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Seamus
Ludlow's murder - a summary
2nd May 1976 : A County
Louth man, Seamus Ludlow (47) - an innocent Catholic bachelor and forestry
worker - was murdered, near Dundalk, by a four-man group of Loyalists/British
Army members from north Down. The loyalist killers were never brought to justice:
indeed, there are strong suspicions that they were protected by authorities on
both sides of the Irish border who shamefully colluded with them.
Seamus Ludlow
(pictured above) was shot three
times, and his lifeless body was discovered the next day. His body
was dumped on a ditch down a lane, off the Bog Road, a half mile from his home
at Mountpleasant, County Louth. In the lane a simple
memorial now stands in silent testimony of the brutal crime that was committed
there.
Seamus was abducted shortly after he left a Dundalk public
house, the Lisdoo Arms, on the N1 road, just north of the town, around
midnight on the Saturday night (May 1st). He was soon afterwards shot three times. His
body was dumped on a ditch down a lane, off the Bog Road, a half mile from his
Thistlecross, Mountpleasant home, near the Ballymascanlan Hotel and an ancient monument known as Proleek
Dolmen.
The innocent
victim was callously smeared as an informer, allegedly murdered by the IRA,
apparently to protect his loyalist and British Army
killers.
This vile smear was spread
by the Irish Gardai, and the
British Army, and his grieving family denied justice to this day.
This murder became
a source of propaganda for the British Army and SAS. Seamus Ludlow's sectarian
killers stayed free - and allowed to kill again. It is now known that members
of this gang were involved in another foul murder three weeks later - when
they mistakenly killed a Protestant man named David Spratt while attempting to murder his
Catholic brother-in-law. Two men, including one of Seamus Ludlow's suspected
killers, were convicted and imprisoned for the Spratt murder.
Seamus
Ludlow was a well known member or supporter of the
Fine Gael party that was at that time the major party in the coalition
government in Dublin.
It is believed that Seamus Ludlow had
unwittingly accepted a lift offered by his killers, who did not know him. He
may have been murdered simply because he was a Catholic, or because he was
mistaken for or instead of another intended victim.
This latter theory is now widely accepted.
Indeed, the name of the actual intended victim, (now deceased) a native of
County Down, then living in Dundalk, is now widely known. It appears that the
UDR and Red Hand Commando killers were unable to find their man in Dundalk and
were on their way home when they fell upon the unfortunate Seamus
Ludlow.
Whatever the reason for his foul murder,
Seamus Ludlow's killers stayed free to kill again (and they did kill again!),
even though they were known to the Gardai and the RUC (as early as 1977 if not
before then), while the victim's good name was smeared with disgusting false
allegations that he was murdered by the IRA because he was an informer.
The
Gardai went further by attempting to implicate members of the Ludlow family in
this foul murder - even though they knew all along who the real killers were
since a file naming the suspects was received from the RUC in 1979!.
Seamus Ludlow's British Army (Ulster
Defence Regiment)/Loyalist killers from north Down were never brought to
justice on either side of the Irish border, while the innocent victim's good
name and his family were smeared. The Ludlow family now knows that the
authorities on both sides of the Irish border had identified his killers
as far back as 1977 (by the RUC) and 1979 (when the information was passed to
the Gardai), if not much earlier.
An RUC file, dating from 1977, naming at least
three of the suspects, was handed to the Gardai in 1979, but nothing more was
done on either side of the border.
Seamus Ludlow became a forgotten victim of the
Irish troubles, his life of no consequence to the Irish police who were
charged with bringing his killers to justice. The Ludlow family wants to know
why Seamus Ludlow was so expendable. Why was the murder investigation wound up
after only 19 days? Who were they trying to protect by smearing the victim?
Why was his murder not investigated in the way that the law
demanded?
The Ludlow family continues to campaign on
behalf of their murdered relative. They demand public inquiries into Seamus
Ludlow's foul murder, the failure to bring his killers to justice, and the
cover-up and smear campaign which protected the known killers for 23 years -
now rapidly approaching 30 years of protection and immunity from
justice.
