Soldiers mocked woman as she hunted for missing dad, Ballymurphy inquest is told
THE daughter of a man who was shot in the Ballymurphy massacre has told an inquest that her hair fell out as a result of the shock of identifying her father’s body.
Alice Harper also recalled how she had cut her father Danny Teggart’s hair shortly before he was killed — and she was only be able to identify the 44-yearold by the same tiny black curls.
The father-of-13 and grandfather-of-one had just found out that his daughter was pregnant again before he went to invite his brother Gerard to stay with her amid rising tensions in the area — but he never made it home.
Ms Harper recalled praying on the street with a local priest when she heard shots ring out on a “beautiful” summer evening, but said it wasn’t until the following morning that her mother Belle became concerned about his safety.
Alice then made her way to Henry Taggart Army Post to see if her dad had been arrested during an internment swoop the previous day.
But she said soldiers just mocked her by boasting that they “only had time for killing” before they sang ‘Where’s Your Papa Gone’.
Ms Harper said that when she returned again she was told “there is a f ****** unidentified body in the Laganbank morgue, why don’t you try there?”
Recalling finding her father’s body in the morgue, she said: “His face was all puffy and it didn’t look like him, but the only way I could recognise him was his tight curly hair.”
The then 23-year-old said she developed alopecia and lost her hair as a result of the shock which tore her family apart.
She said the trauma “took a toll” and contributed to the death of her newborn son who only lived for two days after he was born the following March.
Just two years later, her brother Bernard was killed by the IRA.
Kathleen McCarry, the young“She er sister of former soldier and TA member Edward Doherty (31), also described the impact of her brother’s death during an emotional fourth day of the inquest.
The married father-of-four was last seen in their sister Theresa’s house enjoying a cup of tea. “The next thing we knew Eddie was dead,” she said.
Ms McCarry said her mother, who was visiting her sister and her soldier husband in England at the time, always questioned why God didn’t let her son die in the Blitz when he was just six months old.
looked at him in the coffin and the next thing she was on the floor, it was his poor face, it was all marked and bruised,” she said.
The inquest heard how her mother Elizabeth “went to pieces” and was later admitted to a mental hospital before she “died of a broken heart” following the “nightmare” which would not end.
“She was walking about in a daze,” Ms McCarry said. “There were times we couldn’t find her and would have to go out looking for her, we would find her at the grave washing it down. She went from this strong woman who washed the dead, delivered babies, did amazing things, to a woman who was lost.”
Kathleen also described how Mr Doherty’s widow Marie struggled to cope before she suffered a massive heart attack and died nine years later — she was only 40.
Eileen McKeown, who lost her father Joseph Corr (43) in the massacre, wept as she described how her mum received hatemail from her late husband’s colleagues in Shorts after the Army falsely claimed he was an IRA gunman.
Ms McKeown expressed regret that her family, which had been in the process of emigrating to Australia, didn’t move before her father was shot on August 11, 1971 — he died 16 days later in hospital.
“There wasn’t a bad bone in my daddy’s body,” she said.
She said the loss of her father — and the fact that all her siblings were unable to attend his funeral because they had been taken to a refugee camp — led to deep resentment which built up