The Shankill Butchers - A case study of mass murder

By Martin Dillon During the 1970s a unit of the pro-British UVF deathsquad embarked on a spree of indiscriminate murder which left thirty Catholic civilians dead. The group abducted Catholics at random and cut them up with butchers knives. Their leader was Lenny Murphy, a fanatical Unionist whose Catholic-sounding surname led to his persecution as a child for which he took revenge on all Catholics. "The Shankill Butchers" is a horrifyingly detailed account of one of the most brutal series of murders in Irish or British legal history - a phenomenon whose real nature has been obscured by the political and violent context from which it sprang.