As
indicated above, Seamus Ludlow was falsely alleged to have been
an informer killed by the IRA, and named members of his family were
unjustifiably alleged to
have been involved in the crime. As an alleged informer there would be little
sympathy in Irish society for Seamus Ludlow and few outside his family would
care if the killers were never caught. The Ludlow family cared and they
were determined that this crime and the lies would not be
forgotten.
These cruel lies continued until the emergence
of new, in fact long-suppressed, evidence in 1998, which pointed to an
official cover-up to protect Seamus Ludlow's UDR/Red Hand Commando killers,
one of whom may have been an intelligence asset working under cover within the
death squad. The four main suspects and their real intended victim were publicly
named by the Irish
Examiner and the Sunday
World in 2005.
February 1998 - Four Loyalists, including two who were formerly members of the
British Army's Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) - and one a Captain! - were
arrested by the then Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) for questioning about the
May 1976 murder of Seamus Ludlow. All four men were released without charge, even
though two had made statements while in RUC custody, incriminating themselves
and the two others.
The Six Counties' Director of Public Prosecutions
(DPP) also failed to bring charges almost a year later. With justsice again
denied, the Ludlow family renewed calls for public inquiries into both the
murder and the cover-up on both sides of the Irish border. These calls remain
unheeded to this day! The British authorities in Belfast have consistently
ignored the Ludlow family, while the Irish authorities adopt delaying tactics
with a succession of inconclusive private inquiries that fail to satisfy the
Ludlow family's demands for truth and justice.
29 April 2001 - Seamus Ludlow's 25th
anniversary was commemorated
at the site of his foul murder. There was still no justice, but the Ludlow
family was determined to tolerate lies and cover-ups no longer. Their campaign
still demands public inquiries, the full truth behind Seamus Ludlow's cruel
murder, and an end to the cover-up and British and Irish government collusion
with the loyalist murder gangs.
21 February 2002 - The Ludlow family was informed that
the Dublin Government had decided to disregard their demands for a public
inquiry and that it would go ahead with a private inquiry under Mr Justice
Henry Barron. The family, accompanied by Jane Winter, Director, BRITISH IRISH
Rights Watch, London, had travelled to Dublin hoping to hear something
different from the Irish authorities.
This information was conveyed to the family by Mr Michael
McDowell, the then Attorney General (now Minister for Justice). The AG
was reassured that the Ludlow family's position regarding the private Barron
Inquiry had not altered since their previous unsatisfactory meeting with Mr
John O'Donoghue, then Minister for Justice. For more about this please go to
our Latest
Reports page or read the report from the Dundalk
Democrat. See also The Irish News, 23 February 2002: 'Public
inquiry needed'
Meeting
Police Ombudsman
4 March
2002 - The Ludlow family has had an important meeting with Mrs Nuala
O'Loan, the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland.
Members of the Ludlow family, once again accompanied by Jane Winter
of BIRW and a family solicitor, met with Mrs Nuala O'Loan, the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland,
and her investigations team in Belfast.
Among a number of surprising
revelations was the fact that the RUC first became aware of the Loyalist
killers' identities and other substantive information as early as September
1977 and that, for reasons not yet specified, this information was withheld
from the gardai until 15 February 1979.
This fact poses important
questions regarding the role of the RUC - why did the RUC not pass the
information onto the Gardai until almost eighteen months later? What, if any,
action did the RUC take against any of the four prime suspects between 1977
and 1979?
It was revealed that the
initial gardai murder investigation was wound up on 21 May 1976, after only 19
days! No explanation for this has been given.
It was also revealed that
there was no new information on file at the time of the four arrests in
February 1998, and that the arrests were based solely on the information that
had been available in 1979 - or was that 1977? Why then did neither the RUC
nor the Gardai move against the four suspects more than twenty years
previously?
No information could be
provided to account for the RUC's failure to pass the information on the
gardai before 1979, nor could it be shown that the RUC did anything at all
with this information.
The Ludlow family was not at
all impressed by this apparent failure of the RUC to apprehend or take any
action at all against the killers of Seamus Ludlow. The Ludlow family does not
share the ombudsman's belief that the RUC behaved properly in this case. The
equally shameful and inexplicable failure of the gardai to act with the
information they received in February 1979 in no way excuses the RUC's
inaction.
See interview with Ludlow
family member Jimmy Sharkey in The
Dundalk Democrat, 9 March 2002.
