James Nesbitt MBE (29 September 1934 – 27 August 2014) was a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Detective Chief Inspector who was best known for having headed the Murder Squad team investigating the notorious Shankill Butchers' killings in the mid-1970s. Working from the C Division headquarters at Tennent Street off Shankill Road, Belfast, he eventually caught most of the "Butchers" which led to their convictions. Having received a total of 67 commendations throughout his career, this is the highest number for any policeman in the history of the United Kingdom. In 1980, he was given the MBE "in recognition of his courage and success in combating terrorism".
Early years
Nesbitt was born in 1934 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the son of James, an electrician, and Ellen. He was brought up in the Church of Ireland religion and lived with his parents and elder sister, Maureen in a terraced house in Cavehill Road, North Belfast which was considered to have been a middle-class area at the time. Having first attended the Model Primary School in Ballysillan Road, in 1946 he moved on to Belfast Technical High School where he excelled as a pupil. From an early age Nesbitt was fascinated by detective stories and dreamed about becoming a detective himself.
As a child he avidly read all the celebrated murder trials in the newspapers. At the age of 16, he opted to leave school and went to work as a sales representative for a linen company where he remained for seven years.
Royal Ulster Constabulary At the age of 23, Nesbitt sought a more exciting career and realised his childhood dream by joining the Royal Ulster Constabulary as a uniformed constable. He applied at the York Road station in Belfast and passed his entry exams. His first duty station was at Swatragh, County Londonderry . During this period the Irish Republican Army's Border Campaign was being waged. Nesbitt earned two commendations during the 12 months he spent at the Swatragh station, having fought off two separate IRA gun attacks which had seen a B Specials man shot. In 1958 he was transferred to Coleraine RUC station where his superiors granted him the opportunity to assist in detective work, and three years later was promoted to the rank of detective.
He married Marion Wilson in 1967 and began to raise a family. By 1971 he was back in his native Belfast and held the rank of Detective Sergeant. He had entered the RUC's CID section and was based at Musgrave Street station. Many members of the RUC found themselves targeted by both republican and loyalist paramilitaries as the conflict known as The Troubles grew in intensity during the late 1960s and early 1970s.Taylor, Peter (1999) "Loyalists" .London: Bloomsbury Plc. pp.80–84
C Division
In September 1973 he was promoted to Detective Inspector and moved to head up the RUC's C or "Charlie" Division based in Tennent Street, off the Shankill Road, the heartland of loyalism and home of many loyalist paramilitaries. C Division covered not only the Shankill but also the republican Ardoyne and "The Bone" areas. The area had already been subjected to bombing attacks, rioting, home-burnings, vigilante patrols, street barricades, random sectarian murders and killings as part of sporadic loyalist feuds. Nesbitt's responsibilities were immense as C Division covered an entire fifteen square mile district which contained a population of 150,000 and more sectarian killer gangs than any other district in Northern Ireland. Furthermore, the majority of the violence committed within an area of just three square miles contained every paramilitary group – loyalist and republican – which existed in Northern Ireland at that time. The UVF Brigade Staff (Belfast leadership) was based on the Shankill Road.
Shortly before he was sent to C Division his policing abilities were highly praised in this assessment,
He stimulates interest among his colleagues, often drawing on his personal experiences marrying theory with practice. He is thoroughly sound and reliable and upholds the best traditions of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. He brings great credit to the Force.
Although he encountered considerable suspicion from his subordinates when he arrived at Tennent Street, he managed to eventually create much camaraderie within the ranks of those under his command when before there had been rivalry and discord. C Division would lose a total of 12 men as a result of IRA attacks. Described by Martin Dillon as a controlled man, he was also friendly, generous and displayed a "black" sense of humour. Moreover, he was a devoted family man and highly respected by his subordinates, who typically addressed him as "Boss" or "Sir". Belfast News Letter journalist Bobbie Hanvey who interviewed him, described him as "gentle in manner, extremely soft-spoken and a dapper dresser.
During his tenure as Detective Chief Inspector at Tennent Street, Nesbitt and his team investigated a total of 311 killings and solved around 250 of the cases. Over one weekend in the 1970s, there were a total of nine murders committed in his district. He personally conducted interviews with some of the most ruthless and dangerous killers in Northern Ireland.
Two of the three cars used in the May 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings which had been carried out by the UVF's Belfast and Mid-Ulster brigades, were hijacked in Agnes Street and Torrens Road, both within Nesbitt's jurisdiction.Houses of the Oireachtas, Joint Committee on Justice, Defence, Equality and Women's Rights Interim Report on the Report of the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings, The Barron Report, cain.ulst.ac.uk, December 2003. Retrieved 28 September 2014.
