Sadistic killings blamed on ‘Butchers of Belfast’

Press, 24 February 1977, Page 6

Sadistic killings blamed on ‘Butchers of Belfast’

NZPA Belfast '■-veil Roman Catholics hacked to death in Belfast in the last year are believed to have been murdered by a shadowy group of extremist, Protestant assassins dubbed “The Butchers of Belfast," police sources have reported. Some of the victims were’ tortured with knives, meat cleavers, and bayonets, the sources at police head- 1 quarters said. All the victims had their throats cut and several were virtually decapitated. “We're trying to track these sadistic killers down,”! one officer said. "But so far we’ve had little success. We. believe that one group of four or five men was responsible for all these killings. “But it’s always possible, that some of the murders: jwere perpetrated by copycat.

assassins—psychopaths who, get turned on by a particularly sadistic killing then go lout and do the same kind of thing themselves.” However, detectives are; working on the theory that' all the killings were sec-; tartan, an offshoot of the, feuding between Protestants' and Catholics that has raged in Northern Ireland since August. 1969. ' The killers are believed to I be a splinter group of the 'Ulster Defence Association, the biggest of the province’s Protestant paramilitary organisations. Officially, the U.D.A. denies involvement in killings. But security chiefs suspect it; permits assassination squads, , t operate under different! names as an outlet for mili-> itant members demanding! iaction against the mainly-j

i.Catholic Irish Republican ■Army. i. The I.R.A.’s militant Provisional wing is fighting to end British rule and Protestant ■domination of Northern! Ireland. It wants to unite the province with the neighbouring Irish Republic, which is; '96 per cent Catholic. I Detectives got one clue in! i,a recent Protestant pamphlet! circulated in Belfast which ■ I said that one of the seven ■ Catholics. 22 - year - old Edmund McNeill, was execu- ;; ted as an J.R.A. spv while working as an electrician in Protestant areas. The others were not mentioned. But police theorise they were slain for the same II reason — being considered iI.R.A. activists. The killings began last jFebruary in north Belfast, a irnixed Protestant and Catho-i | lie area. i