The communities of Greysteel and Faughanvale will gather tonight for a special memorial service to remember those who died in the Rising Sun massacre which took place 20 years ago today.
Youngest victim Karen Thompson.
Seven men and women died when UFF gunmen opened fire in the Greysteel bar on 30 October 1993. An eighth man died six months later from wounds sustained in the attack.
An anniversary Mass will be held tonight in the Star of the Sea Church in nearby Faughanvale followed by an inter-denominational service at the Rising Sun Bar during which families of those who lost loved ones in the tragedy are expected to lay wreaths.
Survivors and families of those killed will be joined by those who attended to the dead and dying on the night of the shootings, regarded as a watershed of the Northern Ireland troubles as within a year the IRA and a number of loyalist paramilitary groups announced ceasefires.
The UFF (Ulster Freedom Fighters) said they carried out the killings in retaliation for the IRA bombing on the Shankhill Road in Belfast a week earlier. A number of relatives of those killed in that atrocity will also attend tonight’s memorial service.
On the night of the Rising Sun killings, patrons in the pub were in jovial mood as they waited for a country and western band to come on stage when two men dressed in boiler suits and balaclavas entered the pub.
One shouted “Trick or Treat” and as one struggled with a jammed pistol, the other walked through the premises, firing an AK-47 rifle.
By the time it was over 45 shots had been fired, seven people lay dead and a further 19 injured in a scene of bloody horror.
The massacre was in revenge for the IRA bombing of a fishmonger’s on Belfast’s Shankill Road a week earlier, which left nine Protestants dead. It brought to 23 the number of people murdered in possibly the North’s grimmest week as loyalist gunmen went on a killing spree in revenge for the Shankhill bomb.
Those killed in the Rising Sun were 19-year-old Karen Thompson, from Limavady, who died alongside her 20-year-old boyfriend Steve Mullan, from Greysteel; Joseph McDermott (60), from Greysteel and 81-year-old James Moore whose son owned the bar. The father-of-five was ordering a drink when he was gunned down.
John Moyne, (50), meanwhile, pushed his wife to the floor and died protecting her and 54-year-old John Burns was shot as he walked to the bathroom.
The Protestant father of three children – a 14-year-old daughter and sons aged 16 and 19 – was a former member of the UDR and lived in Eglinton. His wife was badly injured in the atrocity.
The seventh person killed was 59-year-old Moira Duddy, who came from Greysteel. Married with six children she was sitting with her husband and two friends but was the only person hit by gunfire.
A retired farmer and former member of the B Specials in Claudy was the eighth Greysteel victim – Samuel Montgomery dropped dead six months after being wounded. Blood clots resulting from his injuries had moved to the 76-year-old’s heart and lungs.
Within two weeks of the killings, four men were arrested and brought before Limavady Magistrates Court charged with the murders. Stephen Irwin, Torrens Knight, Jeffrey Deeney and Brian McNeill were jailed for life in February 1995.
Graphic details of the murders emerged at the men’s sentencings.
The court heard Irwin, armed with an AK47 rifle, was first in to the pub. As customers prepared for a Hallowe’en dance, he shouted ”trick or treat,” then opened fire on a group of women out on a hen night.
Deeney followed to give Irwin cover but his gun jammed after he fired just one shot — otherwise the death toll could have been far higher.
Knight, armed with a double-barrelled shotgun, stood guard outside, and McNeill was the getaway driver.
The court was told that after the shootings McNeill drove Irwin and Deeney away in his own Skoda car. Knight drove off in an Opel Kadette which he unsuccessfully tried to burn, before meeting the other three.
Within an hour of the shootings McNeill, a prime suspect, was under arrest. RUC Chief Constable Sir Hugh Annesley said that was critical to the overall police investigation, which at one stage involved 50 detectives.
One was the head of Special Branch in that region, Detective Chief Superintendent Maurice Neely, who was among 25 key police and military intelligence officers who later died in the Chinook helicopter disaster on the Mull of Kintyre.
Irwin, Knight and Deeney, all hardened members of a unit which the UFF considered its number one outside Belfast, were questioned and eventually charged along with Irwin after what RUC Chief Constable Hugh Ainsley described was as ”an outstanding piece of investigation”.
The four men pleaded not guilty to all charges when the trial opened on but changed their pleas three days later.
Passing sentencing, Lord Justice Carswell said if the four had contested the charges and been found guilty, he would unhesitatingly have made a recommendation of a minimum period of time they should serve in jail.
The four were also given sentences ranging from 16 to 20 years for attempted murder.
Knight, a roofer from Macosquin, near Coleraine, was also given four separate life sentences for his part in a UFF attack seven months earlier in which four Catholic workmen, including an IRA man, were shot dead in Castlerock, Co. Derry.
Deeney, Irwin and McNeill, a shirt-cutter, all lived close to each other in the Waterside area of Derry.
A fifth man, Derek Grieve (35), from Derry, who admitted conspiring to pervert the course of justice by providing Knight with a false alibi on the night of the attack, was given a two-year suspended sentence.
All four have since been released from prison.
Earlier this month Knight said the attack “should never have happened.” But his apology has been dismissed by SDLP MLA John Dallat who said it was “far too little, far too late.”
Knight, who was 24 at the time, was subsequently given 12 life sentences for his role in the murders and those of four Catholic workmen in Castlerock in March 1993. He was returned to jail after being found guilty of assaulting two sisters in a bar in Coleraine. He was released again on 6 August, 2010.
Now 44, Knight claims he deeply regrets his involvement in the Greysteel killings.
He said: “I’m sorry. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families. The victims are the ones who have to carry on with life and they are still paying the price. That’s how I feel. It shouldn’t have happened, it was a terrible thing. I wish all the atrocities didn’t happen.”
However, Mr Dallat said if Knight was “truly sorry” he would reveal all the names of those involved who have never been brought to justice.
Mr Dallat added: “In every part of the world people have demanded the truth of what happened to their loved ones. It has happened a number of times throughout history and the people of Northern Ireland deserve to find out the truth. It doesn’t matter who was involved, the truth deserves to be told.”
Tags:
