--- title: "The Shankill Butchers: the UK's Worst Serial Killers" description: "As you probably know, if you've been a longtime fan of this channel, there raged an intercommunal conflict in Northern Ireland for many years, commonly known as 'The Troubles'.\n\nLasting from the late 1960s until 1998, the conflict claimed the lives of more than 3,000 people and was punctuated by bombing campaigns, sectarian violence, street riots and kidnappings.\n\nWhat you perhaps don't know is the depths of depravity that emerged from this conflict, and the vicious nature of some of the acts committed by the groups party to it.\n\nOn the one hand, the Provisional Irish Republican Army were known for their bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, and vigilante justice meted out through punishments such as kneecapping, wherein an individual accused of a given crime would be shot in both knees as a deterrent to similar perpetrators. Among the many victims of the group were an unfortunate group of people known as 'the Disappeared', who were civilians often dubiously accused of collaboration of some kind and who were kidnapped and murdered, with many of their bodies never found until this day.\n\nHowever, what sometimes escapes the microscope are some of the other groups whose actions — even if smaller in body count — were no less despicable, committing acts so gruesome that it is as if the public has simply chosen to forget them.\n\nOne such group is the Shankill Butchers, a gang of men belonging to the so-called Loyalist faction and who committed a series of killings in the 1970s at the height of the conflict. The group gained their name by kidnapping civilians at random in the dead of night, and torturing them to death using utensils such as butchers' knives, before dumping the bodies in plain view the next morning.\n\nThe Shankill Butchers are often referred to as the worst serial killers in the history of the UK, yet their brutal actions are largely lost amidst the horrors of the time, despite being undeniably responsible for one of the most inglorious episodes of murderous depravity in all of Europe.\n\n## The Shankill Road\n\nThe name of the gang owed to their founding and base of operations in the Shankill, a well-known street and neighbourhood in Belfast.\n\nThe Shankill Road is a broad thoroughfare which runs through West Belfast, largely populated by supporters of the continued place of Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom, and which is seen as a bastion of the same ideology, which is known as Unionism.\n\nThe Shankill Road runs close to the mostly Irish Republican neighbourhood of the Falls Road, and close to so-called flashpoint areas thinly separating two communities traditionally in favour of either a United Ireland or continued British rule.\n\nThe most well-known terror organisation belonging to the Unionist cause had its headquarters on the Shankill Road. This was the Ulster Volunteer Force or UVF, which traced its origins to a campaign to prevent Ireland from seceding from the British Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. The UVF reformed in the mid 1960s shortly before the Troubles began, and amidst the rise of a strain of Unionism characterised by British nationalist fervour, which came to be referred to as Loyalism. The group became one of the key players in the conflict as it spiralled out of control in the following decade.\n\nIts actions featured gun and bombing campaigns overwhelmingly targeted at Catholic residents of Northern Ireland, and occasionally at Irish communities living south of the border. This included a double bombing attack in Dublin and the northern county of Monaghan in 1974, which killed 35 people and injured almost 300. And although the UVF's sworn enemy was the Provisional Irish Republican Army, IRA members constituted a minority of its victims, most of whom were instead Catholic civilians murdered at random — often in spree killings and attacks on bars and public houses. This was a practice in one ways encapsulated by the longtime leader of the organisation, Augustus 'Gusty' Spence, who declared in 1966: 'if you can't get an IRA man, get a Taig instead' — with 'Taig' being a common slur used against Catholics in Northern Ireland.\n\nHowever, perhaps the most grotesque of all these murders were killings committed in the 1970s by an offshoot gang composed largely of UVF members, a band of men whose sole and only purpose was to identify individuals they presumed to be Irish Catholics, and to murder them.\n\nThis group was the Shankill Butchers.\n\n## A Turgid Tale of Murder\n\nWriter Conor Cruise O'Brien, in his forward to Martin Dillon's landmark book 'The Shankill Butchers', noted that amidst all the devastation of the Troubles, the Shankill Butchers stood apart. Even the Provisional IRA, for all their brutal crimes, never committed the kind of vile acts which the Butchers did.\n\nThe modus operandi of the Shankill Butchers was quite simple. Members of the group would lie in wait at night in areas of North Belfast, waiting for male passers-by to walk past as they returned to their homes often from nights out. They would then set upon their chosen victim, bundling them into a car and driving off, before killing them.\n\nThe intended victims of the murders were Catholics, seen with a visceral hatred by many members of the gang and wider loyalist paramilitary organisations. The site of the kidnappings were therefore streets which led towards predominantly-Catholic neighbourhoods, under the assumption that anyone returning there at night was likely a Catholic themself and therefore suitable for abduction.\n\nOf course, their selection of victims was about as sophisticated as the way in which those victims were then brutally murdered. It resulted that some of their victims were not Catholics at all, and several Protestants were subject to the barbarism of the group. Unfortunately, the group didn't seem to feel that they could apologise and let the captives go, and so the Protestant victims of the Butchers met the same fate as the Catholics.\n\nThe gang continued their murderous campaign for several years, beginning with the quadruple murder of the staff of a liquor store in 1975, and ending in 1977 after most of the gang were rounded up and ultimately jailed. With that said, some members of the gang also committed individual murders either side of this time period.\n\nIn that two year period, nineteen met their fate at the hands of the Butchers, generally by having their throats slit, their wrists cut or being bludgeoned to death in the shaded confines of areas nearby the Shankill Road. The identities of the perpetrators were a mystery to the Police Service of Northern Ireland or PSNI, who tried in vain for several years to gain information on their identities from residents of the area. Their efforts were always rebuffed, and met with a strict wall of silence.\n\nWith that said, it is not to say that the Butchers' identities were not suspected — if not known — by some residents of the Shankill. As attested to by multiple community figures and some investigators subsequently, the names of at least some of the perpetrators of the most demented behaviour of the Troubles were common knowledge, but information was not shared with authorities for fear of subsequent retribution by members or allies of the group. This resulted in the spree continuing for the length of time that it did.