The Republic of Ireland
against Italy
in this group of
the World Cup finals.
I'd say the biggest day
in Irish international
soccer history,
the Giants Stadium
is filled to capacity.
Plenty of Irish in evidence,
and obviously here to enjoy
a great day out...
If you look around the
Colosseum, it's full of Irish...
...we've got to take in
the atmosphere.
It's Italy nil, Ireland one.
That's away to Costacurta.
Donadoni Roberto, Donadoni...
I remember
being in my aunt's house.
She lived in Downpatrick,
which isn't too far from here,
about eight or nine miles,
on a Sunday morning.
I was upstairs in her house
in bed, sleeping,
and being wakened
out of my sleep
to come into the room to Tony,
to my brother,
and we were told together.
I always remember
my two uncles were there,
wearing a coat that a man
would wear to a funeral,
big long, top heavy coat.
I remember thinking,
first of all, why are they here
and why are they wearing
a big, top heavy coat?
It was June.
It was the summer, why are
they wearing big coats?
And I just remember
Mommy saying to us
that bad men had
come into the pub
and they had...
had guns
and they'd shot six people
and Daddy was dead.
He had died.
Nobody that I had known
had ever died before,
so I didn't really know
what was happening.
We had just came home
from Spain on holiday
and my husband came down
here to watch the match.
So I came down to join him
about ten past 10:00.
And when I came down,
I met a local man
at the door and he said,
"Don't go in there,
there's been a shooting."
And for some reason I thought
there was a few boys
around here
would have went out and
shot rabbits or whatever
and I thought somebody's
gone in there with a gun
and it went off accidentally.
And he said,
"No, no, don't go in.
"It's terrible,
we need a clergyman."
So I did come in.
And...
what greeted me will
haunt me to the day I die.
Bodies just lying everywhere.
The smell,
the smoke was lingering,
broken glass.
I couldn't see it, I couldn't.
I had to walk away,
I had to run out, I couldn't.
Good evening to you
One and all
Good luck to you I'll say
I just came here
To sing to youse
Before I go away
Barney was
a well known character,
with his pipe and
his wee rosy cheeks.
He was jovial.
The night
the massacre happened,
where were you,
what are you doing?
Some of the things
I can remember,
but a lot of it blurs.
It was such...
Oh, it was horrendous.
The parish priest arrived up,
and we knew then
that Barney...
definitely was...
was dead.
Did you see anything?
No.
And...
You know, neighbors
round here had no...
no problems whatsoever.
To come to this community
was unreal.
It was as simple as that.
The Troubles were something
that happened in Belfast.
Yes, we were aware of them
and we were aware
of all the atrocities and,
you know,
people losing their lives,
but it was something
that never touched us
and we never,
ever for one minute thought
that we would ever have
to live through that.
Brutal, inhuman, barbaric,
callous slaughter,
some of the words used
today to describe
last night's atrocity
by Loyalist terrorists
in a pub in County Down.
O'Toole's bar lies some
half a mile off the main
Belfast to Newcastle road
at Loughinisland.
It's a comparatively small bar
in an isolated rural area.
Slaughter in Loughinisland,
as the UVF shoot
11 people in the back
as they watch the World Cup
on television.
Six men are dead.
The gunmen from
the outlawed Loyalist group,
the Ulster Volunteer Force,
walked into the Heights Bar
and sprayed it with gunfire
from automatic assault rifles.
The attack was over in seconds.
All six men
who died were Catholics.
The eldest, Barney Green,
was 87.
His nephew, Dan McCreanor,
who was 59, perished with him.
The other victims were
father of four, Eamon Byrne,
father of three,
Malcolm Jenkinson,
father of two, Adrian Brogan,
and single man Patrick O'Hare.
Bodies were piled
on top of each other.
It's just beneath
contempt the people
who could carry out
this type of thing.
It was just a nightmare
after that. Um...
Then there was the whole
process of grieving
and the funeral.
Protestants
and Catholics walked together
as the hearse
carrying Adrian Rogan,
the first victim to be buried,
past the Heights Pub
in Loughinisland,
where the six men
were murdered.
It was a very innocent way
of spending a few hours
in the company of friends,
arguing over the progress
of the game,
delighted in the goal.
I remember
walking behind the funeral,
and my Granny
had me by the hand.
Loughinisland,
it's a close knit community.
I remember being...
I suppose, when
you're small, a child,
it was like thousands
of people everywhere.
For those who have done this,
those who have
killed these people,
my message to them is this.
I suppose some of you
have families.
Let's just picture
a future conversation
that you may have
with your daughter,
who asks you what you did
in your so-called war, Daddy.
And you will say,
"I killed a man of 87."
He was sitting
with his back to me.
He was watching the World Cup.
I shot him dead.
She won't think that the
record of a hero, will she?
Now, I want to say this
at the end,
you are going to be
caught sooner or later.
The RUC never give up.
And you will be caught,
and you will spend
long years in prison.
Thank you very much.
I got
a letter from the Queen...
a letter from the Pope.
This made world news.
Former football great, OJ
Simpson, and his lawyers,
are preparing for
tomorrow's arraignment
on double murder charges.
Meanwhile,
police in Northern Ireland
are hunting for two gunmen
after the worst violence
there in months.
The men killed six people
while they were watching
Ireland's World Cup
soccer match.
I thought
the police can't let this go.
I mean, the eyes of
the world are on them,
they have to be seen to be
doing the right thing here.
I can remember distinctly the
policemen coming into the wake.
A few of them actually would
have known my husband.
I'll never forget their words.
"We will leave
no stone unturned
'till we get the perpetrators
of this."
And those words ring
in my ear to this day,
because I don't think
they ever lifted a stone,
never mind turned it.
More than 20 years
after the massacre,
the Heights Bar
is still in business.
The bars's been rebuilt,
but Aidan O'Toole,
the man shot in the kidney,
still pours Guinness
for local farmers.
I first came here
to do a short film
about the World Cup match,
but I was haunted by the story
of the unsolved murder.
Why this pub?
Why this village?
What was at the heart
of the mystery
the victims' families
were trying to solve?
I was moved by their search,
even as I knew
they weren't alone.
For nearly 50 years,
Northern Ireland has
been haunted
by what is known simply
as the Troubles.
It's fair to say that the origin
of the Troubles was in 1922,
the year Ireland declared its
independence from Great Britain.
As part of that agreement,
Ireland was divided
into two parts.
The Republic of Ireland
and Northern Ireland,
a province that remained
a part of the United Kingdom.
By the late 1960s,
Northern Ireland
was tearing apart.
An embattled Catholic minority,
victims of legal and
economic discrimination,
sought civil rights and unification
with the Republic of Ireland.
Against them stood the mostly
Protestant majority called Loyalists,
who wanted to remain
a part of the United Kingdom.
Over time, both sides descended
into terrorist campaigns,
killing thousands
of innocent civilians.
For Republicans, the
dominant force was the IRA.
For Loyalists, there were
a number of groups,
including the UVF,
which would take responsibility
for Loughinisland.
The UVF, when the
Troubles started in 1968,
when there was rioting and houses
being burnt on the Shankill Road,
they came to the fore, as a sort
of protector of the Protestants.
The heartland would have
been the Shankill Road,
east Belfast,
north Belfast, Portadown,
that would have been more or
less the centers for the UVF.
And they got engaged
in sectarian murders.
So they would have went out
and killed Catholics.
The famous Shankill Butchers
were UVF.
They went out and picked up
innocent Catholics
walking home at night
and cut their throats,
tortured them and killed them.
They talk about soldiers in
the Ulster Volunteer Force.
They weren't soldiers.
They were people who went out
and murdered innocent people.
You were involved
in paramilitary activities
going back to the '80s
and you were in prison.
What were you in prison for?
I was in prison for
being a UVF activist
and being involved in murders.
I come from a neighborhood
which is known as
the Shankill in Belfast.
And I suppose its
historical significance,
and the best way to describe it
is that it was
a pro-British community.
Quite a lot of people
when I was growing up
joined the British Army
and went off and fought
in conflicts
all around the world.
