Opinion

Making murderers pay, on the printed page at least – Leona O’Neill

In real life there may be no justice, but in the fictional world?

Leona O'Neill
Leona O'Neill pictured at St Anne's Cathedral in Belfast (unknown)

Being a reporter in Northern Ireland always was, and remains, a tough station.

This corner of the world is not like other places. We have all the usual challenges, and more. You get to witness the very worst side of humanity and hear of the most awful things we humans can do to one another. It’s difficult not to be haunted by some of it.

This week I will launch my new supernatural novel, Perdition Street. In it, fictional private detective Atlas Bishop – a soul binder – binds the souls of the murdered to their murderers. I’ve been asked a fair few times how my imagination conjured this up.

I didn’t have to look too far, to be honest. Atlas exists in the underbelly of his city, like many of our journalists do. We see the crime, the court cases, the inquests, the violence, the vitriol, the horrible things that happen to human beings. Once you lift the veil on that underbelly, it’s very hard to cover it over again and get on with life.

My fictional character binds the souls of the murdered to the people who murdered them. The murderer gets dragged to Hell, the murdered are released to Heaven and peace.

Perdition Street is a novel by Leona O'Neill
Perdition Street is a novel by Leona O'Neill

Twenty-five years as a reporter here flavoured that story. Twenty-five years of attending funerals of those slain, of sitting in people’s living rooms as they recounted tearfully the person that was shot on their doorstep, or killed on the way to work, killed while making their way back home.

Twenty-five years of hearing time and time again, from so many different victims’ families, of how no-one was ever held to account for the death of their loved ones. Hearing hundreds of times of how their life stopped alongside their loved one’s heartbeat. Of hearing the same pain over and over again – what if I am walking past the killer in the street and I don’t know?

I covered the stories of hundreds of families of Troubles victims, sometimes multiple times as they marked anniversaries or launched appeals for information to help them get justice.



Regardless of the supposed ‘reason’ for the murder, whatever ‘side’ they were on, or the job they did, the raw, gut-wrenching, soul-destroying pain that revolved around those left behind like an unwanted aura was always the same. The pain and quest for justice almost always consumed their entire lives.

There were times as a reporter that I sat outside someone’s house in my car and cried sore after talking to them about their loved ones and their experiences.

I remember interviewing Kathleen Gillespie, whose husband Patsy was murdered by the IRA. I sat in her living room, surrounded by beautiful pictures of their life together as she told me that they chained her husband to the steering wheel and pedals of his van that was packed with explosives. She told me that gunmen held her and her children at gunpoint in the very sitting room we sat in, and ordered her children’s father to drive the van into a military base.

Patsy Gillespie from Derry's Shantallow area was tied into the bomb and ordered to drive it to Coshquin permanent British army checkpoint.
Patsy Gillespie was tied to a bomb and ordered to drive it to Coshquin British army checkpoint on the Derry border

She told me that from the very seat she was now sitting on, she heard the 1,200lb-bomb explode, killing the father-of-three and five British soldiers at the Coshquin barracks on the border.

She told me of how there was nothing but a piece of flesh left to identify him by, her big beloved husband, who had walked out their front door telling her and their children that everything would be OK and that he’d be back soon.

Kathleen has long spoken about how her husband’s killers are walking around free, able to live their lives, after destroying theirs. I remember having to stop my car on the way home because I had to throw up, such was the anguish I felt over the depths of depravity humans are capable of.

I could tell dozens of stories of heartache and pain like that from this place and every one of them has stayed with me, haunted me.

Journalist Lyra McKee was shot in 2019
Journalist Lyra McKee was shot in 2019 (PSNI/PA)

A few years back, while I was wrestling with PTSD after witnessing the callous and brutal murder of journalist Lyra McKee on the streets of my city, I channelled my own pain into art. I dreamt up a fictional character – Atlas Bishop – who tracked down murderers using supernatural devices and bound the souls they murdered to them. He made them pay.

When I was writing that character, and that book, the faces of those people crying in their living rooms, surrounded by pictures of those beautiful lost lives, were in my head. Their words, often delivered through sobs made no less heavy with the passage of time, rang in my ears.

In real life there was no justice, but in the fictional world? Well, that’s rather different.

:: Perdition Street is being launched tonight at St Joseph’s Church in Sailortown, Belfast at 7pm.

In real life there was no justice, but in the fictional world? Well, that’s rather different