See also:
The Sunday Tribune, 15
April 2001: O'Loan
asked to investigate Ludlow killing
4 September 2003 - The Ludlow family
was saddened to hear of the sudden and unexpected death of Brendan Larkin
(47), Dundalk. Brendan, a son of the late Barney Larkin, step brother of
Seamus Ludlow, had a leading role in the Ludlow family's campaign for truth
and justice. He will be sadly missed by all in the Ludlow family
circle.
A
Fresh Inquest.
3 July 2002 - The Irish Attorney
General Rory Brady acceded to the Ludlow family's request for a fresh
inquest into the death of Seamus Ludlow. In a letter to the Ludlow family's
solicitor, a representative of the AG reported that a letter has been sent to
the Coroner for County Louth, Mr Ronan Maguire BL, calling on him to make
arrangements for a fresh inquest.
The Ludlow family
had long called for
a fresh inquest because of their grave concerns over the conduct of the
original inquest of 19 August 1976 - which was conducted in their absence and
without their prior knowledge and at which there was no reference to the
ballistics and forensic reports that were then
available.
After much delay,
The
Dundalk Democrat, 8 November 2003, in an article headlined: "Inquest
could be next January" appeared to indicate that the fresh
inquest was finally expected to get under way early in 2004, though this date
proved hopelessly optimistic. The inquest was
apparently being held up by delays in the the gardai's handing over of
evidence, including the important internal Murphy file. The Democrat
reports:
Delays have been incurred in
receiving relevant information, but Mr Maguire has stated that he is still
waiting on a particular investigative report on the murder and a definitive
explanation on the whereabouts of Seamus Ludlow’s clothing and the bullets
used.
“I am still trying to trace the
clothes although it is possible that they may have been destroyed, and I am
still trying to locate the bullets and ascertain whether they are still in the
possession of the Gardai. I would have thought they should be.”
Seamus’ nephew, Jimmy Sharkey, has
said previously that he understands two of the three bullets used in his
uncle’s murder were sent to Northern Ireland for forensic examination, with
one remaining in the South. He added that Seamus’ clothes were never returned
to the family.
Photographs from the murder scene
which had been lost, have since been found and given to the coroner. Ballistic
reports have also been located.
Mr Maguire said he wants to hear the
second inquest straight through and does not want to see it
adjourned.
“I am not going to open and adjourn
it. It will go ahead with as much information as I can get and I will hear it
completely.”
Retired state pathologist, Dr John
Harbison, who gave a deposition at the original inquest has said he will
attend the new hearing.
The County coroner said the original
inquest had not heard from too many people.
“Looking through the inquest file,
there were only two other witnesses who were there for the purposes of
identification. Obviously they were not family members as they had not been
contacted.
“There are also a number of files
from people who saw Seamus Ludlow in Dundalk on the night he was
murdered.
The inquest could go ahead
before Christmas, depending on the family’s feelings. “Sometimes the families
of the deceased do not want an inquest just before Christmas and if this is
the case then I could be ready to go ahead with the inquest in early
January.”
Incredibly, this Democrat report proved to be yet
another false promise of progress. There was no inquest in 2004..
Delay would follow delay, and almost three full years would
pass before the County Louth coroner would be in a position to name a date for
the new inquest to commence.
A preliminary hearing did not take place until 24 May 2005!
The coroner, Mr. Ronan Maguire, then proposed 5 September 2005 as the date for
the full inquest to commence.
See the Dundalk
Democrat,
25 May 2005 and The Argus
(Dundalk)
27 May 2005 for detailed reports of this long-awaited preliminary inquest
hearing.
The fresh inquest began as planned on the morning of 5 September and
was concluded on the evening of the 6 September. The inquest attracted
considerable interest from press and broadcast media.
A
jury of 6 men and four women unanimously returned a verdict that Seamus
Ludlow's death was an Unlawful Killing, caused by gunshot wounds, with the
medical cause of death being shock and haemorrhage.
A
number of important points also emerged from the inquest:
-
Retired Dt Supt. John Courtney, who received a file naming four
suspects, from the RUC in February 1979, stated that he was made aware of
the four strong suspects in 1979 but was not given permission from Garda
headquarters to pursue the investigation further. This was the first public
admission that the murder investigation had been blocked by the Garda
authorities in Dublin.