So there were strong
links with England
and with the Royal family.
The majority of them would
have been Protestant,
but there were Catholics lived
in my neighborhood as well.
IRA violence at the time in
the Shankill where I lived.
I had watched pensioners,
I'd watched an 18-month-old
baby being blown out of a pram
by an indiscriminate bomb.
People were being
murdered on the street.
The IRA, at the start
they were just
a bunch of killers.
Really it was a blood lust.
They generally went after
soldiers and police,
but they did carry out
sectarian murders as well.
Usually tit for tat.
If a Protestant was
shot dead one night,
then a Catholic was
shot dead the next,
and it just went back and
forward and back and forward.
Sadly there was
people queuing up
on both sides to join
to be gunmen.
Young kids were coming along
and looking at these people
walking down the street,
these big fellas who thought
they were the bees' knees.
"I want to be like him."
So there was no shortage of
people willing to pull a trigger.
For a while I was working
in the intelligence world,
particularly in relation
to Loyalist terrorism.
Earlier on I served
in west Belfast,
which was probably the most
dangerous place in the province.
Murders occurred every day,
every other day.
I suppose it's like
an adrenalin buzz.
You went out every day not knowing
what was going to happen.
So, exactly why did you decide
to join the police, the RUC?
Um...
I suppose it was because
it was a job for life.
Wasn't there
a bit of risk at that time
in terms of being in the RUC?
That's why I'm smiling.
It's a job for life
if you live long enough.
There was an element of risk,
yeah, there was a risk.
At that time I had a
personal protection weapon.
I also had a shotgun which
was kept beside the bed.
I taught my wife
how to fire them both.
Gave her the strategy
that the shotgun
would be shot down the stairs,
and if it came to the handgun
we were in trouble.
So far as the attacks
on the RUC are concerned,
the IRA seem to be
justifying those in advance
by its allegation yesterday
that the police were
torturing suspects.
To stop
the escalating violence,
the British government
deployed the Army.
The IRA viewed that
as an invasion,
and the soldiers
as occupying forces.
They also believed that
members of the military
were collaborating
with Loyalist gangs
by offering access to
intelligence and weapons.
I arrived in Northern Ireland
as a young newspaper
reporter in 1974.
I was based in Belfast
for three years
when something
like 600 people died.
In those days, the Army was
in the lead role in security.
Police were in support
of the Army,
not the other way round.
So it was a quintessential
insurgency.
It was really a civil war.
It was a civil war.
The Army are up here in the
middle of Lenadoon Avenue.
- They have come...
...after earlier confrontation
down at the end...
The bus station was crowded
when a bomb went off
without warning.
It is a tragic, dangerous,
and absurd corner
of the United Kingdom.
Violence went on
throughout the late '80s
and into the early 1990s.
The IRA had developed
its bomb making capabilities,
had developed
its sniper attacks,
and was very much now
fighting an urban war
against the British Army,
the police and
the Loyalist paramilitaries.
People were just being killed
by Republicans, by Loyalists.
Things were completely
out of control.
The Loughinisland massacre
was just something
that always stuck with me.
There have been
hundreds of fatalities
and massacres on all sides,
but for some reason
there were so many
unanswered questions
with Loughinisland.
It just never went away.
It was always there
in the back of the head.
I remember where I was
on the night of the massacre.
The Republic of Ireland
football team
were playing Italy in
the 1994 World Cup.
I'd say the biggest day
in Irish international
soccer history.
There was a reason
everyone in the Heights Bar
was huddled around the TV
on the night of the massacre.
There was a symbolic backdrop
to the World Cup match
in Giants Stadium
in New Jersey.
Ireland, for once,
had a world class team
that seemed to unify
the war torn Ireland.
One image I'll always remember
is going out to the Meadowlands,
the day of the game,
and seeing these cars
from everywhere.
Alabama, New Mexico,
Minnesota, California,
all with Irish flags on them,
and realizing,
you know what, guys?
This is a home game
for Ireland.
When we walked into the stadium
and you walked in
and looked out,
I just saw this sea of green.
You had this din,
you had this Irish singing,
you had this party going on,
people dancing in the stands,
you know...
It was just a huge
expression of Irishness.
There was a sense of larger meaning
to the game, wasn't there?
A sense that the Troubles
might be ending?
Yeah. Very much so.
You were always aware
of the fact that
the sporting arena was one that
reflected the broader Ireland,
particularly in
Northern Ireland.
The game was poised at this
moment of true breakthrough
and hope for the Irish
peace process.
For Irish fans, the game
carried a sense of moment.
Only a few months before,
Gerry Adams,
the political negotiator
for the IRA,
was invited to America
for unofficial peace talks
without first
renouncing violence.
We put to the President
that a visa for Gerry Adams
would have a dynamic effect
on the Irish peace process,
and he accepted it despite the
fact that everybody around him,
including
the Secretary of State,
CIA, the FBI,
the British government,
every one strongly opposed
that Adams visa.
He granted the visa to Adams,
and that was a huge
breakthrough.
I did believe that by
giving Mr. Adams this visa,
this limited visa to come here,
that we might have
a constructive role
in pushing the peace process.
There are a number of armed
factions in my country,
the largest one
is the British Army.
They are allies in
the Loyalist death squads
and the Irish Republican Army.
And I want to see an end
to all armed factions.
Seeing Adams
treated as a statesman
was infuriating to Loyalists
and the British government.
They saw Adams as a terrorist,
and the American negotiators
as coddling a man
who had blood on his hands.
Was the attack
on the bar that night
a way of lashing out
at the peace to come?
The killers had to be
thinking about the game
and the hope it offered
for the people in the bar.
I remember from nowhere
this ball coming dropping into
the midfield for Ray Houghton.
He sees the opportunity
and he lets fly.
I was thinking,
"This can't last."
But as the game went on,
the Republic grew in strength
and the Italians
didn't fancy it.
History has been made
at Giants stadium.
The Republic of Ireland
have beaten Italy.
At the end of it,
to have defeated Italy,
the place went absolutely mad.
We had gone down
into the press center
and I rang the office to
speak to the Deputy Editor.
And I said,
"This is brilliant, Jim.
"I mean, it's got to
be page 1 tomorrow."
And he said, "It won't
be page 1 tomorrow."
And I said, "Why not?"
And he said, "We've
had an atrocity here."
The getaway car was discovered
the morning after the attack
by a local farmer
who noticed the car
in his field,
seven miles from
the scene of the attack.
At that time the usual
practice for paramilitaries
carrying out such an attack,
they would burn the car
to destroy forensic evidence.
Unusually in
the Loughinisland attack,
the car was left fully intact.
I'll be honest.
I thought it was fantastic.
We're going to be able to
work on something from the car.
You had hair samples,
you had fingerprints,
you know, there would
have been a lot of...
Even in those days
there would be
a forensic gift, gold mine.
Within six weeks,
it was August 4th 1994,
the VZ58 rifle,
which had been used
to kill everyone,
was found in a field
not far away from where
the car was found.
Nearby a holdall was found
containing gloves,
handguns, balaclavas.
There was a hair follicle found
in one of the balaclavas.
So there was a wealth
of forensic possibilities.
There was a series of arrests
in July and August,
uh, of that year,
and there was an expectation,
certainly the families hoped,
that this was all leading to
people being charged,
the people who had
carried out the atrocities
being charged and
being brought to justice.
Good evening.
Six weeks after the IRA said
its campaign of violence
was over,
Loyalist terrorists
in Northern Ireland
have also declared a ceasefire.
Within six weeks
of the Loughinisland massacre,
the IRA and Loyalist
ceasefires were called.
So the whole world attention
was on this new future that
Northern Ireland was facing.
This new sense of hope.
Like other atrocities,
Loughinisland became something
that you didn't talk about,
because nobody wanted
to reopen the past.
The only people who
remembered Loughinisland
was the families and
the loved ones.
Time went on,
and we chose to stay quiet
because that was our nature.
That was the nature
of this community.
Just get on with your life.