\n\nPart of the reason for this silence was the sheer viciousness of which members of the group were capable, and which could be turned onto members of their own community at a moment's notice. And so the perpetrators of the murders continued living among their neighbours in North Belfast, despite the depravity of the murders, and their responsibility being as well-known as their reputations were feared.\n\n## Lenny Murphy — A Life of Hatred\n\nThe ringleader of the Shankill Butchers was a criminal and UVF member by the name of Lenny Murphy.\n\nMurphy was a native of the Shankill Road. According to author Martin Dillon, in his youth he was often confused for a Catholic, due to his surname being common among Irish Catholics in Belfast and one of the most common family names in the Republic of Ireland. In primary school, he was nicknamed 'Murphy the Mick' (another slur for Irish people), and developed a visceral hatred of all Catholics, regularly describing them through the use of slurs and displaying a sectarian hatred unique even among other loyalist figures. Murphy was a petty thief and criminal from an early age, and displayed sociopathic tendencies. He also regularly attended trials at Belfast's Crumlin Road courthouse, building awareness of legal processes which would allow him to evade the law when he began his crimes in subsequent years.\n\nHaving already joined the UVF and another loyalist paramilitary organisation, the Ulster Defence Association, Murphy formed the Shankill Butchers and began their murder spree in 1975. His first killings, however, took place in the summer of 1972, when several Catholic men were abducted one by one and taken to the Lawnbrook Social Club, a bar on the Shankill Road. There, they were beaten and stabbed with knives for hours by a group of men, sometimes in front of willing or unwilling onlookers. A 20-year-old Lenny Murphy was front and centre amongst their tormentors, inflicting the most vicious injuries to the victims and often also the fatal blow.\n\nThe same year, Murphy was accused of the murder of a Protestant man, Edward Pavis. Pavis, a keen hunter, had been accused of arms dealing, and during his trial it was revealed that one of his customers and hunting companions was a Roman Catholic priest. This was considered fraternising with the enemy, and while Pavis was on parole, Murphy arrived at his home and shot him dead. Murphy was, however, accused of the murder by his accomplice and getaway driver, Mervyn Connor. Inexplicably, however, the two were kept on the same prison ward at the Crumlin Road prison, and Connor was shortly found dead of cyanide poisoning, with a suicide note exonerating Murphy nearby. Another prisoner on the ward mentioned having seen Murphy enter the ward and force a pill into Connor's mouth while prison guards were on a break. The prisoner was beaten to death in his cell shortly afterwards.\n\nResultantly, the murder case fell apart and Murphy was soon back on the streets. He formed the Shankill Butchers shortly afterwards, and the crime spree began.\n\nIn 1976, with the murders ongoing, Murphy was arrested when he returned to the scene of one of his murders to retrieve a handgun that he had left there. He was sentenced to twelve years in prison, beginning his term in 1977.\n\nAll told, Murphy only served six years in prison before he was released. His crimes were, nonetheless, put to an abrupt end shortly after. Despite this, it is estimated that he murdered as many as thirteen people in his life, including several during the brief period between his release from prison and his death. Yet, Murphy was never actually charged with any of these murders.\n\nBut Murphy quickly returned to murdering. He is thought to have murdered four more innocent people in the time after his release, including one man — a mentally diminished man — who wandered into the bar where Murphy was celebrating his release. The man died after having been beaten and run over several times by Murphy in his car. A few weeks later, he abducted another man whom he tortured by pulling his teeth out with pliers. The victim was facially unrecognisable by the time his body was found.\n\nBut Murphy was very far from the only adherent to the worst depravity of the Butchers. Other key figures included his older brother John, suspected by some to be the true leader of the organisation, as well as other members such as Sam McAllister, Robert 'the Basher' Bates, and William Moore. Moore, in particular, was central to the operation of the gang. He was a taxi driver, and it was his black taxi cab which was often used to abduct and murder the group's targets as they walked home late at night. Moore had also worked in a meat packing business and therefore had access to butcher knives which were later used to carry out the killings. It was, moreover, he who became the leader of the gang when Lenny Murphy was sentenced to prison — and under his leadership, the killings continued with as much vigour as before.\n\nAll told, there were around 20 members of the gang, most of them men in their early twenties and petty criminals, with the oldest member of the gang being thirty-one years old when the group formed.\n\nIt is likely that some of the participants in the gang's activities were never identified and therefore never paid the price for their actions, despite the brutality that they participated in.\n\n## Victims\n\nIn total, the Shankill Butchers murdered at least 23 people.\n\nOf these, fifteen were Catholics and eight were Protestants. Three victims were members of loyalist paramilitary organisations, killed by members of the Butchers in disputes. The remainder were all civilians, with none having well-defined links to terrorist factions. None of the dead were members of the IRA.\n\nThe ways in which individuals met their end at the hands of the Shankill Butchers were varied, but all resulted in a carnival of violence. Their first individual victim, Francis McCrossan, was killed by having his throat slashed. Several other victims were also killed by having their throats hacked by Murphy, Moore, or others with a knife. In 1977, Cornelius Neeson died after having been attacked in the street by Moore with a hatchet, ultimately bleeding to death. His death occurred the same evening that the Butchers attacked a bar in Belfast city centre and massacred four patrons and the bar owner, who was shot in the chest from close range by Robert 'Basher' Bates. Bates later revealed that his compensation for the killing was a 1-litre bottle of vodka.\n\nThe Shankill Butchers were neither particularly inventive or efficient with their killing patterns. The victims — almost all of them innocent civilians — were chosen at random, and often clumsily hacked at with knives by their captors, suffering agonising deaths in the process. The members of the gang were an undisciplined group of men, many of them part-time employed heavy drinkers and who often got into deadly feuds with members of other loyalist paramilitary groups.\n\nThe killings continued with several more random attacks in 1977. This included two more throat slashings, and a bomb attack on an Easter Republican parade, which killed a seven-year-old boy.\n\nBut one individual the group did not succeed in murdering was Gerard McLaverty, another innocent Belfast man who'd been abducted while walking home. Although he was beaten, stabbed, and ultimately left for dead in a back alley with slashed wrists, he survived and this would ultimately prove the gang's undoing. A few days later, McLaverty was able to assist the police in identifying members of the group who'd assailed him. After a quick escort around the Shankill Road, he identified several including Basher Bates, who — perhaps unsurprisingly — lingered in plain sight. Before long, several members had been arrested.