Andersonstown News, 13 December 2003, p. 16
Paul McIllwaine's son David was brutally murdered by the UVF three years ago. His father Paul speaks to Anthony Neeson about his search for truth and justice
Paul McIlwaine has pieced together his son David's final hours from information he has gathered from people he has spoken to since the horrific sequence of events that took place on an isolated country road outside Tandragee on February 19, 2000.
That was the night David - a graphic design student - and an acquaintance, Andrew Robb, were brutally beaten and hacked to death by a number of killers - some of whom were later confirmed as members of the UVF.
Initial media reports claimed that both teenagers were members of the Loyalist Volunteer Force and that their murders were in retaliation for the murder a month earlier of Portadown Ulster Volunteer Force leader Richard Jameson. But while 19-year-old Andrew Robb was on the periphery of the LVF, 18-year-old David had no connections with loyalism. He'd never even been to a band parade and many of his friends were Catholics.
Paul McIlwaine is a father with a broken heart. He says that when his son was murdered his own life stopped. He claims that after an early apparent breakthrough in the case, first the RUC and now the PSNI have put up one roadblock after another in the way of his quest for justice.
In the hours after the double murder the RUC put out the story that the murdered teenagers had been involved in scuffles in Tandragee after coming out of a local nightclub. There was no truth to the story. In fact, David barely knew Andrew - it was a chance meeting that night that brought them together.
As Paul relates the facts that are so far known - what detectives have managed to piece together about the teenagers' last movements - the pain is still clear. But just as clear is his determination to find the truth about what really happened that fateful night.
"After a night out in Tandragee with his friends David came out of a local nightclub in the early hours of the morning," says Paul. "Andrew Robb was in a taxi with three friends and called out to David that he had a lift for him. David hardly knew Andrew, but as it turned out the taxi man refused to take five passengers so Andrew got out with David. Andrew suggested that they go to a girl's house not far way - they must have thought there was a party on."
Unclear as to the exact address, the two boys knocked on the wrong door. The man who answered told them where the girl lived, but this chance meeting set in train the fatal events of that night.
Within half an hour the man came to the girl's house where the two teenagers now were and invited them back to his house for a drink - an offer they accepted.
A number of witnesses saw the boys later coming out of the house and getting into a taxi with a number of identified UVF men, some of who left in a separate, yet identified car. That was the last they saw of the two boys.
Exactly what happened next in the early hours of February 19 is not yet known; what is known is that dawn broke to reveal that two murders of sickening barbarity had been carried out on the Druminure Road just outside Tandragee. Such was the condition of David's body that it was at first believed that he had died from a shotgun blast to the face. In fact, both teenagers had been bludgeoned and stabbed to death in a frenzy of violence.
"David was found 200 yards from Andrew. When they were taken out of the taxi, Andrew was stabbed once in the heart and the pathologist says he died before he hit the ground. Because David was found so far away, I believe he must have seen what happened to Andrew and turned on his heels and ran. However, they eventually caught up with him a couple of hundred yards up the lane and butchered him.
"There were multiple stab wounds all over his body, stab wounds on his head. They slashed his face open, they cut his throat. He was so badly mutilated the police believed at the beginning that he was shot in the face with a shotgun. His hands were cut to pieces where he tried to defend himself."
Two days after the brutal slayings a man was arrested and charged with the double murder. The RUC told the McIlwaine family that the man they had in custody was 100 per cent guilty, that they were convinced they had enough evidence to convict and that the accused would do life for the murders. But over the next couple of months that certainty began to ebb away, and before long the family were being told that the accused might face a new and lesser charge. Then the RUC told Paul the man was going to apply for bail and they wouldn't be challenging it. This was completely opposite to the position two months after the killing when they stated that they would be strenuously opposing any application for bail. Just days before Christmas 2000, the investigating officer told the family that the DPP was withdrawing the charges because of a lack of evidence.
The McIlwaine family were angry and nonplussed in equal measure by the development - they had been told by the RUC that the evidence against the man was extensive, including eyewitness identification, the placing of his car at the scene, as well as fibre and footprint matches.
"At the beginning of the investigation I was allowed into the incident room to see part of the case files which dealt with the recommendation of the DPP. Now I'm not allowed into the incident room and they've been fighting for two years in court to stop us getting a proper investigative inquest," says Paul.
For the past two years the family have been frustrated in their attempt to have a full and proper inquest into the murder of the two boys.
However, last month Justice Kerr ruled that the families are entitled to the disclosure of all the information that the coroner has and that their human rights were violated when they were denied access to the documentation. The family claim that the PSNI approached them and told them that if they didn't stop criticising them publicly for their handling of the investigation they would not release papers allowing them to have an inquest. That threat was scuppered last month when Justice Kerr ruled in their favour and against the PSNI.