So we waited and we waited and,
you know, we were drip fed bits
of information about people,
suspects having been arrested
and we kept thinking,
"Right, this is it now."
And then after about, I would
say, a year, two years,
it just stopped,
there was no contact.
And again we chose
just to stay quiet
and hope that some day
somebody would be
brought to justice.
I think I, you know,
deserve the truth
to know what happened.
Like, my Daddy was only 34.
That's not much older
than what I am now.
Like, he was young.
To me he was old,
you know, he had a mustache
and he was my Daddy,
he was old, I was eight,
he was, not an old man,
but he wasn't,
he was 34 years of age.
If I don't stand up for him
and I don't fight
my Daddy's corner,
who else is going to do it?
I want somebody to
be held accountable
for what happened here.
They've probably been
the least vociferous
victims of the Troubles.
Relatives of the six men
murdered by the UVF
at Loughinisland
12 years ago this Sunday
have never spoken publicly
about the ordeal,
their grief, or the lack
of progress
in the police hunt
for the killers.
But today, the families
gathered in Belfast
to demand answers.
Ten years with no information,
no liaising with the families.
We were kept in the dark.
I can think of
no reasonable reason
why any reasonable
police officer...
From the very first
consultation with the families,
there was just a sense
that something wasn't right.
All they ever wanted to know
was what happened.
By the end of 2005,
we had three meetings with
senior police officers.
The police were saying,
"We have the boiler suits,
"we have the balaclavas,
we have the weapons,
we had the car."
I thought, "Had the car?
"Where is the car?"
Why not you have the car?
Where's the car?
So just where is the car?
"Oh, well, you know,
the car was destroyed.
"And, uh...
"But be sure that all
forensic opportunities
were realized from the car."
Hold on.
You destroyed the car?
The largest physical
exhibit in the case,
and you've destroyed it?
The car wasn't the only
thing that disappeared.
All the transcripts of the
initial interviews with suspects
were also destroyed.
More than ten years on,
even as the police
kept the case open,
more and more doorways
to the truth were closing.
To be honest,
we had always been suspicious.
And on reflection,
sometimes I kind of
feel a bit guilty
that we didn't speak up,
because it seems now
that we were almost...
That's what they
wanted us to do.
They wanted us to stay quiet
and this would go away.
Every question we were asked,
we were told,
Oh, we can't tell you that now,
you have to put
that in writing.
No, we can't tell you that,
that's national security.
We were thwarted all the time.
I have no idea why
the car was destroyed,
but the fact
it was destroyed...
One of the things I do remember
was five o'clock in the
morning after the massacre.
My husband, he went out
and cut the grass.
It seems strange now, but people
were coming and going and...
It was three policemen
standing out
and there was a neighbor
came down,
rolled down the window
of the car and he says,
"You need look no further
than those there."
He said that.
That was his
immediate reaction.
"You need look no further
than them beep there."
Somebody came in here and
murdered six innocent people
that was left
on the floor to die.
And it's not even that they
didn't do anything about it.
Somebody somewhere helped
these people cover this up,
helped them get away with it.
We want to know how high
does this collusion go?
There were six innocent men.
My Daddy and I want the truth,
and I want to know
why it happened,
who allowed it to happen,
and there are questions that
we need answers to.
Last week,
the police who've been
conducting a new investigation
into Loughinisland,
arrested a man and a woman,
but they were quickly
released without charge.
The Police Ombudsman's
office have confirmed
that they have received
a complaint
from families in Loughinisland,
and they say they're carrying
out an investigation.
After the ceasefire,
Northern Ireland established
the office of
the Police Ombudsman
as a way of trying to
reckon with the past.
Its mission was not
to solve crimes.
It was to look into
police misconduct,
including collusion,
a catch-all name for
corrupt relationships
between police, informants
and terrorist gangs.
Collusion first emerges
in the mid to late '80s,
where Republicans allege
that there was collusion
between the police,
between members
of the British Army
and Loyalist paramilitaries
in the murder of Nationalists.
Collusion was a feature
throughout 30 years
of conflict,
and the official line was that
any policeman
or British soldier
that was involved with
Loyalist paramilitaries
was a bad apple.
To a lot of police officers,
collusion is quite
a toxic word,
because it's capable of
a very broad meaning, okay.
And it doesn't easily fit
into a sort of criminal code.
I mean, collusion is
a sense in which
people are giving nudges
and winks and nods.
There is no criminal
offense of collusion.
However, if you were concerned
that the police were
either involved
in killing your loved one,
or involved in colluding
with those
that killed your loved one,
the Police Ombudsman's office
had a responsibility
to investigate your complaint.
In 2011,
the Ombudsman Al Hutchinson,
released the first report
on Loughinisland.
Hutchinson's report detailed
some staggering facts
about the case.
Some evidence was destroyed,
DNA links to the weapons
were mishandled,
and a police informant
had been involved
in the sale of the getaway car.
That was the first
time that those facts
were presented in
an evidence based fashion.
However, the one word that would
not appear in that report
was "collusion."
Al Hutchinson performed
factual gymnastics
to avoid that conclusion.
We were really, really
disappointed in that.
And angry.
Very, very angry.
At one stage I would
have loved to have
put my two hands
round his neck.
I can remember at the press
conference that day
there was one guy,
he's a local fella here,
and he did say,
there are two words
missing from this report,
"Special" and "Branch."
Special Branch is the
intelligence unit in the police
charged with
watching terrorists
and handling informants.
There were questions
about what they knew
and when,
and whether they were keeping
that information to themselves,
or whether it was scrubbed
from the Hutchinson report.
It almost appeared that
that report began
with its conclusions
and cut the pieces of
the jigsaw to make it fit.
Last year, the then Police
Ombudsman, Al Hutchinson,
published a report which
criticized the police inquiry,
but found insufficient
evidence of collusion.
The families strongly disagreed
with that conclusion
and started a lawsuit
to have the Ombudsman's
findings overturned.
This morning at the High Court,
the current Ombudsman,
Michael Maguire,
agreed that last year's
report should be quashed.
We are delighted,
we are vindicated.
Mr. Maguire can now
go back and start again
and hopefully come out
with a report
that gives us
truth and justice.
So the way is now open
for the Police Ombudsman
to start a new investigation.
It's now been
more than 18 years
since the massacre at this bar.
In that time,
16 people have been arrested,
but no one's ever been
charged with the murders.
The families though hope
that today's development
will be a step towards
finding the truth.
Chris Page, BBC Newsline,
Loughinisland.
Loughinisland case was
one of the iconic cases in the
history of Northern Ireland,
the history of the Troubles.
T was one of the cases
that arrived on my desk
shortly after I was
appointed in 2012.
What happened
with the first report
was that it was very
specifically focused
on the attack on the Heights
Bar on the 18th of June,
so it looked at
the investigative steps
that were undertaken at
the time of the incident.
The crime scene management,
and then subsequent steps.
There were significant areas
which had not
been investigated,
and that included the incidents
leading up to Loughinisland.
It was important to broaden
the investigation
and effectively
go back to the start.
In 2013,
Michael Maguire and his team
started a new investigation
into Loughinisland.
Like Hutchinson,
Maguire decided not to reveal
names of sources or suspects.
Police officers were
identified by numbers,
possible suspects by letters.
Unlike the first report,
Maguire's investigation
looked much deeper
into the case
and what led up to the killing.
The report confirmed
that the UVF,
a Protestant
paramilitary group,
was responsible for
the Loughinisland attack.
But the investigation
disproved the UVF claim
that there had been
an IRA meeting in the bar.
It had been
a tit for tat killing.
Three days earlier,
an IRA splinter group had
shot dead three UVF leaders
standing at a bus stop on
the Shankill Road in Belfast.
The UVF called for revenge,
with orders from members
to kill Catholics,
any Catholics.
People knew that there would be
some kind of retaliation.
That had always happened
like this when one side
attacked the other,
there would be retaliation.
The initial police response
to the attack on
the night was, you know,
given the chaos and the terror
that was surrounding
the aftermath of that event,
was as good as could
have been expected.
