[55] Both the silencer and pistol which was later established to have been the same one used in the Miami Showband killings were found by the security forces at the home of Edward Sinclair. 1,453 Vintage Crime Scene Photos Premium High Res Photos Browse 1,453 vintage crime scene photos stock photos and images available, or start a new search to explore more stock photos and images. They were both present when the Miami Showband bomb exploded, but the shootings which followed seconds later - including the slaughter of Fran O'Toole - were mainly the work of John Somerville. It was my own personal feelings and convictions at the time these things happened. Using self-loading rifles and sub-machine guns, the patrol shot back, killing three of their attackers and wounding another. Concerned they might be damaged, McAlea first approached the two gunmen and asked if he could remove his saxophone. [47] The RT programme Today Tonight aired a documentary in 1987 in which it claimed that former UVF associates of Harris Boyle revealed to the programme's researchers that Nairac had deliberately detonated the bomb to eliminate Boyle, with whom he had carried out the Green killing. The gunman turned him round, punched him hard in the back and pushed him on the shoulder back into the line-up. The Historical Enquiries Team (HET), which was set up to investigate the more controversial Troubles-related deaths, released its report on the Miami Showband killings to the victims' families in December 2011. The Miami Showband reformed in 2008, with Stephen Travers, Des McAlea, and Ray Millar, plus new members. However, Martin Dillon alleged that the bomb was meant to go off in the Irish Republic. Griffin based her theory on the nine bullets that were fired from a Luger into McCoy's body and that Jackson's fingerprints were found on the silencer used for a Luger. [67][clarification needed], A number of suspects were arrested by the RUC in early August 1975. [21][22][31] Travers thought that McCoy, a Protestant from Northern Ireland, was familiar with security checkpoints and had reckoned the regular British Army would be more efficient than the Ulster Defense Regiment (UDR), who had a reputation for unprofessional and unpredictable behaviour, especially toward people from the Republic. 50 True-Crime Documentaries on Netflix | 2023 . I was given a sub-machine gun but I had never fired it. Others had already been convicted for the Miami attack and they wanted John to stay in the UVF, but to work for them," said a former loyalist prisoner who served time in prison with Somerville. They Cloned Tyrone. He wore a uniform and beret noticeably different from the others. Browse 22 the miami showband stock photos and images available, or start a new search to explore more stock photos and images. No one forced me. A musician who survived the Miami showband massacre has, 40 years on, made an appeal to trace a young couple who helped him at the time. It had been travelling from Banbridge to Bleary with nine people on board; all were Catholics and most had been returning from a regular bingo session. When they agreed he placed it on the ground, opened its case and then went back into line; however this time he stood first in the line-up closest to the minibus when previously he had been third. He served in C Company, 11th Battalion UDR. About 10 gunmen were at the checkpoint, according to author and journalist Martin Dillon. In his flat - which few people visited - Somerville kept a large photograph of Robin Jackson on the wall of his living room. [101], A Netflix documentary titled ReMastered: The Miami Showband Massacre was released 22 March 2019, highlighting the efforts of Steve Travers to track down who authorized the attack, for what purposes, and to get an admission of culpability.[102][103]. [70] Crozier, McDowell, and Somerville were released after 1998 under the terms of the Belfast Agreement. [34], Thomas Crozier recounted that on the night of the killings, he had driven to the grounds of a school in Lurgan where he had picked up two men. Harris Boyle and Wesley Somerville were given UVF paramilitary funerals conducted by Free Presbyterian minister William McCrea, a Democratic Unionist Party politician. They were: lead vocalist and keyboard player Fran O'Toole, 28, Catholic; guitarist Anthony (Tony) Geraghty, 24, Catholic, from Dublin; trumpeter Brian McCoy, 32, Protestant, from Caledon, County Tyrone; saxophonist Des McAlea (a.k.a. "After the explosion, the red mist came down and I went mad with a machine-gun," he once told a fellow loyalist prisoner. The 55-cent stamp, designed with a 1967 publicity photograph of the band, included two of the slain members, Fran O'Toole and Brian McCoy, as part of the line-up when Dickie Rock was the frontman. In December 1972, Rock left the band to be briefly replaced by two brothers, Frankie and Johnny Simon. [21] He was replaced by Johnny Brown, who in turn was replaced by Dave Monks until Stephen Travers eventually became the band's permanent bass player. According to Kerr, on 31 July 1975 at 4 am Nairac had started out on a road journey from London to Scotland for a fishing holiday. Somerville was sent to jail for 35 years and, despite being firmly opposed to the Good Friday Agreement, he was released under its terms after spending just 18 years behind bars. [21][36] He suggested that had all gone according to plan, the loyalist extremists would have been able to clandestinely bomb the Republic of Ireland, yet claim that the band were republican bomb-smugglers carrying explosives on behalf of the IRA. Days before the Miami attack, Robin Jackson murdered William Hanna, the UVF commander in mid-Ulster. Geraghty was engaged to be married. 