The Seamus Ludlow Truth and Justice Campaign.

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Welcome to the Fourth Page of the website for the Ludlow family's Seamus Ludlow Truth and Justice Campaign. This page was last updated:15/01/03

This is a photograph of innocent victim Seamus Ludlow (47), Thistlecross, Mountpleasant, Dundalk, County Louth, who was murdered in County Louth by the UDR and Red Hand Commando on 1/2 May 1976.

"Mambo" Speaks Out.

Of the four loyalist suspects for the murder of Seamus Ludlow, this Ludlow family website will only identify by name the man who claims to be a witness to the crime. Paul Hosking has come forward and told his story to Ed Moloney of the Sunday Tribune. He has also given a full account to the RUC.

The Ludlow family's website will not reveal the names of the other three suspects, though they are all known widely within the family and within the journalistic community. However, this page is based on an interview that one of these men gave to a Belfast newspaper, the Sunday Life, but his name will not be revealed here. His name has recently revealed by journalist Joe Tiernan in his book The Dublin and Monaghan Bombings and the Murder Triangle, which was published in December 2002.

After his release from RUC custody, nothing more was heard about the man known as "Mambo" until he emerged to give an exclusive interview with journalist Jackie McKeown for the Belfast Sunday Life on 20 September 1998, in which he was identified by name, and insisting that he had nothing to do with the murder of Seamus Ludlow. Speaking from his Staffordshire home, "Mambo" said:

"It's well known that I'm closely associated with the loyalist Red Hand Commando.
But I had nothing to do with that case on the border."

This graphic was used by the Irish independent TV3s current affairs programme 20/20, on 14 November 1999, to indicate the paramilitary and UDR affiliations of "Mambo" and his three companions who were involved in the murder of Seamus Ludlow. The two figures on top, neither of whom have been publicly identified, though their names are known to the Ludlow family, were members of both the illegal Red Hand Commando murder gang and the British Army's UDR. "Mambo", another Red Hand Commando and a suspected agent for the British security services, is indicated at bottom left. The fourth man, Paul Hosking, was a member of the UDA, though his affiliation was not indicated in this graphic. The graphic links to a page about Paul Hosking's account of Seamus Ludlow's murder.

The 45-year-old had been living in England for some ten years and he said that when the police arrested him he thought that it was for the murder of former Sinn Fein Vice-President Maire Drumm, who was shot in her Mater Hospital bed in Belfast on 28 October 1976, only a few months after Seamus Ludlow's murder. "Mambo" claimed that he thought he was being lifted for the Drumm murder because he had been lifted for that before, "but that was on the word of a supergrass". The Sunday Life continues:

"Then I found out the fourth person supposed to be involved in the (Ludlow) murder was myself. The article I read was that I'd done the shooting. How was I, at the age of 23, supposed to give orders to members of the British Army?"

"Mambo" admitted being in the Maze for convictions of robbery and blackmail, but denied membership of any paramilitary association.

And he claimed that officers dug up his garden, towed away a car and turned rooms upside down during his arrest, thereby jeopardising his safety.

". . .I've always been a loyalist, always been closely identified with the loyalist cause," he said."I danced with the paramilitaries, but no one can identify me with any paramilitary group."I'm not a threat to the security forces, but I do look after my own

In the course of this interview "Mambo" has made contradictory statements regarding his alleged links with the Red Hand Commando. However, his links to that sectarian murder gang came under scrutiny yet again on 19 March 1999, when the following message of sympathy to the family of the recently murdered Red Hand Commando Frankie Currie appeared in the Belfast Telegraph of that date. It read: "Deepest sympathy to Cassie, Karen and family. From Mambo".

This photograph of the memorial placed in the lane where the body of Seamus Ludlow was discovered on Sunday, 2 May, 1976, is a link to the excellent website of the Pat Finucane Centre, which features several Sunday Tribune reports from journalist Ed Moloney, including his interview with Paul Hosking.

The insensitive decision by the Northern Ireland DPP on 15 October 1999 not to press charges against "Mambo" and his three co-accused for the murder of Seamus Ludlow confirms the British authorities' determination to prevent the emergence of full truth and the securing of justice for the family of the innocent victim.

Since it took a full year for this cruel decision to be made, it can be appreciated that the weight of evidence in favour of prosecutions must have been enormous and that it was political consideration which won the day. Since two of the suspects had made statements while in RUC custody it would seem that they at least should be facing charges, but they could not be put on trial without risk of unexpected disclosures in court. If "Mambo" and his dark secrets are to be protected the DPP can not risk putting any of the suspects in the dock.

The Ludlow family is aware that "Mambo" probably knew in advance that there would be no charges, since he boasted about this to a journalist more than a week prior to the DPP's decision being revealed to the Ludlow family. Clearly he knows too much and the authorities were afraid to bring him to justice. Seamus Ludlow's murder remains for the British judicial system the non-event it has always been since the cover-up was first mounted.

Therefore the killer gang's official protection continues and injustice reigns. British justice has once again failed the Ludlow family. The family of Seamus Ludlow has suffered a setback, which was not unexpected, but justice is still the goal. The Ludlow family remains determined to struggle on.

Postscript:

The man known as Mambo, of Redbrook Lane, Brereton, Rugely, Staffordshire, made the news again in February 2000 following his conviction and imprisonment for assaulting a man in England. The Post, a weekly newspaper in Rugeley,, on Thursday 10 February, reported how he was jailed for two years and eight months by a court for attacking a man he claimed called him "Semtex Sam".

Mambo inflicted "wicked" head injuries to an Ivan Shirley when he attacked him with a weapon thought to have been the butt end of a snooker cue, Wolverhampton Crown Court was told.

Assistant Recorder John Aucott told the 47 year old defendent that he accepted that he had been subjected to verbal abuse. "But there was no justification in allowing it to boil over into violence", he added. "You exhibited all the hall marks of a terrorist - an occupation you profess to despise."

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