They did seal off
the crime scene,
they put out
vehicle check points,
they put up a helicopter.
We checked the flying time
for that helicopter,
and it was reasonable
in terms of
the amount of time
it was in the air.
So the initial response
of the police to that attack
to us seemed to be not an
unreasonable response.
However, there were
more serious
fundamental investigative
problems
which came up pretty quickly.
In Dr. Maguire's report,
Police Officer 4,
he was the senior
investigating officer
on the night of Loughinisland.
He actually visited
the scene of the attack.
There was a meeting that night
of all the senior detectives,
but then, within 24 hours,
at most 48 hours,
he went on holidays
for I think it was
a month to six weeks.
The biggest mass murder
in the region...
I would have thought, you know,
that would have been one
of his main priorities.
But the first thing on the
agenda was his holidays.
It wasn't six people are
lying dead in a bar there.
The following day,
the 19th of June 1994,
the vehicle was found
abandoned in a field.
There's some mechanical issue
happened with that vehicle
and it appears to have
been pushed off the road,
and from there the gunmen,
and I include driver
in that description,
but the gunmen,
the three people,
and we have witnesses,
we see witness statements
to describe three people.
So we are saying
the three people,
a driver and two,
have made good their escape
probably on foot.
What is utterly frustrating
is the poor
investigative practice
conducted by the police.
There was no
forensic examination
of the field afterwards.
And I know it sounds,
sometimes it sounds as though,
what are you going
to do with a field?
But actually the potential to harvest
evidence from a field is very good.
You know,
the relevance of things like
botany, vegetation,
soil typing.
If you can take soil samples
from somebody's
shoes or clothing,
what you can do is potentially
connect somebody to the field.
If you can connect
them to the field,
you may be able to
connect them to the car.
You know,
it's a rolling process.
But if you don't conduct that
and you don't gather it
in the first instance,
you lose the opportunity
to do that.
The car itself,
it had been allegedly sold
the day before the crime
by a gentleman in Belfast.
A call went out to see the last
registered keeper of that vehicle,
somebody in Belfast,
and an officer was tasked
to go and investigate that.
So I was briefed
to go down to Belfast
and interview several people.
Most importantly,
the person who sold the car
shortly before
the shooting took place.
Because obviously
that's going to be the link
to whoever's
doing the shooting.
Now, it wasn't unusual
when you go to a different area
to go to the local police
and the local links.
They'll have
the local knowledge,
they'd know the personalities.
They would maybe have
a relationship,
some form of
working relationship
with those personalities
as well.
What was unusual on this
occasion is that I went down,
I was told who
I could speak to,
who I couldn't speak to,
and the people that I spoke to
what they would be saying.
But just as importantly,
what they wouldn't be saying.
With retrospect,
do you wonder about that day
in terms of what
you were being told?
Looking back,
it certainly at that time,
I felt... the word I use
is "orchestrated."
The interviews
were orchestrated.
The statements that I would
be taking was orchestrated.
The meeting was orchestrated.
I never got speaking
to the man that,
as a, if I was in overall
charge of the investigation,
who I would
want to be speaking to.
But everybody
was happy with that.
So obviously there was things
going on above my head
that other people
were looking after.
Later on in that day,
Special Branch officers
met with
the senior
investigating officer
and senior members
of the investigation team,
and verbally articulated
those persons
they believed
would be responsible
for the Loughinisland atrocity.
We are talking about
the following day.
The attack is at 10:00,
for argument sake,
Ten o'clock on the 18th.
And we are talking about
during the course
of the day on the 19th.
It's a matter of hours.
They looked at the intelligence
they had and said,
"These are the people you
really want to concentrate on.
The day after the massacre,
Special Branch suddenly
revealed intelligence
about the suspects that they
had been keeping to themselves.
For the past six years,
police had been aware
of men from a Loyalist gang
who had been implicated
in a string of armed
assaults and murders.
In 1986 in Dundrum, they had
tried to kill John O'Rourke,
and were likely involved
in the murder of Jack Kielty.
In November 1992,
they tried but failed
to kill Peter McCarthy
at the Thierafurth Inn,
a place believed by the gang
to be an IRA hang out,
eleven miles
from Loughinisland.
The gang returned to the
Thierafurth Inn two weeks later
and killed another man
named Peter McCormick.
It was eerily like the murder
at Loughinisland.
The men drove
used cars from Belfast,
wore balaclavas
and boilersuits,
and sprayed the bar
with gunfire.
Three weeks later in Belfast, the
same gang murdered Martin Lavery.
The weapon used,
a nine millimeter Browning,
was later found
in the duffle bag
used in
the Loughinisland massacre.
None of the members of
the gang were ever charged
for committing
any of the murders.
Speaking to
Special Branch officers,
their intelligence effort
in the early '90s,
they did begin
to collect intelligence
around the suspects
in those murders.
The problem was that they
didn't share that intelligence
with the detectives that were
investigating those murders.
Slow Waltz was a policy
used by Special Branch
which meant that documents
would be released in slow time.
It's usually there to protect
the source of that information.
So you had this situation where
investigators were dealing with
a bit of the information,
but not knowing
the bigger picture.
And certainly,
the bigger picture
in the context
of Loughinisland,
was the sense that there
was this gang in operation,
they were involved
in serious criminality.
In Maguire's investigation,
the five suspects were
identified only by letters.
Persons A, M, K, I and B.
The ringleader was Person A.
In 1988, Person A was
a member of the British Army,
who lived a few doors down
from a Loyalist club,
Clough Orange Hall,
where people investigating
the Kielty murder
found a revolver,
the sub-machine gun,
ammunition and
an Army photo record,
a montage, with images
of suspected IRA members.
One of them was targeted
for killing by the gang.
Person A's fingerprints
were on the montage.
He was arrested and charged,
but never convicted.
When Person A was released,
the arresting officer
remained concerned
about the threat
posed by Person A.
That Detective was so concerned
that this individual
was a soldier by day
and a terrorist by night.
That he was
so concerned that he
lobbied as much as he could
for him to be thrown
out of the British Army.
How exactly would
you characterize Person A?
I would characterize him as
I would characterize them all,
as ruthless.
Absolutely ruthless.
A serial killer?
By definition, yes.
So within 24 hours
they had the car.
Special Branch were able to come
down and tell the investigators
the names of the suspects.
However, was Person A
arrested that day?
Was his door kicked
down his hallway?
Was he trailed
into a police station
and asked to account
for his movements?
Was his house searched?
No.
Person A wasn't arrested in the first
sweep of arrests in July 1994.
In fact, Person A
wasn't even arrested
until almost two months later.
We don't know
why he wasn't arrested
in July with
the other individuals.
His house was searched.
Whether or not it was
a case that he wasn't there
and there was work
out to locate him,
I just don't know.
One of the difficulties
that we found
in doing our investigation
was the policy logs
that you would have expected
with the senior
investigating officer,
that would write down,
"I have decided not to
arrest this person because...
"I want to get
further information,
or because I want to do,
you know, something else."
All of that documentation
wasn't available to us.
It no longer exists,
because of an asbestos
problem with a police station.
They destroyed a lot
of documentation,
including interview notes
of potential suspects.
I've got a vehicle recovered,
I've got the potential
of forensic harvesting.
You know, if I can hit
somebody early enough
and there's a weak one
amongst this team,
they might start tumbling.
How come they didn't do it?
Good question.
I don't know.
And I don't know because
a senior investigating officer
has not spoken to me.
One key policeman
in charge of the investigation
of Loughinisland had retired,
which meant he could refuse
to cooperate with Maguire.
That left a fog of mystery
over why police
allowed prime suspects
time to cover their tracks.
It's rotten to the core.
The very fact that the SIO
in the Loughinisland case
has steadfastly
refused to cooperate.
What does that tell you?
Something not right here.
You know, it's one thing
when people lose their lives.
It's one thing when
there's a major atrocity
and nobody's brought to book.
But it becomes
a completely different thing
when nobody's brought to book
because somebody else
didn't do their job properly,
or somebody else covered it up.