\n\nBy the late 1970s, the murder spree of the Shankill Butchers was brought to an end. Eleven members were prosecuted, and would be hauled into court to face their murder charges. The case was successful in the prosecution of the arrested men, assisted by the positive identification by McLaverty and the fact that William Moore crumbled under police interrogation, confessing to the crimes and identifying other participants in them.\n\n42 life sentences were doled out to members of the group in February 1979. Jointly, the sentences handed down to the eleven convicted men amounted to more than 2,000 years in prison.\n\n## Policing\n\nIn his landmark book 'The Shankill Butchers\", published in 1989 as the Troubles raged on, journalist Martin Dillon made the point that the PSNI, under chief investigator Jimmy Nesbitt, managed to identify and convict the worst gang of serial murderers in the entire history of the UK, despite having only 11 detectives working the case.\n\nThis paled significantly when compared with the 304 police officers working to track down the Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer active in northern England at around the same time. The murders also occurred amidst the height of the Troubles, at a time when murders were taking place regularly all across Northern Ireland.\n\nUndoubtedly, a huge accomplishment.\n\nHowever, questions have been asked about the level of preparedness of the police to prevent the actions of the group as they took place, as well as the level of knowledge of the loyalist community of the men responsible, which could have prevented at least some of the deaths from taking place.\n\nUnlike other serial killers in the UK at the time, the Butchers had made no effort to hide the bodies of their victims or mask the aims of their behaviour. They operated in a compact area of Belfast which, although densely populated, was still no bigger than fifteen square miles in size. Several of them were known to police as members of the UVF, and some were even questioned regarding their knowledge of some of the murders. Yet, none were charged until the failed attack on McLaverty.\n\nOne of the most significant questions is how Mervyn Connor — accuser of Lenny Murphy for the murder of Edward Pavis — could possibly have been allowed to share a prison ward with the man he accused. Arguably, had the detention of Murphy and Connor been handled with greater care, the activities of the Butchers would have been prevented. Moreover, given the fate of Connor, it may have even prohibited the coming forward of other members of the Shankill community, lest they too suffer the same fate as him.\n\nSome journalists have even claimed that the police were aware of the identities of the Butchers, alongside members of the civilian community.\n\nA 2011 documentary by Northern Irish journalist Stephen Nolan shed new light on the details behind the gang's actions and downfall. In it, Nolan expressed dubiousness that the members of the community of the Shankill — or at the very least, other figures of the loyalist paramilitary movement — were unaware of the identities of the members of the group.\n\nJournalist Jim Campbell (himself the survivor of an assassination attempt by the UVF in the 1980s) lent further weight to this belief. In an interview with Nolan, he noted that if state security forces had the capacity to infiltrate the tight hierarchical structure of the Irish Provisional Army, then it was almost inconceivable that they were hamstrung by a street gang like the Shankill Butchers for several years.\n\nIn concluding, Nolan noted that the Shankill Butchers were arguably even worse than the other notorious serial killer active at the time, the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe. When finally caught, Sutcliffe claimed voices in his head had encouraged him to commit the murders of thirteen women. He was later diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.\n\nBut the Shankill Butchers had heard no such voices in their heads, none other than the deafening sound of their own hatred.\n\n## Justice and Later Lives\n\nDespite the heavy sentences meted out to the Shankill Butchers, all convicted members walked free in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.\n\nThe Agreement was a multilateral treaty signed by most of Northern Ireland's political parties and the British and Irish governments, and which saw a ceasefire and the eventual decommissioning of weapons held by paramilitary groups. It saw the conditional release of 483 prisoners belonging to those organisations on licence, with the stipulation that their freedom would be revoked if they returned to violence. Amongst those who walked free were some of the worst perpetrators of the 30-year period of violence in Northern Ireland.\n\nHowever that is not to say that no justice of any kind was dealt out to the members of the group for their heinous acts. In 1982, Lenny Murphy was released from his trifling firearms conviction and sent out once again into the public. It is thought that during this time he killed a further three Catholic civilians, continuing the unimaginative barbarism which the group had used to terrorise civilian communities the previous decade. However, members of Murphy's own paramilitary community quickly tired of his uncontrollable brutality, and details of his movements were passed on to the Provisional IRA, who paid Murphy a visit in November 1982. He was shot 30 times.\n\nLenny Murphy died having never been charged for any of the thirteen murders which he is suspected of having committed. He was buried in Carnmoney Cemetery, the same cemetery in which one of his Catholic victims was buried, after a UVF funeral. His headstone bore the inscription 'Here Lies a Soldier', the title of a popular Unionist song, although Murphy never served in the military or even killed anyone who was in a realistic position to fight back. Despite all their victims, nobody from the Shankill Butchers is known to have targeted even a single confirmed member of a republican paramilitary group — despite these being their declared archenemies.\n\nThe older Murphy brother — John — also didn't outlive the Troubles. He died in a car accident in Northern Ireland in 1998, only one month before the Good Friday Agreement took effect. Basher Bates didn't fare much better. After his release, he was swiftly murdered by the son of a loyalist paramilitary member whom Bates had himself murdered in 1977, shortly before his arrest. Bates' funeral was attended by hundreds, and his name was included on the banner of a branch of the Orange Order — a Protestant Fraternal organisation — called the Old Boyne Island Heroes.\n\nAs revealed in the 2011 documentary, Charlotte Morrissey — daughter of the group's tenth victim Joseph Morrissey, had the misfortune of blundering into view of the Bates funeral procession. Joseph Morrissey had been hacked to death and his body mutilated in 1977, but his daughter could do little other than sit and watch as huge wreaths were paraded through the streets, glorifying one of the members of the group responsible for her father's death.