KINGSMILL INQUEST I DON’T KNOW HOW I MISSED VITAL PALM PRINT, SAYS EXPERT
A FINGERPRINT expert with more than 30 years of experience has said he cannot understand how he missed matching a palm print from the Kingsmill massacre getaway van — not just once, but twice.
The palm print, found inside the vehicle that IRA gunmen are believed to have used to flee after shooting dead 10 Protestant workmen in 1976, was only matched to a suspect last year, 40 years after the atrocity.
Dennis Thompson yesterday told an inquest into the atrocity that while he was working for the Historical Enquiries Team (HET), he attempted unsuccessfully to find a match for the print on the police database in 2010, and again in 2014.
“I missed it,” he told the inquest. “There is no one more disappointed than me … I can’t fully understand why.
“I have thought and thought about it.
“If I had matched it in 2010 it would have been confirmed by experts and the HET could have investigated it. “I have no answer to it.” The inquest was suspended in May 2016 when it emerged that the palm print had been matched to a suspect, referred to in the inquest as S54.
A PSNI criminal investigation ensued, and a 59-year-old man was arrested in the Newry area.
However, the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) said that it would not pursue a case against the man due to “insufficient evidence”.
No-one has ever been convicted for the January 1976 murders in south Armagh.
The 10 Protestant workmen were stopped by an IRA gang, lined up against their work minibus and shot dead.
An 11th man survived, despite having been shot 18 times.
The inquest resumed following the PPS’s decision, and called Mr Thompson to give evidence about the print.
It heard that Mr Thompson began his career with the RUC in 1970, before joining the fingerprint bureau in 1976. He re- mained in the unit until he retired in 2001.
He returned to work in the fingerprint unit as an agency worker in 2002 and remained there until 2006, when he moved to the HET where he worked until it was wound up.
The inquest heard he was the sole fingerprint specialist working for the HET, and although he was based within the PSNI’s unit, the head of the PSNI’s Fingerprint Bureau Jeff Logan told the inquest that “there had to be an operational distance between the HET and the PSNI”.
The inquest also heard that the palm print was originally retrieved by two RUC officers who travelled to Dublin in 1976 to examine the suspected getaway van.
It was manually checked against records then, and again in 1977. Statements from those two officers will be read to the inquest later this week.
S54’s finger and palm prints were taken by the Garda in 1981 and shared with the RUC. However the inquest heard that the RUC only had the suspect’s fingerprints.
The inquest heard that the force’s successor, the PSNI, did not have S54’s palm print until 2010, when Mr Thompson requested it from the Garda.
He received it, but failed to match it to the print retrieved from the suspected getaway van.
Mr Thompson tried again to find a match in 2014, but this was also unsuccessful.
Earlier the inquest heard that Mr Thompson also made a series of “misses” in historic cases.
Mr Thompson worked for the HET for around eight years and examined 685 cases.
Following the Kingsmill miss, a senior PSNI officer ordered a “dip sample” of Mr Thompson’s work to be carried out by PSNI specialists, with oversight by two officers from the London Metropolitan Police.
Of a sample of 70 cases that Mr Thompson examined for the HET, errors were found in 12, including the Kingmill miss.
The inquest did not hear which other cases may have been affected.
Mr Logan told the inquest he was troubled by the findings.
However, he said he had worked with Mr Thompson in the PSNI’s Fingerprint Bureau, where he described his work as competent.
“It is something that shouldn’t have happened,” he told the inquest.
Mr Logan also made the point that where human beings are called on to make judgments, error is always a risk.
He also described how Mr Thompson had worked for the HET alone and was looking at 685 cases.
This, he told the inquest, was in sharp contrast to the PSNI Fingerprint Bureau, where staff work in a team, cases are double-checked and the work of staff is checked every month to ensure quality.
Mr Logan has also ruled out any “pattern” to errors.
The inquest continues. It is expected to hear later this week from Detective Chief Inspector Harrison, who led the most recent criminal investigation into Kingsmill, and from a witness who will give evidence over allegations that IRA murder victim and undercover soldier Captain Robert Nairac had been at the scene of the massacre.
The inquest previously heard that Captain Nairac had not been in Northern Ireland at that time.
❝I missed it, there is no one more disappointed than me, I can’t fully understand why