary, known as the B-Specials, a quasi-military reserve force of the British Army which probably roughly compares to the Black-and-Tans of the 1920s. When the B-Specials were disbanded in 1970 he joined the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) the sanctioned reserve military wing of the army, In 1972 he set up the Mid-Ulster Brigade of the UVF and is believed to have carried out, or been involved in the planning of the twin bombings in Dublin and Monaghan in May of 1974, five bombings in all which resulted in thirty-three fatalities.

With the apparent collusion of the RUC, and together with the UDA (Ulster Defence Association) and UDR, the Mid-Ulster Brigade became part of an infamous loyalist paramilitary gang known as the "Glenanne Gang" which carried out sectarian murders and bombings throughout the 1970s, and also ran a protection racket, robbed banks and stole weapons. Hanna was killed, it's believed by Robin Jackson, the mastermind behind the Miami massacre, and who then assumed command of the Mid-Ulster Brigade. The story seems to be that Hanna was remorseful about "all those children killed in Dublin" (two infants and an unborn child were among the dead, and one young girl was decapitated by the explosion, only recognisable by her platform boots which confirmed her as a female) and refused to take part in the massacre. Fearful that he would inform on them, Jackson shot him as he got out of his car in the early hours of July 27. Though never comprehensively proven, it's believed that Hanna worked for British intelligence, and that they had been involved in the planning of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.


Robert "Robin" John Jackson (1948 - 1998)

Also known as "The Jackal", he joined the UDR in 1972 but quickly seems to have drifted to the UVF, where, as mentioned above, he planned the Miami Showband killing and executed his former boss, Bill Hanna, who refused to go along with it. Also refusing, according to an unsubstantiated theory, to help was Brian McCoy, trumpeter with the Miami Showband and a protestant from Northern Ireland; approached by (according to the theory, without so far as I know any actual evidence) Jackson and asked to use his connections with the band to help plan UVF attacks in the Republic, McCoy had refused and so (again, according to the theory) Jackson had targeted him and his band for death in reprisal, believing McCoy was disloyal to the Unionist cause.

It's widely accepted now that Jackson not only planned but helped carry out and direct the ambush, himself shooting McCoy dead when two of his comrades, Wesley Somerville and Harris Boyle, were blown up when the bomb went off prematurely. Jackson, believed to be an agent working for RUC Special Branch, later shot his brother-in-law for allegedly informing on him to the RUC. Jackson, in turn, was believed (none of this was ever conclusively proven, so I have to keep using words like that) to have been controlled by this guy.



Captain Robert Laurence Nairac (1948 - 1977)

Again, we have one of those weird little coincidences, where I note that he and Jackson were both born in the same year. Nairac was a military intelligence officer who worked both with the army and the RUC, and narrowly escaped being blown up when a car bomb detonated on the Crumlin Road in Belfast in 1973. He appears to have been something of a loose cannon, conducting unsanctioned surveillance on republican pubs and supplying loyalist paramilitaries with guns, bombs and help in planning attacks, including the Dublin and Monaghan car bombings.

Steve Travers remembers a British Army officer being at the shootings, and noted he had a very cultured, English accent. It's believed this was Nairac, though it has never been proven. Two years later Nairac was abducted and killed by the IRA while visiting a republican pub and posing as a member of the organisation. His body has never been found.



William Wesley Somerville (1941 - 1975)

A close friend of Robin Jackson, Somerville and his brother were members of the Mid-Ulster Brigade of the UVF, and were part of the infamous Glenanne Gang. Among other crimes, Somerville and his brother were accused of kidnapping, bombing and sectarian attacks and was said to have been with Jackson when the later commander of the Mid-Ulster Brigade shot Catholic trade unionist Patrick Campbell on his doorstep in 1973, though the charges were dropped on this, possibly due to Jackson's being an alleged RUC special agent. Somerville also took part in the Monaghan bombing of 1974.

