Prayers will be offered for the eight people murdered in the 1993 Greysteel massacre on Monday night to mark the 30th anniversary of their deaths.
Many of the victims' families, in what became known as the 'trick or treat' killings, are to attend a special 30th anniversary Mass of Remembrance.
Following Mass at Star of the Sea Church, prayers will be said at a memorial to the dead and injured at the scene of the atrocity at the Rising Sun bar.
The families are expected to be joined by the surviving wounded as well as paramedics and other emergency service personnel who attended the scene of the killings, one of the worst of the many massacres of the Trouble.
Following the short prayer service, refreshments will be served in the Rising Sun bar where the murders took place.
The eight people who died in the Greysteel massacre ranged in age from 19 to 81. They were: Karen Thompson (19) and her boyfriend, Stephen Mullan (20); Joseph McDermott (60); Moira Duddy (59); John Moyne (50); John Burns (54), Victor Montgomery (76) and the oldest victim, James Moore (81) the father of the bar’s proprietor, also James who passed away in 2015.
Thirty years on, the Greysteel massacre continues to stand out as one of the most shocking atrocities of the Troubles.
Three Ulster Freedom Fighters (a cover name for the UDA) gunmen opened fire on the small rural pub, just off the main Derry to Limavady road on October 30. 1993.
The murders became known as the 'trick or treat' massacre after one of the killers, Stephen Irwin shouted the words as he opened fire.
Seven people died at the scene while an eighth, Victor Montgomery (76) died some months later.
The UDA claimed the killings were a response to the IRA’s murder of nine Protestant civilians in the Shankill Bombing a week earlier. One of the two IRA men behind that attack, Thomas Begley also died.
Greysteel, on the banks of Lough Foyle, is one of those countless villages around the north where both communities mixed and life continued quietly in spite of the Troubles. Gaelic football and cricket live side-by-side in Greysteel with players interacting between the two sports.
Around 70 people were in the Rising Sun Bar on the night of the massacre. A party had been organised in advance of Hallowe’en the following day. Irwin, along with fellow gunman, Geoffrey Deeney opened fire from the door. A third member of the gang, Torrens Knight stood guard with a shotgun. All three were dressed in blue boiler suits.
After emptying his assault rifle, Irwin calmly changed the clip and started shooting again. Deeney opened fire with a 9mm handgun but it jammed after one shot. It was reported that the three killers laughed as they fled the scene.
Read more:
- 'The smell of gun smoke is something I have never forgotten' says Greysteel Massacre paramedic
- Greysteel killings ended one of Troubles' darkest weeks
As the gun smoke lifted, a scene of utter horror emerged. The dead and the dying lay around the bar, tables were overturned and broken glass lay in the pools of blood around the dance floor. When ambulance crews and police reached the scene, seven were already dead and 19 injured. An eighth victim died later. The dead and injured came from both Protestant and Catholic communities.
Troubles-hardened paramedics said they had never experienced such slaughter. Faughanvale parish priest, the late Fr Stephen Kearney recalled seeing his colleague, the late Fr Jack Gallagher, with his hands covered in blood.
“He had gone in and he had gone around everybody and anointed them or said a prayer,” Fr Kearney, who passed away in 2020, said.
The killers, along with Brian McNeill who drove a scout car on the night, were each given eight life sentences but were released as part of the Good Friday Agreement in 2000. A picture of Knight with his face contorted in hatred as he was led from Limavady court house remains a shocking image of the era.
On the 25th anniversary, a monument to the Greysteel dead and injured was unveiled at the bar. Its epitaph says: “May their sacrifice be our path to peace”.