"Everybody's been blocking us," says Paul. "We've gone to every politician in the country and they don't want to know."
It was only after they were advised to approach British Irish Rights Watch and Relatives For Justice that the families began to make progress in the case. Hence last month's Belfast court victory, one small step, they believe, on the road to unearthing a cover-up that is protecting an informer within the UVF - the man responsible for their son's murder.
UVF leader Richard Jameson's murder, a month before David and Andrew's killing, is generally cited as the reason for the murder of David McIlwaine and Andrew Robb. The UVF swore vengeance on the LVF and in the weeks after Jameson was gunned down his associates began removing LVF murals in Portadown and handing out leaflets warning parents to keep their children away from 'LVF drug dealers'.
Paul McIlwaine says the RUC told him that they had intelligence that a UVF team was to be sent to Tandragee that night to kill two LVF drug dealers. But the pushers left town early, and the killers were to turn their attention elsewhere. They recognised Andrew Robb from a photograph in a local paper in which he was photographed beside LVF leader Billy Wright at the time he broke away from the UVF. The McIlwaines have since spoken to the leadership of the UVF and they've been told that while the killings hadn't been sanctioned by the organisation, UVF members had indeed been responsible.
The family also claims that a few months into the investigation they were told by a senior PSNI officer that four arrests were about to be made in connection with the murders. Later that night one of Paul McIlwaine's relatives received a phone call from an out-of-town loyalist figure who asked to meet him. He told the relative nobody would be charged with David's murder, despite what he had been told by the PSNI, and went on to mention a number of things that only someone with access to inside police information could possibly know.
"He said that if those four men were charged as members of the UVF, David Ervine and Billy Hutchinson would not be able to sustain their place in the political process, and if they walk it's over. None of them were ever charged. He was right after all."
Paul is convinced that one or more of the killers of the two teenagers is working for Special Branch. "What the PSNI and the British government are saying here is that these men can keep on killing innocent people because in the bigger picture they are giving us information."
The bigger picture for McIlwaine family means finding the killers. Through a reliable and credible source the Andersonstown News can reveal that a man from North Belfast who has been responsible for 14 deaths, including Catholics and Protestants, played a role in the murders. He is also the Special Branch informant who is being blamed for the 1997 UVF murder of Raymond McCord in North Belfast. Mr McCord's father, also Raymond, complained to the Police Ombudsman's office after becoming dissatisfied with the police handling of his son's case. Under the legislation the only thing that is made public in the Police Ombudsman's investigation is the determination. However, Mr McCord won a judicial review of that restriction and was given access to the murder file. In the file is the name of the person who killed Raymond McCord Jnr. In that file it is also alleged that this man killed 13 other people. Through our source we can reveal that if the Ombudsman's Office is given the resources to fully investigate the McCord case that it will reveal that this person was also involved in the murders of David McIlwaine and Andrew Robb. The NIO are currently refusing to allocate resources to the Ombudsman's Office to enable it to fully conduct its investigation.
"David was an innocent child and he was butchered and all we want is justice," says Paul. "But the powers-that-be have their own strategic interests which govern why they won't prosecute this case.
"I don't understand it. I lived by the law, I'm not a paramilitary and I've never lifted my hand to anybody. But when you have this case here going nowhere and the Raymond McCord case going nowhere you have to start asking questions.
"I met with Danny McColgan's family. A guy is stopped in a car and he says he has information about the murder of Danny McColgan. He's brought into a police station and then released, and a half an hour after being released he's found at the bottom of a cliff after going jogging. You have to start asking, what's going on? There's too much of it.
"If they knew that two LVF men were going to be murdered that night then why didn't the police have an operation up and running to try and prevent it?
"I died on February the 19th 2000. Our lives finished on that day, plain and simple. I will exhaust every legal avenue to bring those responsible to justice. The UVF, the LVF, the police, the Special Branch and the British government are all responsible for our son's death and they have a lot to answer for. They knew that night when they were killing him that our David was innocent."
At a local funeral parlour an undertaker spent all day working on David's ravaged body to make it presentable to his family who were determined to see him one last time before he was buried.
The McIlwaines took one look and closed the coffin for the last time. While leading UDA men Johnny Adair and John White showed up at Andrew Robb's funeral the day before, the McIlwaines were determined that no loyalist paramilitaries would attend their son's burial. A month later, the local Catholic Church was packed out when David's friends held a month's mind Mass for him.
"That shows you what kind of lad he was," says his father.
Last month when the McIlwaines were in Laganside Courthouse in Belfast they were once more ignored by the media spotlight. There were no prominent politicians promoting their case.
"It was the day of Children in Need and yet no-one was interested in two kids who were butchered down a country lane. We were trying to get justice for two innocent kids and none of these politicians were interested in us.
"But we won't give up. They won't bury the truth."