The families suspected
that the investigation might
have been mismanaged on purpose,
possibly to protect
an informant.
Throughout the Troubles,
the British government used
informants, called touts,
to infiltrate terrorist groups
and provide intelligence.
Let's talk about the British
government's handling of informants.
Yeah.
Were there problems balancing the
benefits of information gained
with the cost of protecting
dangerous sources?
Well that's always
a difficult issue,
because right through
the period of the Troubles,
some people very bravely
stood up and said,
"This is destroying our country,
destroying the province.
A lot of people's lives
are at risk."
And a lot of people very
bravely provided intelligence
which prevented serious
outrages taking place.
Now, the question then was
whether they were
being properly handled,
whether it was
accurate information,
and whether they were people
who could be fully trusted
and were working at
all times within the law.
So you have an informant
who's working in
an organized crime gang.
At what level is that
individual allowed to work at?
Is he allowed to
lead that organization?
Does he go to the very
top of that organization?
And what dangers is that?
Is he then part of
planning the operations?
And of course, if you don't
authorize them to do it,
their fellow comrades
and gang members
will want to know
why is this person,
why are they not
taking part in this.
This issue was kicked around
officials year after year.
Everybody wrestled with
how do you make
something that's
manifestly criminal
not criminal?
And no one could do it.
However much they tried,
no one could fix it.
People made decisions
at high levels
to continue running sources
who weren't nice people,
these people, you wouldn't want
to walk through your door.
You didn't like
dealing with them,
but unfortunately
they still saved lives.
It was a fairly shady world,
but it was one that
you had to accept.
Very frustrating.
And...
Informants are
horrible to work with.
I mean, part of my job as a
Detective interviewing terrorists,
even interviewing
ordinary criminals,
was to recruit them,
and on some level, certainly
on the criminal level,
you'd run, operate informants
as any Detective would.
They were essential.
But what's emerging
was there was maybe
more of it allowed to go on
than should have done.
And just who was running them
is a different question.
You had the police who
would be running informants,
but you also had the military
who would be
running informants.
The organization
that I went to prison for,
the Ulster Volunteer Force,
the likes of the police
and other people
have infiltrated them.
People in British security
services definitely,
you know,
were recruiting people
and putting them
into organizations.
And on some occasions when
the police are doing this,
they're just looking for people
to give them information,
not big bits of information,
but then if they grow the person
big enough in that organization
then, you know,
it's more than information.
It's about how do they
destroy the organizations?
And they do it from within.
They create confusion.
They give misinformation.
People start to get killed.
The danger of running
highly placed informants came
when those agents, under the
protection of the state,
started killing people.
One of the most famous examples
was not from the UVF,
but from the IRA.
He was a highly placed tout,
responsible for the torture
and murder of other touts.
His name was
Freddy Scappaticci,
code name Stakeknife.
Scappaticci was in prison,
an internee in the 1970s.
Later on he became
a member of the IRA.
I knew him, not greatly,
but I knew him.
He was an acquaintance of mine.
I had seen him at Republican
events, at funerals, etc.
He was in charge of security.
Part of his role was interrogating
suspected IRA informers and agents.
He was breaking people,
getting them to admit
that they were informers,
and then handing them over
to the IRA who killed them.
And the people who were
running these agents
knew that another agent
was involved
in the assassination of agents
who were actually
working for the state,
and should have been
protected by the state
from that point of view.
How is it
advantageous to the state
to have this guy
killing all these people
who were informers in the IRA?
Because my
understanding is that
the people who Scappaticci
was interrogating,
were people who
the IRA at a lower level
suspected of being informers.
So their value
to the Special Branch,
or to British Intelligence
had run its course.
And so they saw
a further advantage
in having their man,
Stakeknife,
be the person who says,
"That person's guilty. I have
broken him under interrogation.
He should be executed."
To be clear,
it was the IRA that was
doing the executing.
But since British agents were
running the system of touts,
the state's moral standing
could be compromised
by the knowledge
of crimes committed.
That gave informants power
over their handlers.
Freddy Scappaticci was charged.
Freddy Scappaticci would
say to his handler,
"If I'm going down,
you're going down."
And the handler would
turn round and say
to the British government,
"If I'm going down,
"Number 10 Downing Street
is going down as well,
"because you knew
all along about the dirty war,
about what we were asked to do
and what we were doing."
The paper trail will lead
to 10 Downing Street,
and they cannot allow
that to happen.
There is
a picture of Scappaticci
which sort of captures
just how surreal
the secret world of agents
had become.
He's walking behind a man
who was a former
senior member of the IRA,
next to the coffin of
his brother, Ruby Davison,
who was in fact an informer.
So we have Gerry Adams carrying
the coffin of an informer,
Scappaticci who
was an informer,
and there's another
informer beyond the picture
who was responsible for
this murder in the first place.
It's sort of madness.
This is the British government
involved in
assassinating people.
It was as if they were sitting in
their parlors in Surrey, or in Kent,
playing war games
with our lives here.
Did the running and protection
of so many informants,
all with hidden motives,
spin out of control?
It was a question that haunted
the Loughinisland case,
and the way the murder weapon made its
way into the hands of the killers.
The weapon that was used in
Loughinisland was a VZ58.
It's a Czec made assault rifle.
It looks like
an AK47 people recognize,
and it's often called an AK47.
If that weapon was
used in Loughinisland,
how did it come
into the province?
To trace how the weapon
got into the hands
of the UVF gunmen,
you have to understand
the story of the arms race
between the Loyalist
paramilitaries and the IRA.
The IRA was
the first to smuggle in
powerful weapons from overseas.
They made a deal
with Gadaffi's Libya
to provide them enough
military ordnance
for two Infantry battalions,
including machine guns,
surface to air missiles
and Semtex explosives.
The IRA brought the campaign
to the British capital, London.
For a number of years the IRA
exploded bombs in the city
and all over England.
From subway stations
to financial markets.
One mortar attack nearly killed
the Prime Minister John Major.
The audacity of the attack
has shocked Londoners.
The van evidently stopped
for several minutes
just outside the Ministry
of Defence on Whitehall.
The British Parliament is only
a few hundred yards away.
The IRA had certainly
come to the conclusion
that a bomb in London was worth
ten bombs in Northern Ireland.
It was one of the best
strategies the IRA ever had,
because our opinion
in Northern Ireland
was the British
government believed
there was an acceptable
level of violence.
A policeman getting killed
in Northern Ireland,
a young Catholic
getting murdered,
a Protestant getting murdered,
a soldier getting murdered
didn't mean much
to English people.
They really didn't care,
to be honest.
You take the war to England
and you put them
under pressure,
and that's what they did
with the London bombings.
A few of those,
and other bombings later on.
The English campaign by the IRA
led to threats of escalation
by the Loyalists.
That raised questions about
whether the British government
tried hard enough
to stop the Loyalists
from getting bigger
and better weapons.
For Loyalist paramilitaries,
there was a strategic decision
to do what they call
return to serve.
So by attacking
the Catholic community
and by terrorizing
the Catholic community,
this was a way of
bringing the game,
as they saw it, to the IRA.
Thereby in their view,
putting pressure on the IRA
to stop their campaign.
And they needed weapons
to be able to do that.
As part of our investigation,
we found a document which
talked about an informant
who was reported to Special
Branch in the late 1980s.
He said that
Loyalist paramilitaries
were preparing to buy a
shipment of arms from overseas.
Did the British state
bring those weapons
into Northern Ireland?
Is that what you discovered?
No, I wouldn't go as far
as to say that.
Did the state know that weapons
for Loyalists were coming?
Did the state know?
The state, clearly from
what we've seen,
the state knew that
there were plans afoot
to bring weapons in.
By late 1987,
the British government was
watching the coastal waters.
Police knew that Loyalist gangs
had robbed a bank to buy a cache
of guns from South Africa.
In late December,
informants told
the military, and the police,
that the weapons were nearing
Northern Ireland,
hidden under floor tiles
in a container ship.