The brothers were part of the hit squad that night, but Wesley was blown up when the bomb he was trying to plant on the Miami Showband's van exploded. All that was left of him was an arm with a tattoo, which was how he was later identified as having been one of the bombers. His brother would later be arrested for his part in the attack, but serve only seven years of a life sentence before being released. Wesley Somerville and his accomplice, Harris Boyle, were both given paramilitary funerals by the command of the UVF, who maintained they had acted to defend themselves and Ulster against Catholic bombers (somehow ignoring the fact that half of the band were Protestant).



Harris Boyle (1953 - 1975)

Believed to have been second-in-command of the Mid-Ulster Brigade of the UVF when Billy Hanna was in charge, he held the rank of major and was involved in the Dublin and Monaghan car bombings too. In fact, the bomb used in the Monaghan attack was said to have been assembled in his own house before being transported across the border. He was also believed to be an agent being run by Captain Nairac, and is generally accepted to have been in charge of the ambush on the Miami Showband. He was the second UVF man blown to kingdom come when the bomb went off, but unlike his compatriot, there was nothing left of him to identify him. Nevertheless, he, along with Wesley Sommerville, received a paramilitary funeral by the UVF and was hailed as a hero and a martyr to the Unionist cause.

It was alleged that Nairac - whose presence at the attack has never been confirmed, and much evidence has apparently been presented to show that he was nowhere near it - deliberately made sure the bomb went off, as he wanted to eliminate Boyle due to his role in the killing of Provisional IRA man John Francis Green that January, afraid Boyle was going to inform on him.


In the wake of the attack, the best the fledgling Irish government could do was to summon the British ambassador and convey, in the strongest possible terms, their outrage at the killings and at the failure of the British to prevent their citizens being murdered in the course of entertaining the people of Northern Ireland. I'm sure Sir Arthur Galsworthy, the ambassador at the time, lost a lot of sleep over that dressing-down.

I began this account by calling the Miami Showband massacre a watershed moment, but I suppose that's just me being a little hyperbolic. It's not as if this was an event that brought peace to Northern Ireland, had people out on the streets (except of course in the Republic, mad with anger and grief) or forced new legislation to, I don't know, guarantee the safe passage of bands over the border. In point of fact, nothing changed. The massacre was, surely, forgotten at the time as new attacks were made, reprisals carried out and the bodies piled up as the cycle of violence went on for another twenty years or more. Stark evidence that the revenge killings would not end soon came with the murder of Brian McCoy's brother-in-law Eric Smyth by the IRA, as late as 1996.

However ten years later, a form of reconciliation was enacted as Steve Travers went back to Ulster to meet a UVF paramilitary commander known only as "The Craftsman", who apologised for the attack, telling him that his men had panicked when the bomb went off that night. Appropriately or horribly not so, the meeting took place in a church. Sadly, Thomas Crozier was not so willing to meet Travers, leaving him standing at his door while he refused to answer.


One year later, a memorial to the slain band members was unveiled in Dublin's Parnell Square. Both surviving members attended, as did the Taoiseach. In 2011 journalist Kevin Myers noted of the massacre that "in its diabolical inventiveness against such a group of harmless and naïve young men, it is easily one of the most depraved [of the Troubles]".

The subsequent HET (Historical Enquiries Team) report, published in 2011, raised questions about the possibility or indeed probability of collusion between the RUC, the British Army and loyalist paramilitary groups like the UVF, though nobody was ever charged based on their findings. For the families of the band, it was at least some vindication that they had been set up, and that the authorities had not only let it happen, but covered it up too.

But though we've had to read an account of horror and death, betrayal and the loss of innocence, murder and sectarian hatred, let's try to end on a slightly positive note. You might expect, that with half of them dead, the band would have folded, but actually the Miami continued gigging - obviously with new members replacing those killed - until 1986, and reformed in 2008. They're still playing today.

So, without meaning in any way to cheapen the loss of life, the meaningless and horrendous and blameless deaths of three young men who had their whole lives ahead of them, I suppose in the end, you might say that no matter what you do, you can't kill the music.