2023 Getty Images. [42], When the RUC arrived at the site they found five dead bodies, a seriously injured Stephen Travers, body parts, the smoldering remains of the destroyed minibus, debris from the bomb blast, bullets, spent cartridges and the band members' personal possessions, including clothing, shoes and a photograph of the group, strewn across the area. Multiple jurors also cried, covered their mouths and turned away as the graphic. [23], According to the Irish Times, at the height of Irish showbands' popularity (from the 1950s to the 1970s), up to as many as 700 bands travelled to venues all over Ireland on a nightly basis.[24]. [6] The existence of these talks led unionists to believe that they were about to be abandoned by the British government and forced into a united Ireland; as a result, the loyalist paramilitary groups reacted with a violence that, combined with the tit-for-tat retaliations from the IRA (despite their ceasefire), made 1975 one of the "bloodiest years of the conflict". [53] The three convicted UVF men, although admitting to having been at the scene, denied having shot anyone. The year 1975 was marked by an escalation in sectarian attacks and a vicious feud between the two main loyalist paramilitary groups, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA). However, the officers suspected that the checkpoint was fake. O'Toole and McCoy were both married; each had two children. He was unimpressed by the UVF men he met in the loyalist stronghold. Despite his conversion to Christianity, Somerville remained virulently anti-Catholic and he strongly opposed the Good Friday Agreement. Miami Showband massacre survivors and relatives to get 1.5m in damages 'I wake up to these murders every day of my life,' band member Des McAlea tells court Expand The Miami Showband (from. [65] Earlier that night, three RUC officers in an unmarked car had been stopped at a checkpoint but allowed through. The submachine guns, which had been stolen years earlier from a former member of the B Specials,[52] were linked to prior and later sectarian killings, whereas the Luger had been used to kill leading IRA member John Francis Green the previous January. Findings in a report carried out by the PSNI's Historic Enquiries Team into the Miami atrocity stated that there was fingerprint evidence linking Robin Jackson to the attack. [25] As McCoy rolled down the window and produced his driving licence, gunmen came up to the minibus and one of them said in a Northern Irish accent, "Goodnight, fellas. The government held the view that the British Government had not done enough to stop sectarian assassinations in Northern Ireland. She furthermore opined that Jackson was the man Travers saw kicking McCoy's body to make sure he was dead. [84], The families held a press conference in Dublin after the report was released. Five people were killed, including three members of The Miami Showband, who were then one of Ireland's most popular cabaret bands. In January 2015, he was found dead in his Shankill Road flat. "A hundred of your men haven't done what I've done," he told a UVF leader. [100] According to the report, Jackson had claimed during police interrogations that after the shootings, a senior RUC officer had advised him to "lie low". [22] Near the junction with Buskhill Road they were flagged down by armed men dressed in British Army uniforms waving a red torch in a circular motion. And two years later when he was scooped in an RUC raid in Dungannon on September 26, 1980, he made a detailed confession outlining his involvement in numerous UVF murders. [5] This move made loyalists apprehensive and suspicious that a secret accord was being conducted between the British government and the IRA, and that Northern Ireland's Protestants would be "sold out". Verzamel, beheer en geef commentaar bij uw bestanden. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. While the Miami is synonymous, for many, with the atrocity, the musical tells the whole story of the band, Lynch says, from when it re-formed in 1967, and Fran O'Toole and Des Lee first joined . [12] Journalist Joe Tiernan suggested that Hanna was shot for refusing to participate in the Miami Showband attack and that he had become an informer for the Garda in exchange for immunity from prosecution for the Dublin bombings. O'Toole was noted for his good looks and popularity with female fans,[20] and was described by the Miami Showband's former bass guitarist, Paul Ashford, as having been the "greatest soul singer" in Ireland. [30] The UVF's plan was that the bomb would explode once the minibus had reached Newry, killing all on board. Robin Jackson died of cancer in May 1998 aged 49. [80] The same panel revealed that about six weeks before the attack, Thomas Crozier, Jackson and the latter's brother-in-law Samuel Fulton Neill, were arrested for the possession of four shotguns. 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