\n\nUnfortunately many of the other key members of the gang — including William Moore — lived the rest of their lives in relative normality. The same was true of many members of the IRA and other terrorist organisations operating in Northern Ireland, some of whom have since sought repentance for their crimes, many of whom haven't, and some of them who even continued upon the path of sectarian violence in the years after the signing of the agreement.\n\nMartin Dillon stated that there were up to seventeen people involved with the murders who were never brought to justice, and many of these were never identified. But even many of the known members of the gang were able to see out their lives without even having spent even the majority in prison for the crimes they committed.\n\nWilliam Moore — noteworthy for both having taken over the leadership of the group when Murphy was in prison and for mutilating victims' bodies after they were dead — died of a heart attack in 2009, having recently come under investigation for yet another murder committed in 1974.\n\nSam McAllister, another member of the group known for his large size and being able to physically drag victims into waiting cars, and who was instrumental in the failed murder of Gerard McLaverty which led to the group's downfall, was also released and continues to live in relative normality, though he was wounded in an assassination attempt in 2001 following yet another loyalist feud. He was also shot in both arms as punishment for beating another loyalist to death with a breezeblock in 1976.\n\nOne of the lesser-known members of the gang, Eddie McIlwaine, still alive and also a member of the Orange Order, even participated in one of the group's annual 12th of July parades in 2023, commemorating the victory of a Protestant King over a Catholic King at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. McIlwaine was also a former member of the Ulster Defence Regiment, an infantry division of the British Army active in Northern Ireland, and was dismissed from his position around the time of the Butchers' arrest. A few days before the parade in 2023, he had been pictured erecting a UVF flag on the Shankill Road. When questioned, McIlwaine claimed he had \"paid his debt to society\".\n\nHe served a total of eight years in prison.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n\n- The Shankill Butchers were a loyalist gang active during the Troubles, known for brutal murders.\n- The gang operated in Belfast's Shankill Road area, targeting civilians presumed to be Catholic.\n- Lenny Murphy led the group, which used butcher knives and other tools to torture and kill victims.\n- Despite their heinous crimes, many members were released under the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.\n- The group's actions were largely known within the local community, but fear prevented reporting.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### What were the Shankill Butchers?\n\nThe Shankill Butchers were a gang of men belonging to the Loyalist faction in Northern Ireland who committed a series of killings in the 1970s during the height of the Troubles. They were known for kidnapping civilians at random, torturing them to death using utensils such as butchers’ knives, and dumping the bodies in plain view the next morning.\n\n### How many people did the Shankill Butchers murder?\n\nThe Shankill Butchers murdered at least 23 people, with fifteen being Catholics and eight being Protestants.\n\n### Who was the ringleader of the Shankill Butchers?\n\nThe ringleader of the Shankill Butchers was Lenny Murphy, a criminal and UVF member from the Shankill Road.\n\n### What was the modus operandi of the Shankill Butchers?\n\nThe Shankill Butchers would lie in wait at night in areas of North Belfast, waiting for male passers-by to walk past. They would then abduct their chosen victim, drive off, and kill them, often by slitting their throats or cutting their wrists.\n\n### Why were the Shankill Butchers able to operate for so long?\n\nThe Shankill Butchers were able to operate for so long due to a strict wall of silence from residents of the area, who feared retribution from the group or its allies. Additionally, the police struggled to gain information and make arrests despite suspecting the identities of some members.\n\n### What happened to the members of the Shankill Butchers after their arrests?\n\nEleven members of the Shankill Butchers were prosecuted and received a total of 42 life sentences amounting to more than 2,000 years in prison. However, all convicted members were released in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.\n\n### What was the significance of the Good Friday Agreement for the Shankill Butchers?\n\nThe Good Friday Agreement led to the conditional release of 483 prisoners belonging to paramilitary groups, including some of the Shankill Butchers. This meant that despite their heavy sentences, all convicted members walked free in 1998.\n\n### How did Lenny Murphy die?\n\nLenny Murphy was shot 30 times by the Provisional IRA in November 1982 after details of his movements were passed on to them by members of his own paramilitary community, who had tired of his uncontrollable brutality.\n\n### What was the role of William Moore in the Shankill Butchers?\n\nWilliam Moore was a central figure in the operation of the gang. He was a taxi driver whose black taxi cab was often used to abduct and murder the group’s targets. Moore also worked in a meat packing business, giving him access to butcher knives used in the killings. He took over the leadership of the group when Lenny Murphy was in prison.\n\n### What was the reaction of the loyalist community to the release of the Shankill Butchers?\n\nThe reaction of the loyalist community varied. Some members, like Basher Bates, were glorified in funeral processions and had their names included on banners of Protestant fraternal organizations. Others, like William Moore, lived out their lives in relative normality despite their crimes.\n\n## Sources\n\n- [Original Into the Shadows video: The Shankill Butchers: the UK's Worst Serial Killers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pyi_j1ZNro)\n- [https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/david-mckittrick-will-loyalists-seek-bloody-revenge-1643076.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/david-mckittrick-will-loyalists-seek-bloody-revenge-1643076.html)\n- [https://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2023/06/25/news/shankill_butcher_eddie_mcilwaine_spotted_putting_up_uvf_flag-3380086/](https://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2023/06/25/news/shankill_butcher_eddie_mcilwaine_spotted_putting_up_uvf_flag-3380086/)\n- [https://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2023/06/27/news/shankill_butcher_eddie_mcilwaine_says_he_has_paid_his_debt_to_society_days_after_erecting_a_uvf_flag-3385100/](https://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2023/06/27/news/shankill_butcher_eddie_mcilwaine_says_he_has_paid_his_debt_to_society_days_after_erecting_a_uvf_flag-3385100/)\n- [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-65164519](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-65164519)\n- [Hero image source](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Old_Shankill_station.jpg) by Suckindiesel / openverse, by.