Shankill Butchers' killings
By 1975, Nesbitt was encountering death and serious injury on a daily basis as the violence in Northern Ireland showed no signs of abating; however towards the end of that year, he was faced with the first of a series of brutal killings that added a new dimension to the relentless tit-for-tat killings between Catholics and Protestants that had already made 1975 "one of the bloodiest years of the conflict". By this time he had already earned 48 commendations for his excellent detective work.
On the morning of 25 November after the body of Francis Crossin, a 34-year-old Catholic, was discovered in an entry between Silvio Street and Ambleside Street in the vicinity of Tennent Street station, Nesbitt and his Murder Squad which consisted of ten CID detectives, including himself, immediately launched an investigation into the savage killing. He had been in bed when he received a telephone call from the duty officer at the station advising him about the body "dumped on his patch". He arrived at the murder scene as the victim's body was being taken away by mortuary personnel. Nesbitt addressed his nine-man murder squad on 26 November with the following statement: "We're looking for somebody more brutal than the average terrorist and we'd better get to him". Crossin had had his throat slashed so deeply by his assailant that he was almost decapitated with just a tissue of flesh connecting the head to the trunk. When his corpse was found the head was lying almost at right angles to his body. Later Nesbitt's team of ten would be augmented by men from the Belfast Regional Crime Squad and an undercover surveillance team.
Less than three months later there was another killing. Following a telephone call to a Belfast newspaper made by a male caller using the pseudonym "Major Long of the Young Militants" on 7 February 1976, Nesbitt and his team found the body of Catholic man Joseph Quinn (55) lying facedown on a grass bank off Forthriver Way, in the Glencairn estate near the Upper Shankill as instructed by the caller. He had been badly beaten about the head and face and his throat deeply cut. The man calling himself "Major Long" had claimed Quinn was a "militant Republican" who had been killed in retaliation for the fatal shooting of two Protestant policemen by the IRA the day before.Note: The two RUC men shot dead by the IRA were James Blakeley (42) and William Murtagh (31). [CAIN: Sutton Index of Deaths – 1976] The name "Major Long" derived from "The Long Bar", one of the Shankill Road pubs the "Butchers" frequented and often set out from to carry out their killings as they had done on the night of 6/7 February. Nesbitt did not connect the name "Long" to the Shankill pub which was a known haunt by loyalist paramilitaries. On the morning of 23 February a woman who was putting out her rubbish in an entry that ran between Mayo Street and Esmond Street in the Shankill Road area discovered the body of Francis Rice (24). Rice, an unemployed Catholic road labourer, had his throat hacked through almost to the spine. Nesbitt concluded the latest killings were perpetrated by the same person or persons that had killed Crossin. By this stage the media was already using the term "the Butchers" to describe the killings. Despite Nesbitt and his men often working 18 hours a day, seven days a week in an attempt to apprehend the culprits, Nesbitt's major obstacles in solving the crime was the lack of manpower, resources and the reluctance of the local population to come forward out of fear of reprisals from paramilitaries."RUC defended on 'Butchers' probe". Belfast News Letter. 30 March 2011. Retrieved 6 June 2012 Furthermore, the killers left behind no witnesses or evidence which provided clues as to their identity.
When a paramilitary killing took place, Nesbitt and his Murder Squad were aided by other members of CID for at least three days. The detectives attempted to cover every patch of ground in the area where it was believed the paramilitaries operated. When the period of time terminated, the squad went back to teamwork and the other members of the force resumed their handling of crimes unconnected with paramilitary activity. Nesbitt and his men viewed all paramilitaries as criminals no matter from which community they originated.
He received his first lead in the "Butchers"' killings when the woman who found Francis Rice's body said that on the previous night she heard voices with Belfast accents in the entry off Esmond Street and the chugging noise of a taxi. Her home overlooked the entry and the sounds had been clearly audible. Black London-style taxis were frequently used in Belfast as a means of transportation and over 200 plied up and down the Shankill Road every day. As a result, Nesbitt ordered that all the taxis in the Shankill were to be taken in and forensically tested, including a black taxi belonging to one of the gang, William Moore, a former meat packer. However, as the vehicle had been thoroughly cleaned, no evidence remained to incriminate Moore in the attacks. Moore subsequently destroyed his taxi.
Lenny Murphy