‘KING RAT WAS A STATE AGENT’
UVF killer tells BBC of his suspicions over Wright
A LOYALIST killer has claimed the UVF believed Billy Wright was a state agent.
Laurence Maguire told BBC NI’S Spotlight programme he had been called to answer questions about Wright for a UVF inquiry in the 1990s.
He said he had begun to have suspicions when Wright stopped him from killing three suspected IRA members, who were later killed by the republican group – accused of being state agents.
The revelation comes after the government asked the Supreme Court to rule on whether to keep some intelligence on UVF murders a secret.
Parts of Maguire’s interview were first broadcast in 2019, but further details of what he told Spotlight have become more relevant because of information which emerged at recently stalled inquests.
Maguire, who was jailed in 1994 for five murders, told Spotlight he followed Gregory Burns, Aidan Starrs and John Dignam weekly, and his plan to shoot them near Dungannon.
He told the BBC: “When I look back now, it seems there was a lot of strange things about it.”
In July 1992, the men were abducted and killed by the IRA who said they were informers.
The Provos claimed they were involved in the murder of Margaret Perry because she had learned Burns was working for the intelligence services.
Former IRA member Tommy Mckearney, whose brother and uncle were killed by Wright’s gang, said Maguire’s story raised the question of whether Wright had been protecting the men because they were agents.
If Wright “was an agent”, he asked, “was he acting on orders to prevent Maguire operating against them?”
Maguire said he had subsequently been questioned by the UVF as part of an investigation into “suspicions” about Wright.
He added: “I think it came to light he was definitely working for somebody else.
“I just call it the Crown.” An inquest into UVF murders in Mid Ulster heard earlier this year that the late PUP leader David Ervine, had headed just such a probe into Wright.
The court heard the investigation collapsed when UVF killer and suspected police informer, Robin Jackson, did not testify against Wright.
Jackson, who has since died, was also named in court documents as being suspected of involvement in a number of attacks in
Mid Ulster.
LAURENCE MAGUIRE BBC SPOTLIGHT
UVF MURDERER,
Bernie Mckearney’s husband and parents were killed by Mid Ulster UVF in 1992. Inquests into the deaths of Kevin and John Mckearney, and Charles and Teresa Fox, stalled this year when the Secretary of State took legal action
to prevent material from being released. Mrs Mckearney said: “It has been hard knowing if Kevin had the protection that State agents got, he could be still be living today.”
Former Police Ombudsman Baroness Nuala O’loan said: “We know Billy Wright was an informant.
“There is no justification for
denying them information which may have been of some significance to national security 30 or more years ago, but which now cannot, in many cases, be of any significance.”
Wright broke away from the UVF in 1996 to form the Loyalist Volunteer Force and was killed in the Maze Prison the following year.
All Troubles-era cases are now being referred to the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery.
PSNI Chief Constable Jon Boutcher said he is prepared to give material to new investigators “without condition and without redaction”.