‘I’ve no forgiveness for Patsy’s killers... my working with ex-paramilitaries is all to do with peace’
THE widow of a Londonderry father who died after the IRA strapped him into a van packed with explosives and forced him to drive it to an Army checkpoint says she has been helped on her path to healing by former paramilitaries who have become close friends.
Kathleen Gillespie’s 42-yearold husband Patsy died on October 24, 1990.
He had been kidnapped four hours earlier by a masked Provo gang who held Kathleen and their teenage children at gunpoint before forcing him to drive a 1,000lb bomb to the Coshquin checkpoint on the Derry/Donegal border.
As Kathleen prepares to remember her husband on the 27th anniversary of his death, she looked back at that night and to years after the atrocity when a remarkable friendship blossomed between her and a former IRA woman.
“They came into the house that night, took turns guarding us and eventually took Patsy away at midnight. They let him in to say goodbye to us,” she explained.
“He said to me: ‘I’ll be all right girl, I’ll be home soon’. They told us that if everyone did what they were told, no one would be hurt. More fool me for believing them.
“They chained my husband to a van loaded with 1,000lbs of explosives and forced him to drive to the Army checkpoint at Coshquin, where it was detonated by remote control.
“Patsy had shouted a warning as he approached even though he knew he could never escape himself, and he saved many lives in doing so.” A shocked and numb Kathleen tried her best to navigate the days after the blast with her children, then aged 18, 16 and 12. She said that she wasn’t able to identify her husband’s body — she was told that it was unrecoverable.
“The trauma of the event, the aftermath as a single parent bringing up our three teenage children whilst trying to cope with our loss of an incredible husband and father was extremely difficult,” Kathleen said.
“I did not fully believe that Patsy was actually dead, as there was a closed coffin and no actual body to mourn.
“There were days when I couldn’t get out of bed until the children came home. I became ill