-
The same four suspects were questioned in 1998 and two of the men
gave similar accounts of their involvement. Again, this was a first public
admission.
-
No Garda was recorded as being given responsibility for contacting
the Ludlow family for the first inquest in August 1976.
-
Seamus Ludlow was not murdered by the IRA nor was he a member of the
IRA. The suspicion of IRA involvement had been excluded from the murder
investigation within three months of the murder, though the Ludlow family
were never informed. Indeed, family members were still being told this lie
nearly twenty years later!
-
No trace of the victim's clothing or of two of the fatal bullets can
be found. No explanation for their loss has been given!
See The
Dundalk Democrat, 7 September 2005, for a detailed report of the
inquest.
Among those human rights groups now
supporting the Ludlow family are Amnesty International; the Irish
Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), Dublin; Relatives for
Justice, Belfast, the Pat Finucane Centre (PFC),,
Derry; victims' relatives group An
Fhirinne, the Celtic League; and British
Irish Rights Watch (BIRW), London. Links to all of these groups can be
accessed on our Links
page.
We are also enjoying widespread support
from good people of our south Armagh and north Louth neighbourhood,
including that of Newry and Mourne District Council and Louth County Council,
and the South Armagh Farmers and Residents
Committee.
The Ludlow family also has the support of
Justice for the
Forgotten, the group campaigning on behalf of victims of the Dublin and
Monaghan Bombings of May 1974, and the families of the victims of the Dundalk
Bombing of 19 December 1975.
Recent
developments.
In a March 2003 letter to the Ludlow family's
Dundalk solicitor, Mr Justice Henry Barron, the retired Irish judge who was
conducting a private inquiry into the murder, said that he had seen
intelligence passed to the Garda's security section claiming that Seamus
Ludlow was shot by the IRA because he was an informer.
Though individual garda members whom Mr
Justice Barron has interviewed did not accept this claim, the comment confirms
the Ludlow family's contention that there were elements within the Gardai - as
well as the RUC and the British Army - who were spreading lies about Seamus
Ludlow.
The
first Barron Report, published in 2003, inquired into the Dublin and Monaghan
bombings of 1974. That Report did not call for a public inquiry into the bombings which
killed 34 innocent people in Dublin and Monaghan. Instead, the Report was
referred to a Joint Oireachtas Committee, which later met in open session and
ultimately decided not to proceed with a public inquiry.
Though very critical of the Garda investigation into the bombings, and
the lack of concern shown by the then Fine Gael/Labour Party coalition
government, Mr Justice Barron failed to find evidence for high-level
collusion between loyalist death squads and British forces. Critics would
suggest that his private investigation was severely weakened by its inability
to compel witnesses and the production of documents. It was also hampered by a
refusal of the British government to cooperate in handing over relevant files
and, equally shocking, the unexplained disappearance of vital files from the
Irish Department of Justice!
Could it be that his failure to find evidence of collusion was in fact
due to his inability to get at the evidence that was withheld from him? He was
not allowed to see the evidence, no wonder he found no collusion!
20 December 2003: See the following articles from
the local Dundalk Democrat newspaper for comments on the recently
published Barron Report on the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.
Interestingly,
in his letter of March 2003, Mr Justice Barron has also
stated that the progress of his private inquiry into the murder of Seamus
Ludlow was being "slowed owing to the
absence of any information being received from outside the
jurisdiction". Evidently, the new "reformed" PSNI and the British military and
governmentauthorities in Belfast were showing the same
indifference to truth and justice in this sad affair that was shown by the
RUC for 25 years after the murder was committed.
There was still
at that time no indication of when Mr
Justice Barron would finish his inquiries into the Seamus Ludlow murder
or the Dundalk
bombing of December 19, 1975, in which two Dundalk men, Hugh Watters and
Jack Rooney, were killed and many more injured.
Ludlow
family member Jimmy Sharkey, interviewed by the Dundalk Democrat, 8
November 2003, in an article headed Family feel inquiry will make little difference, revealed that the judge had not interviewed a number of
important witnesses that had been recommended by the Ludlow
family.
“We put forward names of people we felt should
have been included in the inquiry and they were not.” . . .