\n\n## Related Coverage" url: https://intotheshadows.pub/article/the-shankill-butchers-uks-worst-serial-killers.md canonical: https://intotheshadows.pub/article/the-shankill-butchers-uks-worst-serial-killers datePublished: 2026-06-28 dateModified: 2026-06-28 author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://intotheshadows.pub/author/simon-whistler publisher: Into the Shadows image: "https://media.intotheshadows.pub/cdn-cgi/image/width=1600,height=900,fit=cover,quality=80,format=auto/articles/5pyi_j1ZNro/hero.jpg" type: Article contentHash: d9ef5c3f4e9147cb489d4f53477ad4b444b84087fd6919e84b28d6bbcf1136d0 tokens: 7358 summaryUrl: https://intotheshadows.pub/article/the-shankill-butchers-uks-worst-serial-killers.md.summary.md --- As you probably know, if you've been a longtime fan of this channel, there raged an intercommunal conflict in Northern Ireland for many years, commonly known as 'The Troubles'. Lasting from the late 1960s until 1998, the conflict claimed the lives of more than 3,000 people and was punctuated by bombing campaigns, sectarian violence, street riots and kidnappings. What you perhaps don't know is the depths of depravity that emerged from this conflict, and the vicious nature of some of the acts committed by the groups party to it. On the one hand, the Provisional Irish Republican Army were known for their bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, and vigilante justice meted out through punishments such as kneecapping, wherein an individual accused of a given crime would be shot in both knees as a deterrent to similar perpetrators. Among the many victims of the group were an unfortunate group of people known as 'the Disappeared', who were civilians often dubiously accused of collaboration of some kind and who were kidnapped and murdered, with many of their bodies never found until this day. However, what sometimes escapes the microscope are some of the other groups whose actions — even if smaller in body count — were no less despicable, committing acts so gruesome that it is as if the public has simply chosen to forget them. One such group is the Shankill Butchers, a gang of men belonging to the so-called Loyalist faction and who committed a series of killings in the 1970s at the height of the conflict. The group gained their name by kidnapping civilians at random in the dead of night, and torturing them to death using utensils such as butchers' knives, before dumping the bodies in plain view the next morning. The Shankill Butchers are often referred to as the worst serial killers in the history of the UK, yet their brutal actions are largely lost amidst the horrors of the time, despite being undeniably responsible for one of the most inglorious episodes of murderous depravity in all of Europe. ## The Shankill Road The name of the gang owed to their founding and base of operations in the Shankill, a well-known street and neighbourhood in Belfast. The Shankill Road is a broad thoroughfare which runs through West Belfast, largely populated by supporters of the continued place of Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom, and which is seen as a bastion of the same ideology, which is known as Unionism. The Shankill Road runs close to the mostly Irish Republican neighbourhood of the Falls Road, and close to so-called flashpoint areas thinly separating two communities traditionally in favour of either a United Ireland or continued British rule. The most well-known terror organisation belonging to the Unionist cause had its headquarters on the Shankill Road. This was the Ulster Volunteer Force or UVF, which traced its origins to a campaign to prevent Ireland from seceding from the British Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. The UVF reformed in the mid 1960s shortly before the Troubles began, and amidst the rise of a strain of Unionism characterised by British nationalist fervour, which came to be referred to as Loyalism. The group became one of the key players in the conflict as it spiralled out of control in the following decade. Its actions featured gun and bombing campaigns overwhelmingly targeted at Catholic residents of Northern Ireland, and occasionally at Irish communities living south of the border. This included a double bombing attack in Dublin and the northern county of Monaghan in 1974, which killed 35 people and injured almost 300. And although the UVF's sworn enemy was the Provisional Irish Republican Army, IRA members constituted a minority of its victims, most of whom were instead Catholic civilians murdered at random — often in spree killings and attacks on bars and public houses. This was a practice in one ways encapsulated by the longtime leader of the organisation, Augustus 'Gusty' Spence, who declared in 1966: 'if you can't get an IRA man, get a Taig instead' — with 'Taig' being a common slur used against Catholics in Northern Ireland. However, perhaps the most grotesque of all these murders were killings committed in the 1970s by an offshoot gang composed largely of UVF members, a band of men whose sole and only purpose was to identify individuals they presumed to be Irish Catholics, and to murder them. This group was the Shankill Butchers. ## A Turgid Tale of Murder Writer Conor Cruise O'Brien, in his forward to Martin Dillon's landmark book 'The Shankill Butchers', noted that amidst all the devastation of the Troubles, the Shankill Butchers stood apart. Even the Provisional IRA, for all their brutal crimes, never committed the kind of vile acts which the Butchers did. The modus operandi of the Shankill Butchers was quite simple. Members of the group would lie in wait at night in areas of North Belfast, waiting for male passers-by to walk past as they returned to their homes often from nights out. They would then set upon their chosen victim, bundling them into a car and driving off, before killing them. The intended victims of the murders were Catholics, seen with a visceral hatred by many members of the gang and wider loyalist paramilitary organisations. The site of the kidnappings were therefore streets which led towards predominantly-Catholic neighbourhoods, under the assumption that anyone returning there at night was likely a Catholic themself and therefore suitable for abduction. Of course, their selection of victims was about as sophisticated as the way in which those victims were then brutally murdered. It resulted that some of their victims were not Catholics at all, and several Protestants were subject to the barbarism of the group. Unfortunately, the group didn't seem to feel that they could apologise and let the captives go, and so the Protestant victims of the Butchers met the same fate as the Catholics. The gang continued their murderous campaign for several years, beginning with the quadruple murder of the staff of a liquor store in 1975, and ending in 1977 after most of the gang were rounded up and ultimately jailed. With that said, some members of the gang also committed individual murders either side of this time period. In that two year period, nineteen met their fate at the hands of the Butchers, generally by having their throats slit, their wrists cut or being bludgeoned to death in the shaded confines of areas nearby the Shankill Road. The identities of the perpetrators were a mystery to the Police Service of Northern Ireland or PSNI, who tried in vain for several years to gain information on their identities from residents of the area. Their efforts were always rebuffed, and met with a strict wall of silence. With that said, it is not to say that the Butchers' identities were not suspected — if not known — by some residents of the Shankill. As attested to by multiple