Then mysteriously, the government
lost track of the vessel
and the guns landed
somewhere near Belfast.
It was a shipment
that was large enough
to equip a small Army.
I mean, we are talking
about hundreds
of automatic weapons,
fragmentation grenades,
rocket launchers, handguns.
Tens of thousands
of ammunition.
We know from
the Ombudsman's report
that after the shipment
of weapons came in,
they were held at the farmhouse
of one James Mitchell.
Mitchell's farmhouse was
at the heart of
what became known
as the Glennane gang.
This Glennane gang
was comprised
of members of the UVF,
serving soldiers,
serving police officers.
From James Mitchell's
farmhouse,
the most appalling acts of
terrorism had been plotted,
going back at least to 1974.
Dublin Monaghan bombs, some
30, 33 people were killed.
They were turning up,
machine gunning
people going into bars,
posing as soldiers with
their uniforms at night
at check points and
gunning people down.
They were fearsome, fearsome.
And they were members
of the Security Forces.
At the farm,
the weapons were waiting
to be split three ways
between three Loyalist gangs,
one of which was the UVF.
On January 8th 1988,
three cars set out from Belfast
to pick up their shares.
One of the cars was
followed by police,
who had been tipped off
by a Loyalist informant.
The surveillance operation
lost sight of these men,
and, therefore,
were not able to
track them to
the location where
the entirety of the arms dump
was being stored.
But after they left that farm,
they were picked up,
two Ford Granadas,
which were laden down
with dozens of VZ58 rifles.
The suspects found driving
these two Ford Granadas,
had straw and muck
and manure on their boots,
so they knew that they had
been to a farm type area.
And the police intelligence knew
all about James Mitchell's farm,
but they don't go there.
I just wonder, "Hmm.
A farmhouse near here.
Now, I wonder, could that be
James Mitchell's farmhouse?"
The notion that that didn't
even occur to them
is beyond belief.
Especially because
very shortly after the arrest
of those Loyalists whose
cars were full of guns,
someone tipped off
James Mitchell
that the security forces
might soon be coming
to look at his farm.
And the rest of the guns
were moved very swiftly.
So you've got one half
of the state
trying to interdict this stuff,
and you've got another section
within the intelligence
gathering community
determined to
undermine that effort,
and they succeed in doing so.
It's an appalling story.
Really appalling story.
The UVF, they ended up with
the capability
they didn't have before.
The paintings appeared on walls
of the guys standing
with the VZ58s.
Guns got away,
and they were used in murders,
over 70 murders.
At least 70, seven zero people
were killed
by the rifles alone.
How many people were
killed by the bullets
and the fragmentation grenades,
and the rest of it...
we don't know.
An awful lot of people
died as a result
of those guns coming
into Northern Ireland.
One of those weapons left
the farm in Glennane
and would reach
its murderous conclusion
on the 18th of June, 1994,
in Loughinisland.
There is a ballistic
specific trail.
The serial number of the weapon
that was used in Loughinisland
falls specifically in
between two weapons
that were recovered after the
arms importation in January 1988.
Well, that's a great
encouraging start,
and certainly the team playing
as if they were among the
elite, and deservedly so.
- And camera maker.
So, about six months
after the massacre,
police had a significant
breakthrough
when they received
an anonymous call?
From what I understand,
the call was made to
a confidential reporting line
maintained by the RUC,
and basically, basically
wanted to pass information
as to the potential identities
of people involved
in the in shooting,
in the shooting
at Loughinisland,
and gave names
in relation to that.
And were those names
the same names of the suspects?
They're all relevant
names, yes. Oh, yeah.
And it wasn't too far later
when it was followed up
by a written anonymous letter
delivered to a local councilor,
that again articulated
the same information
and naming the same people
as being involved.
But you weren't
able to ascertain
whether the police knew who
this anonymous source was?
Yes, the police knew who
the source was, yeah.
And do you know how they knew?
Alex, you're taking me
into an area
I don't really want to go to,
because of the constraints
from which I operate under.
I mean, the police
had information
which they could have exploited
and in my view they didn't
do it particularly well.
I think that's all I'm
prepared to say at this stage.
How exactly were the police
able to identify
this anonymous caller,
given that it was anonymous?
I'm only, I'm only taking
a moment to think
about some of the potential
dangers in this line.
And I appreciate fully where
you want to go with this,
what you want to glean off it,
but I also am really, really
conscious of the potentials,
potential dangers behind it.
Because I can answer that,
but I know what your
next question's going to be,
and I'm going, at that point I
would shut you down completely,
because it's...
because I'd be asking the same
question being in your shoes.
Was there any other evidence,
or any other information
that came...
Of course, I wanted to know the
name of the anonymous caller,
and whether it was the same
person who'd written the letter.
But the investigators
weren't talking.
To protect witnesses, they were willing
to tell us the plot of the story,
but not the names
of the characters.
So the Ombudsman's
investigation
was a bewildering thicket
of letters and numbers
"Person A, Person M,
Police Officer 12."
Who were these people?
The answer came in the form
of another anonymous tip.
In 2011, someone upset by
the Loughinisland cover up,
leaked a document to
journalist Barry McCaffrey.
The leaked document
came through the post.
I still don't know to this day
what pricked somebody's
conscience to send it.
Maybe it was the fact that...
they knew we were
working on this story
and that the families
weren't getting the answers,
or hadn't been
given the answers.
The document was
an unpublished report
carried out by
the previous Ombudsman
into the Loughinisland
atrocity.
This report had preceded
Al Hutchinson's report.
It had been dated 2008.
The leaked report was a draft,
so it was unredacted.
It contained real names
and critical details
about the case that had
never been disclosed.
The text of the anonymous
letter was missing,
but the report revealed
the name of the man
to whom the letter was sent.
Patsy Toman, a local politician
who arrived at the Heights Bar
just after the shooting.
I got this letter
on Valentine's Day,
and I says maybe somebody's
sending me a Valentine card.
But as I read down it, I found
out that it was serious,
and very serious.
And it seemed to be...
I thought it was
a lady's writing,
the sort of writing.
"Dear Mr. Toman, I am writing
to advise you of certain facts
"that I think would be
of interest to you
"in your quest to cage
the Loughinisland murders.
"When I saw you on TV
after the inquest,
"I felt that I had to let someone
know what I was privy to.
"The men arrested
after the murder
"were indeed
close to the culprits.
The commander
of the operation..."
No, I'm sorry,
I'm not going to read it.
No, thanks.
Patsy had reason to be afraid.
Before the Loughinisland
massacre,
his house had been bombed
by Loyalist terrorists.
More than 20 years later,
he was still afraid to read
the section of the letter
that named the alleged killers.
All right?
Patsy had given the original
letter to the police,
who then lost it.
But Patsy kept a copy
and was willing to share it years
later with Barry McCaffrey.
"The gunman was
one Ronnie Hawthorn,
"a married man from Clough.
"Gunman two was Alan Taylor,
single from Dundrum.
"The driver of the getaway car
was Gorman McMullan,
"a convicted terrorist
from Belfast
"and a leading light
in the Belfast UVF.
"I was privy to this info,
because I was
"in the original planning
of the murders.
"I pulled out of the attack
due to a prior engagement
"that I couldn't cover up.
"The police indeed had
the boys in for questioning,
"but as a policeman told me,
'"We know who done it,
but we can't prove it.
"And without proof or
statements they'll go free.'
"Hawthorn and Taylor,
they took part in the attack
"on the Thierafurth pub
in Kilcoo a few years ago,
"and various other incidents
in the area.
"This information will
somehow ease my conscience,
"but will never fully
clear my name.
"But I do this for
the family and children
"of the men who were
slaughtered in Loughinisland.
Contributed, may we all
live in peace."
It turned out that
the people named as the killers
in the anonymous letter
were also key suspects
named in the leaked report.
Were these the same people
that Maguire had focused on
in his investigation?
We looked at both documents,
and by cross referencing
arrest dates,
were able to break the code and
put names to all the cyphers.
Person I was Gorman McMullan,
named by the letter
as the driver.