Jimmy Sharkey believes that another person who
should have been interviewed is Police Ombudsman, Nuala O’Loan.
“The family met with Nuala O’Loan and it was a
very informative meeting. It would have been useful for Barron to have a
conversation with her. Jimmy says he hopes that the Dublin and Monaghan
families do make some progress as a result of the Barron Inquiry, but he does
not see his uncle’s murderers ever being prosecuted.
“The chances are the main protagonists involved
in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings are dead. Those who were involved in
Seamus’ murder are still very much alive and we don’t think any of them will
be prosecuted,” he said.
The Barron Report was finally published on 3 November 2005, more than a
year after it had been completed and handed over to the government in Dublin.
The published report, which names the four suspect killers, does not find
evidence for collusion, but then it does report that important files are
missing from the Garda headquarters and from the Department of Justice. It
also reports that the British basically refused to cooperate. This, of
course does not necessarily mean that there was no collusion between the
British, the gardai and the loyalist killers. It only means that Justice
Barron was not allowed to find the evidence.
Download
the Barron Report into the murder of
Seamus Ludlow from the Oireachtas website (pdf file)
Download
the Final Oireachtas Sub-Committee Report on the murder of Seamus Ludlow from
the Oireachtas website (pdf file)
The website will
show who Seamus Ludlow was, what kind of person he was and how his family has
searched for the truth and justice through more than twenty years of lies,
smears and cover-up.
If you believe in the right to truth and
justice and in the protection of basic human rights please read on. If you
believe that such abuses can not, and should not, happen in an independent
Irish state please read on.
If you want to know the truth of Seamus
Ludlow's murder and the full extent of the conspiracy which has denied and
perverted justice and protected known murderers please read on. If you would
like to support the Ludlow family in their campaign for truth and justice
please read on.
Seamus Ludlow cannot speak for himself or
challenge the liars who smeared his good name. The Ludlow family is proud to
speak for him. In doing so, they also hope that they can prevent similar
abuses occurring again, thereby sparing other families the trauma that they
have suffered at the hands of corrupt members of the Gardai and the British
Army and the RUC in the Six Counties.
This website is the Ludlow family's own
account of the abuses which were committed on both sides of the Irish border
after Seamus Ludlow's murder and up to the present. But given the full, and as
yet largely unknown, extent of the police cover-up which sadly is ongoing, it
remains to be seen just how much remains to be revealed.
Until full truth has been revealed, this site
will remain a sincere family tribute to the memory of an unfortunate, innocent
Irishman whose death at the hands of British agents must not be
forgotten.
The Barron Report on the 1974 Dublin and
Monaghan bombings can be downloaded in pdf format from http://www.irlgov.ie/oireachtas/Committees-29th-Dáil/jcjedwr-debates/InterimDubMon.pdf
See also: 10.12.03 Statement by An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern TD on the publication
of the Barron Report into the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings 1974
Download
the Barron Report into the murder of
Seamus Ludlow from the Oireachtas website (pdf file)
| From the website of Radio Telefis
Eireann (RTE) Radio, dated 18 February 1999:
Family of man abducted and
killed in 1976 claim there was a cover-up
One night at the
beginning of May in 1976, a 47-year-old forestry worker, Seamus
Ludlow, was abducted and shot as he was hitching a lift to his home in
Dundalk. His killers have still not been brought to justice. Seamus
Ludlow's family say he was an ordinary man, with no connections to any
paramilitary organisation. They believe loyalists were responsible for
his murder, and they claim there has been a cover-up on both sides of
the border to protect his killers.
|
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SUPPORT
THE SEAMUS LUDLOW APPEAL FUND
Bank of Ireland
78 Clanbrassil Street
Dundalk
County Louth
Ireland
Account No. 70037984
Thank You.
Seamus Ludlow
CD
A group of supporters of justice helped raise
money for our Seamus Ludlow Appeal
Fund by producing a a special
music CD.
The CD features as its leading track An Ode To
Seamus Ludlow written exclusively by Phil McCabe and brought to
to life by the voice talents of Tom Moore. To Phil and Tom and to all who
helped produce this excellent CD, a sincere vote of thanks.
Sadly, this CD is no longer
available.
Find out more.>>>
