FORMER British agent Willie Carlin was one of the last people census worker Joanne Mathers spoke to before she was shot dead by the IRA almost 40 years ago.
The 29-year-old was killed as she carried out a census survey in the Gobnascale area of Derry in April 1981.
Republicans had urged a boycott of the census during the 1981 Hunger Strike, which resulted in the deaths of 10 members of the IRA and INLA.
In his new book, Willie Carlin reveals that he spoke with the mother-of-one just minutes before she was killed yards from his mother’s house.
He recounts how the frightened census worker knocked his mother’s door after being threatened at another house in the area.
He said her hand was shaking as she took a glass of water before his mother asked what was wrong.
She sighed and explained that a man had "said he would have me shot if I didn’t leave the area".
Read more:
- 'Political pressure may have been placed on judge' in IRA supergrass case
- 'I saw Martin McGuinness leaving MI5 safe house'
- IRA tip-off led to arrest of INLA man behind Droppin' Well bomb, Willie Carlin claims
Mr Carlin said he realised the “grave danger” the mother-of-one was in and advised her to leave the area.
However, before she left he suggested that she call at two houses on his mother’s street, where he felt she would be safe.
“Joanne stood up to leave and thanked my mother,” he wrote.
“She pressed her hand into mine and said ‘God bless you’.
“As she walked half way up the steps she turned to me. 'Will you watch and make sure I’m OK.
“I smiled, ‘Of course’.”
Mr Carlin reveals how he watched after the young mother as she knocked the door of a nearby house.
“Just as the door opened a masked man ran from the side of the house and tried to take the clipboard from her,” he wrote.
“As she struggled keep hold of it I heard a shot and saw Joanne fall forward into the hallway."
Horrified, Mr Carlin called to his mother to phone an ambulance.
“As I turned back towards the house, a second shot rang out and I could her screams in the distance.
“I caught sight of the masked man as he fled across the waste ground at the back of Anderson Crescent.”
Read more:Who is Willie Carlin?
He said the gunman smashed through a glass door as he chased the young mother into the house before shooting her a second time.
Mr Carlin goes on to describe horrific scene as Ms Mathers lay dying and recounts how another neighbour looked at him and snarled, “Willie Carlin, you’re nothing but a pack of murdering b*****ds”.
The IRA later denied involvement and claimed the killing was the work of those “intent on discrediting the election campaign of hunger striker Bobby Sands”.
Mr Carlin said that “fuelled by anger” over the killing, he decided to make contact with MI5 - which he had stopped working with a year earlier - after the election campaign was over.
When unable to get in touch, he later approached British army intelligence and began working for the Force Research Unit until he was exposed in 1985.
Read more:
- Stakeknife 'saved my life' says Willie Carlin
- 'I saw Martin McGuinness leaving MI5 safe house'
- IRA tip-off led to arrest of INLA man behind Droppin' Well bomb, Willie Carlin claims