Person M was Alan Taylor,
named as the man
who held the door.
Person A, accused of being the
ringleader of the gang and the gunman,
was Ronald Hawthorn.
The leaked document
revealed something else.
The author of
the anonymous letter
and the person who made
the anonymous phone call
were one and the same.
Hillary Hawthorn,
the wife of Ronnie Hawthorn.
We don't know what
Hillary Hawthorn looks like.
There are no images of her
or Ronnie Hawthorn online.
We found an article about Ronnie's
arrest for the photo montage.
We found Ronnie and Hillary's
marriage certificate.
They were married in a
Presbyterian church in Clough,
a few miles from Loughinisland,
ten years before the killing.
He was 24, she was 18.
Did she know then what kind
of man she was marrying?
We also know that Hillary
was close to local police.
A Detective told me
she had actually worked
in the canteen of
the Newcastle Police Station.
That's how they
recognized her voice
when she made
the anonymous call.
Brought in for questioning,
Hillary Hawthorn admitted
writing the letter.
Area police said she did it to punish
her husband for cheating on her.
What's hard to understand
is why she was never
charged with a crime.
She was indeed arrested,
but we don't know what
she said in the interviews,
because police fortuitously
destroyed those notes
and we don't know why
she wasn't charged.
But the line in this letter
that states,
"I was privy
to this information,
because I was in the original
planning of the murders."
How this one person
was not charged
before the court
with conspiracy to murder,
and who knows what
the author of this letter
would have wanted to do
in terms of perhaps even
turning states evidence.
We don't know,
because she wasn't charged.
The question of why
leads to the man who
interrogated Hillary Hawthorn,
Police Officer 4, Detective
Inspector Albert Carroll.
It turns out he was the Deputy
SIO in charge of Loughinisland,
but left on vacation
the day after the killing.
He had also been involved in three
other murder investigations
regarding the Hawthorne gang.
He retired in 2011.
Barry McCaffrey
went looking for him.
Where did you find
Albert Carroll?
In a small village in France.
It took a long time to
convince him to even meet us.
We had met him
in a little hotel.
Mr. Carroll, he couldn't
explain to us
why he hadn't charged
Hillary with conspiracy.
I got the distinct
impression that
Mr. Carroll wanted to know
more what we knew about him
than what he was going to
tell us about Loughinisland.
Did you show Albert Carroll
the leaked report
in which he was named?
Yes.
What was his reaction
when he saw how much
you knew about his role?
He shit himself.
Yes.
He was very defensive...
Yes, yeah.
Yeah, he was very
defensive and edgy.
Carroll was keeping secrets,
but he did reveal a new detail.
When Hillary was arrested,
Ronnie was there.
Ronnie knew about the letter
and why it was written.
But instead of
charging Hillary,
or using her to get to Ronnie,
Carroll let her go
with a vague promise
that she would help make sure
that her husband
wouldn't kill in the future.
What do you suspect
is the reason
Hillary was never charged?
I suspect
that the author of this letter
wasn't charged to ensure
that the police's wider
intelligence agenda
was not disrupted.
There was a kind of culture
of picture building.
The requirement for
intelligence gathering was
more strategic than it was
to serve the criminal
justice system.
And the intelligence tail
began to wag the dog.
That issue hung over the case.
Was intelligence
and protecting informants
more important
than solving the crime?
And just before the killing,
what did the police know
and when did they know it?
So two, maybe three
months after the murders,
on one particular night,
late into the night,
half past 10:00,
11 o'clock,
I was at a country bar,
which would have been
about ten or 15 miles
away from Loughinisland.
And two detectives came in,
my colleagues.
They had just been to
a meeting in Armagh,
which is where senior Detective Chief
Superintendent would have been.
And in the conversation
with one of them,
out of ear shot
of everybody else,
what was told to me is that
there was a phone call
made at half past 6:00 on
the evening of the shooting,
and that the shooting
had been called off.
A phone call had been
made by an informant
at half past 6:00
saying the shooting
had been called off,
because the car was unreliable.
We know that
the killing wasn't called off,
but did Special Branch
know before the murder
that there was a plan,
and that the killers were
having problems with their car?
According to the letter,
Person A was Ronnie Hawthorn,
the gunman.
Person I was McMullan,
the driver.
Person M was Alan Taylor,
the man who held the door.
An informer told police
that the three of them were on
Main Street in Newcastle?
Yeah.
"At tea-time on
the 18th of June 1994,
"a phone call was made
to Frenchie's Bar,
"either by Person A
or Person M,
asking to speak to
Person B urgently."
How did
Special Branch know that?
I can't tell you that.
I know how they
get to know that,
but I can't tell you that,
I'm sorry.
It's perfectly legitimate
how they know that.
Was there a bug on the phone?
It's not.
Well, was one of the people
involved an informer?
All I will tell you is that
we have seen
intelligence that says
one of the legitimate
suspects in the investigation
was a police informer
and continued to be
for some time afterwards.
And it could be more than one,
or at least one?
At least one.
I mean, we have
specifically identified one
uh, within the suspect
group that
for our investigation
purposes was relevant.
But there certainly could be
more than one within that,
but we are only
concerned with one.
By and large on the ground,
people wanted to solve crime
and catch criminals.
But in Loughinisland,
informants were involved,
and that's where
the lines become blurry.
Had the event ran its course
without any informant,
it was just
a straightforward murder
that nothing could be done
about, nobody knew about it.
But then when something could
have intervened and it doesn't,
that raises a lot of questions.
Special Branch had intelligence
on these individuals
prior to the attack
and then the getaway car
was found
a short distance from
the family home
of Man A, Ronnie Hawthorn.
But police never searched
the Hawthorns' family home.
It has never been searched.
Another critical
piece of information
we found disturbing was that
individuals who were
arrested in August,
at the back end of August,
were warned the night before
that they were
going to be arrested.
And subsequently to that,
we learned that the police
then had further information
that the individual
who warned them
had been a police officer,
and that was hugely concerning.
Of the four suspects warned,
the most significant was
Person A, Ronnie Hawthorn.
Prior to Loughinisland,
he had been charged in
connection with one murder
and implicated in
a string of others.
In the case of the massacre,
he was named the day
after as a likely suspect,
and the getaway car was
found within walking distance
from his family home.
Yet the police
waited two months
before Hawthorn was finally
brought in for questioning.
We interviewed Hawthorn, yeah.
He'd been arrested early hours,
probably five, six o'clock
in the morning.
Did Hawthorn himself seem to
be smug in the interview?
I mean, was he,
you know, pretty relaxed?
He wasn't stressed,
that's for sure.
In my mind
he was just a terrorist.
Just a hateful...
a hating...
uh, bigot you know,
Killing a Catholic to him
was like wiping his shoe,
a fly off his shoe.
That's what he was to me.
And if I'd have got in his way,
I've no doubt he'd
have shot me, too.
Inside the police station,
the interrogation was
more than a little strange.
The actual questioning
about Loughinisland
only lasted for
about ten minutes.
This was a kind of a charade,
it was like I have to talk
to you about something,
but we're just pretending here?
"We have to be here for two
hours, let's have a chat.
"Okay? We have to
be here for two hours.
You killed these people,
you were the gunman."
"No, I wasn't."
"All right.
"You know, we're not going
to get anywhere here.
"You're not going to admit it.
That's fine,
let's have a chat."
Then the conversation
turned away from
interrogating Hawthorn,
to encouraging him
to commit a murder.
To kill an IRA gunman who posed
a threat to the Detective.
So this Detective
spent most of the time
telling Hawthorn that if he doesn't
kill this Catholic gunman soon,
this Catholic gunman
is going to get him.
So you're telling the cat
kill the mouse
before the mouse gets you,
because I'm shit scared
of the mouse killing me.
If that makes sense.
So he was telling Hawthorn,
"You better get
this Catholic gunman."
"Because he's going
to get you."
But why is he doing that?
Because I'm petrified that
guy's coming for me.
And then Hawthorn was released
from Armagh, Gough Barracks,
probably about
six o'clock the next night.
It was just disgusting, it was.
Five years later,
Hawthorn was arrested again.
DNA testing on the hair
found in the duffle bag
revealed a match
to Hawthorn's family.
But within a day
he was released
due to insufficient evidence.
I never wanted to believe
there was collusion
in any of the murders I was at.
But Loughinisland, you'd have to
say someone was being protected.
And the truth is being
withheld from the families.
There was no drive at all
to solve a murder.
Hope for the families arrived
with a notice that
the Ombudsman was nearing
the end of his investigation.
In the spring of 2016,
I traveled back to
Loughinisland for the moment
in a private meeting with
the victims' families
when Maguire would reveal
what he had discovered.
What do you think
the outcome of this will be?
I don't know, I'm nearly
afraid to think about it.
I don't want to think
about it either.
It couldn't be any worse
than the last one,
but you can't hold out
much hope.
No.
We have been let down
so many times,
we don't want to be getting
our hopes up again.
No, but...
It's hard to believe
that after all this time
they might eventually
admit the truth.
Hopefully.
My grandchildren
are now starting to ask,
"What happened to Grandad?
Did anybody go to jail?
Was anybody punished?"
Because children are taught
from no height
if you do wrong
you'll be punished.
Should you be sent to
your room or, you know,
you won't get any
sweets or whatever.
You must learn to...
Get your
Play Station taken off you.
Your Play Station, whatever.
So...
So, I need answers for him.
Okay, ready to go?
Well, good afternoon.
Good afternoon.
Um...
Today has been the day
that we have been waiting for.
It's been a long journey,
longer than it should
have been, I think,
and I'm certainly
aware of people
that would like
to have been here,
but can't through
the passage of time,
and my sympathies
to those families.
Thank you for sticking with
me as we inch closer
to the publication
of this report.
I appreciate your patience,
even though I
recognize that at times
we didn't deserve it.
But I am grateful for the fact
that you've worked with me
while we have inched towards the
publication of this document.
I'm going to
tell you my conclusion,
and then I'm going to tell you
how I arrived
at that conclusion
based on the information
that we have received.
When I looked
at all the information,
which I will spell out
this afternoon,
I have no hesitation
in saying that collusion
was a significant element
in relation to the killings
in Loughinisland.
The report is divided
into three areas.
The arms importation in 1987,
the events prior to
the attack on Loughinisland,
the investigation into the...
This is 22 years
that these families
have waited patiently,
with dignity, they have
campaigned ferociously.
Everybody knows
the pain and trauma
that you have gone through.
And I think that the memory
of your loved ones
has had dignity
restored to them.
That's all we ever wanted was
somebody to tell us the truth.
Every single person
in this room,
all we wanted was the truth
of what happened.
It's just hard to take in.
There's parts of it that
you have to kind of park up,
because I couldn't
take it all in.
Sorry.
This report is one of the
most damning expositions
of state collusion
in mass murder
that has ever been published.
We had the truth today,
22 years on.
Now it's time for justice
and accountability.
We all deserve
and demand justice
from the British government
who are ultimately responsible.
This was
the tip of the iceberg,
but there's still two thirds
of it buried below.
The publication of the report,
it caused ripples,
that it has impinged on
a lot of other cases
and a lot of people hopefully
will have gained
a wee bit of hope
that they may get answers
somewhere along the line,
and just keep
hammering away at it.
It's 160 pages.
If you remember the last
report in 2011 was 63 pages,
and of substance
was probably about 55.
So there is an immense
amount of detail in this that.
The finding of collusion was
a victory for the families.
But there were many details
that were not revealed to them.
Details that I had uncovered.
The names of
the alleged killers,
the contents of the letter,
the strange role played by
the suspected gunman's wife.
Then there was the question
of why the police
still refused to charge anyone.
That was linked to the mystery
that still haunted the case.
Who was the informant?
There needs to
be accountability.
Dr. Maguire has more
information to brief us with,
so what he has told us already are
the headlines and they are...
There are other
incidents and murders
that are referred to
in the report,
and I have been approached
by some of those families,
one of whom were the family
of Martin Lavery,
who was murdered on the
20th of December, 1992.
We know from the report
that four people were
responsible for his murder.
Persons A, M, K and person I.
The Lavery family,
quite correctly,
felt that there were questions
that they had that they
deserved answers to.
Through a process
of legal disclosure
at a meeting with people
in a position to know,
Mr. Lavery's family
asked quite pointedly
were any of the people involved
in the murder of Martin
an informant?
We were told that at
the time of Martin's murder,
none of them were informants.
However, one of those
individuals was an informer
at the time of
the Loughinisland atrocity.
Knowing that it was
one of four people,
I approached the source with access
to the Special Branch files.
Nervous,
he wouldn't say a name,
but he confirmed that
one of the gang that night
was working for the British
state as an informant
when Person A,
Ronnie Hawthorne,
reportedly emptied his weapon
into a bar full of people
watching the World Cup.
One of the things we learned,
it's not in the Maguire report,
is that among the gang
that killed your husband,
there was at least
one informant.
Had you heard that?
No.
Does that surprise you?
Not really.
Nothing surprises me anymore.
Um...
I suppose it's news to me,
but it doesn't.
No, nothing surprises me.
I just have no idea
just how absolutely rotten
this whole system was.
There's a shot and
it's a goal for Ireland.
I told the families
what I had learned
about the massacre
that went beyond
the Maguire report.
The names of the suspects,
and my suspicions that they
were still being protected
by some part of
the British government.
The person named as the
second gunman, Alan Taylor,
left Northern Ireland
in the late '90s,
and was last seen in England.
Gorman McMullan, the man
named as the driver of the car,
lives in Belfast.
A member of H and W
Welders Club,
he regularly turns out
for parades
celebrating the UVF,
and pops up on social media
in sex club websites.
If you drive four miles
from Loughinisland,
you can find a country road
scattered with lovely houses,
where Person A,
Ronnie Hawthorn, lives.
He is still together
with his wife Hillary,
who named him as the gunman.
When calls and letters
failed to get a response,
we hired a private eye
to see if we could find out
what they looked like.
This photo is
the two of them at work.
They own a small company
that cleans offices,
and for firms overrun by pests,
offers extermination services.
Then...
It kind of makes
me look over my shoulder
that I could be meeting these
people in the course of my work,
or going to the shop.
I may not know
what they look like,
but they'll know me.
And that makes me a little,
if not a lot...
more anxious
than I'd ever been.
It's hard to understand why,
more than 20 years
after the crime,
when so much is known
about the suspects,
that they can't be prosecuted.
Of course, even if convicted,
they would only
serve two years.
In order to bring peace
to Northern Ireland,
that was the deal made under
the Good Friday Agreement,
for every murder involved
with the Troubles.
For those who
have killed these people,
you are going to be
caught sooner or later.
The RUC never give up.
And you will be caught and you
will spend long years in prison.
Thank you very much.
The government were
trying to use us as pawns
to try and bring peace
to Northern Ireland.
Protecting informers was
much more important
than bringing
the people to justice
who carried out this atrocity.
It seems as if hands are tied.
That...
What do you mean?
I think it goes higher up.
I really do believe that.
We believe that
it goes as far up,
right to the top.
What has the state got out of
turning a blind eye
to this murderous activity?
It's very hard to come up
with an answer.
It would have to be
pretty damn good.
I can't imagine
what it might be.
In fact,
I'd go so far as to say
the reward couldn't
possibly ever
match the consequence
of those deaths.
The reason
Loughinisland is important,
is because it's another insight
into the kind of compromises
that we as a state made
on moral and legal standards.
Every democracy has to
make those compromises.
We, I think, made, uh...
more compromises
than a lot of us
have been aware of,
as more of the picture of
the hidden past is revealed.
Year after year,
the past is set aside
to make room for the future.
But for families of victims,
that's hard to accept.
They need to dig back
and reckon with
what happened and why.
Surrounded by
mountains of records
with many of the answers,
government officials
decide each day
what they think
is good to remember,
and what is better to forget.