community figures and some investigators subsequently, the names of at least some of the perpetrators of the most demented behaviour of the Troubles were common knowledge, but information was not shared with authorities for fear of subsequent retribution by members or allies of the group. This resulted in the spree continuing for the length of time that it did. Part of the reason for this silence was the sheer viciousness of which members of the group were capable, and which could be turned onto members of their own community at a moment's notice. And so the perpetrators of the murders continued living among their neighbours in North Belfast, despite the depravity of the murders, and their responsibility being as well-known as their reputations were feared. ## Lenny Murphy — A Life of Hatred The ringleader of the Shankill Butchers was a criminal and UVF member by the name of Lenny Murphy. Murphy was a native of the Shankill Road. According to author Martin Dillon, in his youth he was often confused for a Catholic, due to his surname being common among Irish Catholics in Belfast and one of the most common family names in the Republic of Ireland. In primary school, he was nicknamed 'Murphy the Mick' (another slur for Irish people), and developed a visceral hatred of all Catholics, regularly describing them through the use of slurs and displaying a sectarian hatred unique even among other loyalist figures. Murphy was a petty thief and criminal from an early age, and displayed sociopathic tendencies. He also regularly attended trials at Belfast's Crumlin Road courthouse, building awareness of legal processes which would allow him to evade the law when he began his crimes in subsequent years. Having already joined the UVF and another loyalist paramilitary organisation, the Ulster Defence Association, Murphy formed the Shankill Butchers and began their murder spree in 1975. His first killings, however, took place in the summer of 1972, when several Catholic men were abducted one by one and taken to the Lawnbrook Social Club, a bar on the Shankill Road. There, they were beaten and stabbed with knives for hours by a group of men, sometimes in front of willing or unwilling onlookers. A 20-year-old Lenny Murphy was front and centre amongst their tormentors, inflicting the most vicious injuries to the victims and often also the fatal blow. The same year, Murphy was accused of the murder of a Protestant man, Edward Pavis. Pavis, a keen hunter, had been accused of arms dealing, and during his trial it was revealed that one of his customers and hunting companions was a Roman Catholic priest. This was considered fraternising with the enemy, and while Pavis was on parole, Murphy arrived at his home and shot him dead. Murphy was, however, accused of the murder by his accomplice and getaway driver, Mervyn Connor. Inexplicably, however, the two were kept on the same prison ward at the Crumlin Road prison, and Connor was shortly found dead of cyanide poisoning, with a suicide note exonerating Murphy nearby. Another prisoner on the ward mentioned having seen Murphy enter the ward and force a pill into Connor's mouth while prison guards were on a break. The prisoner was beaten to death in his cell shortly afterwards. Resultantly, the murder case fell apart and Murphy was soon back on the streets. He formed the Shankill Butchers shortly afterwards, and the crime spree began. In 1976, with the murders ongoing, Murphy was arrested when he returned to the scene of one of his murders to retrieve a handgun that he had left there. He was sentenced to twelve years in prison, beginning his term in 1977. All told, Murphy only served six years in prison before he was released. His crimes were, nonetheless, put to an abrupt end shortly after. Despite this, it is estimated that he murdered as many as thirteen people in his life, including several during the brief period between his release from prison and his death. Yet, Murphy was never actually charged with any of these murders. But Murphy quickly returned to murdering. He is thought to have murdered four more innocent people in the time after his release, including one man — a mentally diminished man — who wandered into the bar where Murphy was celebrating his release. The man died after having been beaten and run over several times by Murphy in his car. A few weeks later, he abducted another man whom he tortured by pulling his teeth out with pliers. The victim was facially unrecognisable by the time his body was found. But Murphy was very far from the only adherent to the worst depravity of the Butchers. Other key figures included his older brother John, suspected by some to be the true leader of the organisation, as well as other members such as Sam McAllister, Robert 'the Basher' Bates, and William Moore. Moore, in particular, was central to the operation of the gang. He was a taxi driver, and it was his black taxi cab which was often used to abduct and murder the group's targets as they walked home late at night. Moore had also worked in a meat packing business and therefore had access to butcher knives which were later used to carry out the killings. It was, moreover, he who became the leader of the gang when Lenny Murphy was sentenced to prison — and under his leadership, the killings continued with as much vigour as before. All told, there were around 20 members of the gang, most of them men in their early twenties and petty criminals, with the oldest member of the gang being thirty-one years old when the group formed. It is likely that some of the participants in the gang's activities were never identified and therefore never paid the price for their actions, despite the brutality that they participated in. ## Victims In total, the Shankill Butchers murdered at least 23 people. Of these, fifteen were Catholics and eight were Protestants. Three victims were members of loyalist paramilitary organisations, killed by members of the Butchers in disputes. The remainder were all civilians, with none having well-defined links to terrorist factions. None of the dead were members of the IRA. The ways in which individuals met their end at the hands of the Shankill Butchers were varied, but all resulted in a carnival of violence. Their first individual victim, Francis McCrossan, was killed by having his throat slashed. Several other victims were also killed by having their throats hacked by Murphy, Moore, or others with a knife. In 1977, Cornelius Neeson died after having been attacked in the street by Moore with a hatchet, ultimately bleeding to death. His death occurred the same evening that the Butchers attacked a bar in Belfast city centre and massacred four patrons and the bar owner, who was shot in the chest from close range by Robert 'Basher' Bates. Bates later revealed that his compensation for the killing was a 1-litre bottle of vodka. The Shankill Butchers were neither particularly inventive or efficient with their killing patterns. The victims — almost all of them innocent civilians — were chosen at random, and often clumsily hacked at with knives by their captors, suffering agonising deaths in the process. The members of the gang were an undisciplined group of men, many of them part-time employed heavy drinkers and who often got into deadly feuds with members of other loyalist paramilitary groups. The killings continued with several more random attacks in 1977. This included two more throat slashings, and a bomb attack on an Easter Republican parade, which killed a