Colm Murphy: IRA's Kingsmills Massacre victim calls for legacy inquest to name leading republican as chief suspect

The IRA stopped a minibus of 10 civilian workers near Kingsmills in south Armagh in 1976 and gunned them down.

In 2017 a detective from PSNI Crime Operations told the Kingsmills inquest that intelligence reports identified suspect S91 [Murphy] as “the man in charge” of the massacre.

Both the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) and PSNI evidence to the inquest agree on several points about Suspect A or S91 as they respectively labelled him.

Both agree that this suspect was the armed hijacker of the van used by the Kingsmills gunmen.

And both agree that in the 1980s he was arrested in the USA trying to buy weapons for PIRA and was jailed there as a result.

The HET also said Suspect A was one of those found liable in civil action by the Omagh bomb relatives.

Colin Worton, whose brother Kenneth was killed at Kingsmills, said the details clearly identify Murphy as the chief suspect. “It could only be him,” he said.

He was one of many Kingsmills relatives who walked away from the inquest in 2020 because the coroner declined to name dead suspects. “So I firmly believe that Colm Murphy should be named now too, now that there is no risk to his life,” he added.

Kingsmills survivor Alan Black has taken a judicial review to press the inquest to name two deceased suspects.

“He could be named now, but he is dead,” he said. “He was dead to me a long time ago. I have no feelings for him whatsoever. He lived by a different code than I lived by.”

He noted that in 2016 a palm print found on the IRA getaway vehicle was matched to a suspect – with Mr Murphy going public claiming he was going to be held responsible. However, it later transpired that the palm print belonged to someone else.

The inquest has closed and a final report is being compiled.

Mr Murphy had been found liable for the 1998 Omagh attack, which killed 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, and injured hundreds more.

In 2002 he was found guilty in Dublin of causing the Omagh bomb, and jailed for 14 years. However, this was overturned in 2005 and he was cleared in a retrial in 2010.

In a landmark civil action a Belfast judge ruled in 2009 that Murphy and four others were all liable for the Omagh bomb, ordering them to pay £1.6m to 12 relatives. In 2011 he won an appeal against the verdict, but was again found liable in 2013.

Police intelligence from the Kingsmills inquest linked suspect S91 (Murphy) to: the murder of five men in Tullyvallen Orange Hall in 1975; forty-six murders from 1974-76 – 22 civilians, including a boy aged seven, 21 soldiers, two RUC officers and one IRA member; and the murders of senior RUC officers Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan.

Kenny Donaldson is Director of Services with the South East Fermanagh Foundation, which represents a number of the Omagh bomb families and supports others in assisting those impacted by the Kingsmills and Tullyvallen massacres.

"Colm Murphy was a systemic terrorist who sadly was involved with subversive Irish Republican organisations for the greater part of his adult life, many homes are not the same due to his direct actions and/or via those of his associates,” he said.

"However, we take absolutely no glee in his death, but we do mourn the way in which he chose to live his life and the impact these choices had upon his own neighbours.”

"Our thoughts and prayers are principally with the Omagh families but with all other innocents of whom his criminal actions were linked.”