These boys will cut your throat if you so much as look at them the wrong way, no matter what your skin colour mate, are these guys really stand up citizens? They would sell rat poison coke to your ten year old kid
Some of this "heroes" great deeds
Hugh Leonard Thompson Murphy, best known as
Lenny Murphy (2 March 1952 – 16 November 1982), was an
Ulster loyalist gang leader believed responsible for ordering the
Shankill Butchers murders, most of which occurred while he was in jail. Due to a lack of evidence to try him for the killings, which his followers had already received long sentences for, Murphy was released in 1982 and returned to the Shankhill Road, where he embarked on a murder spree. Details on Murphy's movements were apparently passed by Ulster loyalist paramilitaries
[1] to the
Provisional IRA, who executed Murphy.
William Moore (who had confessed to detectives soon after being arrested) was portrayed in subsequent police accounts as having been in effective control of the Butchers gang during Murphy's incarceration. However a 2017 book on the UVF asserted that John, an older brother of Murphy who escaped prosecution, had been directing the activities of the Butchers during that time. John Murphy died in a car crash during the 1990s.
The gang shot dead four Catholics (two men and two women) during a robbery at a warehouse in October 1975. Over the next few months, the gang began abducting, torturing and murdering random Catholic men they dragged off the streets late at night. Murphy regarded the use of a blade as the "ultimate way to kill", ending the torture by hacking each victim's throat open with a butcher's knife. By February 1976 the gang had killed three Catholic men in this manner. Murphy achieved status through his paramilitary activity and was widely known in the Shankill. Many regarded his crimes as shaming the community but feared the consequences of testifying against him.
[13][14] None of the victims had any connection to the IRA, and there was suspicion among some of their families that the murders were not properly investigated because those being killed were Catholics.
[13]
The Butchers were also involved in the murder of Noel Shaw, a loyalist from a rival UVF unit, who had shot dead Butcher gang-member Archie Waller in Downing Street, off the Shankill Road, in November 1975. Four days before his death, Waller had been involved in the abduction and murder of the Butchers' first victim, Francis Crossen. One day after Waller's death, Shaw was beaten and pistol-whipped by Murphy while strapped to a chair, then shot. His body was later dumped in a back street off the Shankill.
[15]
By the end of 1975, the UVF Brigade Staff had a new leadership of "moderates", but Murphy refused to submit to their authority, preferring to carry out attacks by his own methods. Dillon suggested that whilst some of the Brigade Staff knew about Murphy's activities (albeit not the precise details), they were too frightened of him and his gang to put a stop to them.
[16] On 10 January 1976, Murphy and Moore killed a Catholic man, Edward McQuaid (25), on the Cliftonville Road. Murphy, alighting from Moore's taxi in the small hours, shot the man six times at close range
On completing his sentence for the firearms charge, Lenny Murphy walked out of the
Maze Prison on Friday, 16 July 1982. During his term inside, his wife Margaret had initiated divorce proceedings which were being finalised at the time of his death. Murphy returned to his old ways, killing at least four more people over the next four months. He beat to death a partially disabled man one day after returning to the Shankill. Another victim sold him a car and was shot dead after demanding full payment.
[17] Murphy also attempted to extort money from local businessmen who had been sympathetic in the past; however, this encroached on other loyalist paramilitaries with established
protection rackets.
[18]
Early on 11 March 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 for a prolonged period. However, he was able to
plea bargain whereby he was allowed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of a firearms offence, and received twelve years' imprisonment on 11 October 1977. Dillon notes that the police believed Murphy was involved in the Shankill Butcher murders. To divert suspicion from himself Murphy ordered the rest of the gang to continue the cut-throat murders while he was in prison. The Butchers, now under the operational command of William Moore, went on to kill and mutilate at least three more Catholics.
The team of
Criminal Investigation Department (CID) detectives investigating the murders was led by Detective Chief Inspector
Nesbitt who headed C Division based at Tennent Street off the Shankill Road. However the police were overworked during this period and little progress was made in the investigation until one victim, Gerard McLaverty, survived his assault. Detectives were driving him down the Shankill Road on the way to the scene of his abduction when he recognised two of his assailants walking in the street. This identification of Sam McAllister and Benjamin Edwards led to the arrest of much of the gang in May 1977 and, in February 1979, they were imprisoned for long periods. Confessions of gang members had named Murphy as the leader but statements incriminating him were later retracted. He was questioned once again about the Butcher murders but denied involvement. The total of sentences handed down to the gang at Belfast
Crown Court was the longest in legal history in the UK.
In late August 1982, Murphy killed a part-time
Ulster Defence Regiment soldier from the lower Shankill area who was closely involved with the UVF in
Ballymena and was allegedly an informer. The man's body was not discovered for almost a year.
[19][20] In mid-October, Murphy and several associates kidnapped a Catholic man who was then tortured and beaten to death in Murphy's own house (temporally vacated due to renovations). Murphy, who had left the house strewn with the victim's blood and teeth, was arrested for questioning the next morning but later released. The sadism of the widely publicised killing led to loyalism receiving a great deal of bad publicity, and leading UVF figures concluded that Murphy's horrific methods had made him too much of a liability.
[8]
On 16 November 1982, Murphy had just pulled up outside the rear of his girlfriend's house on the Forthriver Road area of Glencairn, a part of the Greater Shankill Area, when two
Provisional IRA gunmen emerged from a black van nearby and opened fire with an assault rifle and a 9 mm pistol. Murphy was hit by more than twenty rounds and died instantly.
[21]He was gunned down just around the corner from where the bodies of many of the Butchers' victims had been dumped. A few days after his death the IRA claimed responsibility. According to
RUC reports, the UVF had 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 UDA leader
James Craig,
[18] who saw Murphy as a serious threat to his widespread racketeering and provided the IRA with key information on Murphy's movements. Craig was known to meet IRA commanders to discuss their racketeering activities – he was later killed by his comrades for "treason".
[22]
Murphy was given a large paramilitary funeral by the UVF with a guard of honour wearing the UVF uniform and balaclavas. A volley of three shots was fired over his coffin as it was brought out of his house and a piper played "Abide With Me". He was buried in Carnmoney Cemetery; on his tombstone the following words were inscribed: "Here Lies a Soldier".
[23]The tombstone was smashed in 1989.
[24] His photograph was displayed inside "The Eagle", the UVF Brigade Staff's headquarters over a chip shop in the Shankill Road. According to investigative journalist Paul Larkin, it graced the walls as a "fallen officer" up until the late 1990s.
[25]