seven-year-old boy. But one individual the group did not succeed in murdering was Gerard McLaverty, another innocent Belfast man who'd been abducted while walking home. Although he was beaten, stabbed, and ultimately left for dead in a back alley with slashed wrists, he survived and this would ultimately prove the gang's undoing. A few days later, McLaverty was able to assist the police in identifying members of the group who'd assailed him. After a quick escort around the Shankill Road, he identified several including Basher Bates, who — perhaps unsurprisingly — lingered in plain sight. Before long, several members had been arrested. By the late 1970s, the murder spree of the Shankill Butchers was brought to an end. Eleven members were prosecuted, and would be hauled into court to face their murder charges. The case was successful in the prosecution of the arrested men, assisted by the positive identification by McLaverty and the fact that William Moore crumbled under police interrogation, confessing to the crimes and identifying other participants in them. 42 life sentences were doled out to members of the group in February 1979. Jointly, the sentences handed down to the eleven convicted men amounted to more than 2,000 years in prison. ## Policing In his landmark book 'The Shankill Butchers", published in 1989 as the Troubles raged on, journalist Martin Dillon made the point that the PSNI, under chief investigator Jimmy Nesbitt, managed to identify and convict the worst gang of serial murderers in the entire history of the UK, despite having only 11 detectives working the case. This paled significantly when compared with the 304 police officers working to track down the Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer active in northern England at around the same time. The murders also occurred amidst the height of the Troubles, at a time when murders were taking place regularly all across Northern Ireland. Undoubtedly, a huge accomplishment. However, questions have been asked about the level of preparedness of the police to prevent the actions of the group as they took place, as well as the level of knowledge of the loyalist community of the men responsible, which could have prevented at least some of the deaths from taking place. Unlike other serial killers in the UK at the time, the Butchers had made no effort to hide the bodies of their victims or mask the aims of their behaviour. They operated in a compact area of Belfast which, although densely populated, was still no bigger than fifteen square miles in size. Several of them were known to police as members of the UVF, and some were even questioned regarding their knowledge of some of the murders. Yet, none were charged until the failed attack on McLaverty. One of the most significant questions is how Mervyn Connor — accuser of Lenny Murphy for the murder of Edward Pavis — could possibly have been allowed to share a prison ward with the man he accused. Arguably, had the detention of Murphy and Connor been handled with greater care, the activities of the Butchers would have been prevented. Moreover, given the fate of Connor, it may have even prohibited the coming forward of other members of the Shankill community, lest they too suffer the same fate as him. Some journalists have even claimed that the police were aware of the identities of the Butchers, alongside members of the civilian community. A 2011 documentary by Northern Irish journalist Stephen Nolan shed new light on the details behind the gang's actions and downfall. In it, Nolan expressed dubiousness that the members of the community of the Shankill — or at the very least, other figures of the loyalist paramilitary movement — were unaware of the identities of the members of the group. Journalist Jim Campbell (himself the survivor of an assassination attempt by the UVF in the 1980s) lent further weight to this belief. In an interview with Nolan, he noted that if state security forces had the capacity to infiltrate the tight hierarchical structure of the Irish Provisional Army, then it was almost inconceivable that they were hamstrung by a street gang like the Shankill Butchers for several years. In concluding, Nolan noted that the Shankill Butchers were arguably even worse than the other notorious serial killer active at the time, the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe. When finally caught, Sutcliffe claimed voices in his head had encouraged him to commit the murders of thirteen women. He was later diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. But the Shankill Butchers had heard no such voices in their heads, none other than the deafening sound of their own hatred. ## Justice and Later Lives Despite the heavy sentences meted out to the Shankill Butchers, all convicted members walked free in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. The Agreement was a multilateral treaty signed by most of Northern Ireland's political parties and the British and Irish governments, and which saw a ceasefire and the eventual decommissioning of weapons held by paramilitary groups. It saw the conditional release of 483 prisoners belonging to those organisations on licence, with the stipulation that their freedom would be revoked if they returned to violence. Amongst those who walked free were some of the worst perpetrators of the 30-year period of violence in Northern Ireland. However that is not to say that no justice of any kind was dealt out to the members of the group for their heinous acts. In 1982, Lenny Murphy was released from his trifling firearms conviction and sent out once again into the public. It is thought that during this time he killed a further three Catholic civilians, continuing the unimaginative barbarism which the group had used to terrorise civilian communities the previous decade. However, members of Murphy's own paramilitary community quickly tired of his uncontrollable brutality, and details of his movements were passed on to the Provisional IRA, who paid Murphy a visit in November 1982. He was shot 30 times. Lenny Murphy died having never been charged for any of the thirteen murders which he is suspected of having committed. He was buried in Carnmoney Cemetery, the same cemetery in which one of his Catholic victims was buried, after a UVF funeral. His headstone bore the inscription 'Here Lies a Soldier', the title of a popular Unionist song, although Murphy never served in the military or even killed anyone who was in a realistic position to fight back. Despite all their victims, nobody from the Shankill Butchers is known to have targeted even a single confirmed member of a republican paramilitary group — despite these being their declared archenemies. The older Murphy brother — John — also didn't outlive the Troubles. He died in a car accident in Northern Ireland in 1998, only one month before the Good Friday Agreement took effect. Basher Bates didn't fare much better. After his release, he was swiftly murdered by the son of a loyalist paramilitary member whom Bates had himself murdered in 1977, shortly before his arrest. Bates' funeral was attended by hundreds, and his name was included on the banner of a branch of the Orange Order — a Protestant Fraternal organisation — called the Old Boyne Island Heroes. As revealed in the 2011 documentary, Charlotte Morrissey — daughter of the group's tenth victim Joseph Morrissey, had the misfortune of blundering into view of the Bates funeral procession. Joseph Morrissey had been hacked to death