The naked body of Derry man Gerard Hampson was found in 2008. Police treating his death as murder
Gerard Hampson of Northland Road in the city disappeared at the end of November 2007 and after a search his naked body was found on January 9 2008.
At Friday’s hearing a niece of the dead man recounted the last time she saw her uncle.
Mary Hampson said her uncle called to her home and she said he was “very on edge” and “very distracted”
The Belfast Telegraph reports that she said there was another man waiting in a car who didn’t come in.
When she asked him was he okay he said he wasn’t and added there were “boys (from Derry) looking for him” and he didn’t know where to go.
Her uncle – known as ‘Shorty’ – seemed to be “in real fear”, she said, and talked about going
“over the hill’ which she took to mean over the Glenshane Pass.
She told her uncle he could stay with her but he said he didn’t want to “bring these boys to your door” as he didn’t know what they were capable of.
As her uncle was leaving Mary Hampson said she held his arm and said “Gerard stay here” but he left and that was the last time she saw him alive.
She told Coroner Joe McCrisken she said she did not believe it was suicide.
The Coroner said he did not believe it was suicide and this would be reflected in his findings which will be delivered next week.
Earlier in the inquest, the Coroner heard that ‘Shorey’ Hampson had been deliberately drowned.
A pathologist who carried out a post mortem examination said a possible cause of death was drowning and “there must be considerable suspicion around his death.”
At the time he went missing the 53-year-old was wanted for questioning in connection with a double abduction in Co Westmeath and a shooting in Derry in 2007.
Marvin Canning, a brother-in-law of the late Sinn Féin deputy first minister Martin McGuinness, was charged in connection with the episode but the prosecution was later dropped.
Mr Hampson was a former republican prisoner who served a sentence for IRA activities and was connected to the anti-agreement 32-County Sovereignty Movement.
In one statement provided to police by a individual known only as Witness Y it was claimed he had been told that Mr Hampson had been drowned.
The witness identified three men they believed were involved in Mr Hampson’s death.
Two are now understood to be dead with one having taken his own life in 2010.
Witness Y confirmed to police they had met with Mr Hampson before he went missing and claimed that another person, known only as Witness X, had later “more or less” said while drinking that Mr Hampson had been drowned.
Witness Y later went on to say that Witness X, while “seriously drunk”, had claimed “it wasn’t easy to do, or something, or it wasn’t easy done, or hard to do or something, ‘holding that man under the water’ – that was the words that was said”.
“Again I thought drink talking, I honestly thought. I though he was talking rubbish,” Witness Y said in his statement.
Witness Y also told police in a 2015 statement that, while visiting the grave of the person who had taken his own life in 2010, that Witness X had also claimed “that man’s dead and buried and the secret’s away with him”.
During the hearing both Witness X and Witness Y failed to attend to give evidence resulting in the Coroner issuing both with maximum £1,000 fines each.
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