Lenny Murphy

Hugh Leonard Thompson Murphy, who commonly went by the name Lenny Murphy (March 2, 1952 - November 16, 1982), a loyalist paramilitary from Belfast, Northern Ireland, was a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and leader of the notorious Shankill Butchers. Although never convicted of murder, Murphy is known to have killed numbers of people through his own actions, and to have ordered the deaths of many more.

Early life

Lenny Murphy was the youngest of three sons of Joyce and William Murphy from the loyalist Shankill Road, Belfast. While the family moved house several times, in 1957 they returned to Percy St in the lower Shankill, not far from the Falls area, where they settled. A hoodlum at school (Argyle Primary), where he was known for the use of a knife and had his elder brothers to back him up, Murphy logged his first conviction at the age of twelve for theft. After leaving the Model Boys school at sixteen, he joined the UVF.

Murphy had a fanatical hatred of Roman Catholics. It has been suggested that Murphy's visceral loathing of Catholics may have stemmed from his own family being suspected of having recent Catholic ancestry, because of his traditionally Irish surname which is often associated with Catholics.

First crimes

In his book "The Shankill Butchers", Belfast journalist Martin Dillon suggests, but has no direct evidence, that Murphy was involved in the torture and murder of four Catholic men as early as 1972. However, on September 28, 1972, a man named William Pavis was shot dead at his home by loyalists because he was alleged to have sold firearms to the IRA. Murphy was arrested for this crime along with an accomplice, Mervyn Connor.

During pre-trial investigations, Murphy was placed in a line-up for possible identification by witnesses to Pavis' shooting. Before the process began formally, he created a disturbance and stepped out of the line-up. With his knowledge of police procedure, garnered though attending trials at Belfast Crown Court, it is likely that Murphy was trying to "muddy the waters" as regards identification. However, two witnesses picked him out when order was restored.

Connor and Murphy were held in prison together but, in April 1973, before the trial, Connor died after ingesting cyanide in his cell. He had written a suicide note in which he confessed to the crime and exonerated Murphy, who had forced Connor to write the note before being forcibly fed the cyanide. Murphy was sent to trial for the murder of Pavis. Although two witnesses identified him as the gunman, he was acquitted on the basis that their evidence may have been affected by Murphy's antics during the police line-up inquiry. The court's decision was to have deadly consequences for many innocent people at a later date. For now, though, Murphy was back in custodyfollowing a re-arrest for attempted escapes.

By May 1975 Murphy, now twenty-three, was back on the streets of Belfast. He was married with a daughter (he was to father six children in all) but spent much of his time drinking in Shankill bars. At that time he was living in Brookmount Street, towards the top of the middle Shankill (heading out of town). With his brother William he soon formed a violent gang of more than twenty men that would become known as the Shankill Butchers, one of his lieutenants being William Moore.

The gang is believed to have killed four Catholics during a robbery in October 1975. Over the next few months Murphy and his willing accomplices began to abduct, torture and murder random Catholics they dragged off the streets late at night, Murphy hacking each victim's throats open with a butcher's knife. They killed three Catholic men in this manner.Dillon, "Shankill Butchers", pp 66-69, 115-31] None of the victims had any connection to the IRA or any other republican group.

The Butchers were also involved in the murder of Noel Shaw, a loyalist from a rival UVF unit, who had shot dead Butcher gang-member Archie Waller in Downing Street, off the Shankill Road, in November 1975. Four days before his death, Waller had been involved in the abduction and murder of the Butchers' first cut-throat victim, Francis Crossan.Jordan, "Milestones in Murder" (centre pages with image of Shaw's body in basket)]

Shaw's kangaroo-court sentence, one day after Waller's death, consisted of a vicious beating and pistol-whipping by Murphy while the accused was strapped to a chair in full view of the Butcher gang, followed by a hail of bullets from Murphy. His body was later dumped in a back street off the Shankill.

The manner in which he tortured and killed his victims by a slow painful death, which included jumping on the bodies after they were dead, was frightening even in a society accustomed to extreme violence.

On January 10, 1976, Murphy and Moore killed a Catholic man, Edward McQuaid (25), on the Cliftonville Road. Murphy, alighting from Moore's taxi in the small hours, shot the man six times at close range.

Imprisonment

On March 13, 1976, Murphy shot and injured a young Catholic woman, once again on the Cliftonville. Arrested the next day after attempting to retrieve the gun used, Murphy was charged with attempted murder and remanded in custody. However, he was able to plea bargain whereby he was allowed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of a firearms offence, and received twelve years' imprisonment on October 11, 1976. The police believed Murphy was involved in the Shankill Butcher murders; after his conviction, therefore, he relayed orders from prison through his brothers, to divert suspicion: the rest of the gang was to continue their cut-throat murders.

The Butchers, now under the operational command of William Moore, went on to kill and mutilate at least three more Catholics before they were arrested in May 1977 and, in February 1979, imprisoned for long periods. Many confessed to their crimes; however, although they named Murphy as the godfather, they retracted those parts of their statements in fear of Murphy and his brothers. Murphy was questioned once again about the Butcher murders but refused to co-operate.

The total of sentences handed down to the gang at Belfast Crown Court was the longest in British criminal history.

Death

On completing his sentence for the firearms charge, Lenny Murphy walked out of the Maze prison on July 16, 1982. During his term inside, he had kept his head down and acted as a model prisoner to ensure he was freed as early as possible.

After his release, Murphy killed at least three more people over the next six months, including a partly-disabled man beaten to death the day after Murphy's return to the Shankill.

On November 16, 1982, Murphy had just pulled up outside the rear of his girlfriend's house in the Glencairn area of the upper Shankill when two Provisional IRA gunmen emerged from a black van nearby and opened fire with an assault rifle and a 9-mm pistol. Murphy (now aged 30) was hit with more than twenty rounds and died instantly at the scene. Coincidentally, he was gunned down just around the corner from where the bodies of many of the Butchers' cut-throat victims had been dumped. A few days after his death, the IRA claimed responsibility, and according to RUC reports, the UVF provided the IRA hit team with the details of Murphy's habits and movements, which allowed them to assassinate him at that particular location. Another line of inquiry ends at UFF commander James Craig, who saw Murphy as a serious threat to his widespread racketeering and provided the IRA with key information on Murphy's movements. Craig was later executed by his comrades for "treason". Dillon, pp 312-16]

Murphy was given a paramilitary send-off by the UVF and thousands of loyalists attended his funeral.

References

* "The Shankill Butchers"', Martin Dillon, 1989 ISBN 0-415-92231-3
* [http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/terrorists/shankill_butchers/index.html Crime Library's "Through a Veil of Blood and Tears" article]