and his body mutilated in 1977, but his daughter could do little other than sit and watch as huge wreaths were paraded through the streets, glorifying one of the members of the group responsible for her father's death. Unfortunately many of the other key members of the gang — including William Moore — lived the rest of their lives in relative normality. The same was true of many members of the IRA and other terrorist organisations operating in Northern Ireland, some of whom have since sought repentance for their crimes, many of whom haven't, and some of them who even continued upon the path of sectarian violence in the years after the signing of the agreement. Martin Dillon stated that there were up to seventeen people involved with the murders who were never brought to justice, and many of these were never identified. But even many of the known members of the gang were able to see out their lives without even having spent even the majority in prison for the crimes they committed. William Moore — noteworthy for both having taken over the leadership of the group when Murphy was in prison and for mutilating victims' bodies after they were dead — died of a heart attack in 2009, having recently come under investigation for yet another murder committed in 1974. Sam McAllister, another member of the group known for his large size and being able to physically drag victims into waiting cars, and who was instrumental in the failed murder of Gerard McLaverty which led to the group's downfall, was also released and continues to live in relative normality, though he was wounded in an assassination attempt in 2001 following yet another loyalist feud. He was also shot in both arms as punishment for beating another loyalist to death with a breezeblock in 1976. One of the lesser-known members of the gang, Eddie McIlwaine, still alive and also a member of the Orange Order, even participated in one of the group's annual 12th of July parades in 2023, commemorating the victory of a Protestant King over a Catholic King at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. McIlwaine was also a former member of the Ulster Defence Regiment, an infantry division of the British Army active in Northern Ireland, and was dismissed from his position around the time of the Butchers' arrest. A few days before the parade in 2023, he had been pictured erecting a UVF flag on the Shankill Road. When questioned, McIlwaine claimed he had "paid his debt to society". He served a total of eight years in prison. ## Key Takeaways - The Shankill Butchers were a loyalist gang active during the Troubles, known for brutal murders. - The gang operated in Belfast's Shankill Road area, targeting civilians presumed to be Catholic. - Lenny Murphy led the group, which used butcher knives and other tools to torture and kill victims. - Despite their heinous crimes, many members were released under the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. - The group's actions were largely known within the local community, but fear prevented reporting. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What were the Shankill Butchers? The Shankill Butchers were a gang of men belonging to the Loyalist faction in Northern Ireland who committed a series of killings in the 1970s during the height of the Troubles. They were known for kidnapping civilians at random, torturing them to death using utensils such as butchers’ knives, and dumping the bodies in plain view the next morning. ### How many people did the Shankill Butchers murder? The Shankill Butchers murdered at least 23 people, with fifteen being Catholics and eight being Protestants. ### Who was the ringleader of the Shankill Butchers? The ringleader of the Shankill Butchers was Lenny Murphy, a criminal and UVF member from the Shankill Road. ### What was the modus operandi of the Shankill Butchers? The Shankill Butchers would lie in wait at night in areas of North Belfast, waiting for male passers-by to walk past. They would then abduct their chosen victim, drive off, and kill them, often by slitting their throats or cutting their wrists. ### Why were the Shankill Butchers able to operate for so long? The Shankill Butchers were able to operate for so long due to a strict wall of silence from residents of the area, who feared retribution from the group or its allies. Additionally, the police struggled to gain information and make arrests despite suspecting the identities of some members. ### What happened to the members of the Shankill Butchers after their arrests? Eleven members of the Shankill Butchers were prosecuted and received a total of 42 life sentences amounting to more than 2,000 years in prison. However, all convicted members were released in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. ### What was the significance of the Good Friday Agreement for the Shankill Butchers? The Good Friday Agreement led to the conditional release of 483 prisoners belonging to paramilitary groups, including some of the Shankill Butchers. This meant that despite their heavy sentences, all convicted members walked free in 1998. ### How did Lenny Murphy die? Lenny Murphy was shot 30 times by the Provisional IRA in November 1982 after details of his movements were passed on to them by members of his own paramilitary community, who had tired of his uncontrollable brutality. ### What was the role of William Moore in the Shankill Butchers? William Moore was a central figure in the operation of the gang. He was a taxi driver whose black taxi cab was often used to abduct and murder the group’s targets. Moore also worked in a meat packing business, giving him access to butcher knives used in the killings. He took over the leadership of the group when Lenny Murphy was in prison. ### What was the reaction of the loyalist community to the release of the Shankill Butchers? The reaction of the loyalist community varied. Some members, like Basher Bates, were glorified in funeral processions and had their names included on banners of Protestant fraternal organizations. Others, like William Moore, lived out their lives in relative normality despite their crimes. ## Sources - [Original Into the Shadows video: The Shankill Butchers: the UK's Worst Serial Killers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pyi_j1ZNro) - [https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/david-mckittrick-will-loyalists-seek-bloody-revenge-1643076.html](https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/david-mckittrick-will-loyalists-seek-bloody-revenge-1643076.html) - [https://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2023/06/25/news/shankill_butcher_eddie_mcilwaine_spotted_putting_up_uvf_flag-3380086/](https://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2023/06/25/news/shankill_butcher_eddie_mcilwaine_spotted_putting_up_uvf_flag-3380086/) - [https://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2023/06/27/news/shankill_butcher_eddie_mcilwaine_says_he_has_paid_his_debt_to_society_days_after_erecting_a_uvf_flag-3385100/](https://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2023/06/27/news/shankill_butcher_eddie_mcilwaine_says_he_has_paid_his_debt_to_society_days_after_erecting_a_uvf_flag-3385100/) - [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-65164519](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-65164519) - [Hero image source](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Old_Shankill_station.jpg) by Suckindiesel / openverse, by. ## Related Coverage