A mural of Lyra McKee, threatening IRA posters and police officers on Fanad Drive after the shooting. Composite: Guardian Design/AFP/Getty/Shutterstock/RexView image in fullscreenA mural of Lyra McKee, threatening IRA posters and police officers on Fanad Drive after the shooting. Composite: Guardian Design/AFP/Getty/Shutterstock/Rex‘Could only have been one person’: top former detective says system failed murdered journalist Lyra McKeeJason Murphy believes he knows who killed McKee in Derry, but culture of silence and mistrust of police is denying her family justice
When Lyra McKee was shot and killed on the night of 18 April 2019, approximately 150 people were in her vicinity. The 29-year-old journalist had watched in a crowd as rioting broke out in Derry, Northern Ireland. Police footage captured the grainy outline of a man firing a handgun.
“Someone’s fucking shot,” a bystander could be heard crying in mobile phone footage shown as evidence in court. “There’s a fucking kid shot in the head.”
The New IRA has claimed responsibility for her death.
This July, more than seven years after McKee was killed, a Belfast judge delivered a verdict after a 25-month trial. Three men were found not guilty of her murder among a series of mostly failed prosecutions.
The judgment criticised the prosecution’s case, in particular the lack of evidence identifying the defendants as those depicted, often masked, in video footage. None of the many onlookers on the street that night came forward as a witness to the murder.
Jason Murphy was head of major investigations for the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) when McKee was killed. The former detective superintendent oversaw homicide investigations across Northern Ireland’s six counties while running his own caseload, including McKee’s murder. Next week Channel 4 will air a three-part documentary on his investigation.
View image in fullscreenJason Murphy was the lead investigator in the Lyra Mckee murder trial in Northern Ireland. Photograph: Polly Garnett/The GuardianMurphy is confident that he successfully identified the shooter, who he believes “could only have been one person”. But while the suspect was arrested, they were not charged. The prosecuting barrister felt that based on the evidence they could present in court, a guilty verdict was not likely. No eyewitness would confirm their identity. Within days of the killing, the New IRA offered its “full and sincere apologies” to McKee’s family, but no individual was held responsible.
Murphy believes that a culture of silence within this tight-knit community – partly owing to a severe mistrust of the police, and partly out of fear of violent repercussions from allies of those implicated – is denying the McKee family justice for Lyra.
“She was an innocent bystander,” he says. “Quickly it was clear this was an attack on the police.”
It was a challenging investigation. McKee, who was from a Catholic background, was shot on the Creggan estate, one of Northern Ireland’s last IRA hotbeds. During the Troubles, the mostly Catholic area was a violent battleground, and it remains hostile territory for the PSNI.
People here were reluctant to help “find someone within their own community who killed one of their own”, Murphy says. After McKee’s death, threatening graffiti appeared across Derry and placards were tied to lamp-posts warning of repercussions for providing information to the police. “Informers will be shot. IRA,” read one, illustrated with a rat in crosshairs.
View image in fullscreenLyra McKee rose to prominence in 2014 after a blog post titled ‘Letter to my 14-year-old self’, in which she spoke about growing up gay in Belfast. Photograph: Chiho Tang/Oranga Creative/PASimple tasks were resource intensive, with two public order units enlisted to support each house search. The murder weapon wasn’t initially recovered from the scene, meaning “there were firearms circulating in the community, uncontrolled”.
Acquiring bystander mobile phone footage required “court warrants to do searches and seize mobile phones from teenagers”. This was out of necessity, but also to ensure that children weren’t targeted in revenge, Murphy says.
Early on in the investigation, he learned that the TV presenter Reggie Yates had been filming in Derry the night McKee was shot. A group of young men were showing Yates around the Creggan area for an MTV documentary about the impact of Brexit, though in her judgment, Mrs Justice Smyth stated it appeared Yates had been “making a documentary about Saoradh”, widely understood to be the political wing of the New IRA.
In the footage, Yates is told by one man, Patrick Gallagher, that there “could be a number of people gathered” outside a property being searched by police, including “those that are more than capable of carrying out acts of resistance”.
One of the last moments filmed is a woman pleading with Yates: “The rioting is going on because of the camera crew … it’s all set up for youse.”
The cameras are switched off before McKee is shot.
Days later the BBC interviewed Gallagher for a Newsnight segment. He was asked if he was surprised nobody had been charged with McKee’s murder. “Not really,” he replied. “People have called for members of this community to inform … but the people of this community know the life of an informer. Judging by history, they know exactly what would happen.”
Originally from Belfast, McKee had moved to Derry to live with her partner. Her book Angels with Blue Faces, about a Troubles-era murder, was published soon after her death.
She rose to prominence in 2014 after a blog post titled “Letter to my 14-year-old self”, in which she spoke about the struggle of growing up gay in Belfast. The letter was later turned into a short film.
Read moreWhile McKee was not the intended target of the New IRA, which said she was “tragically killed while standing beside enemy forces”, the prosecution’s case was still “that Lyra had been killed in a coordinated attack by members of the New IRA”, Murphy says.
It also argued that “connectivity between mobile phones showed a direct relationship between the riot and known New IRA leadership. Therefore, the riot and shooting of Lyra were one continuous event.”
In total, 10 men were charged with 52 offences. Gallagher was one of them. Three were charged with joint enterprise murder. None were alleged to have fired the gun, but to have intentionally encouraged or assisted the shooter. Separately, Niall Sheerin was sentenced to seven years in prison for possessing the murder weapon.
Of the nine men ultimately prosecuted (the 10th died last year), seven were acquitted on all counts by the judge, including the three charged with murder and Gallagher.
Kieran McCool was found guilty of common assault, and Christopher Gillen of possessing and throwing petrol bombs, and riot. Due to the risk of paramilitary interference, there was no jury.
Murphy and his team “fully expected” to secure the “vast majority” of prosecutions, including the murder charges.
The defence called no witnesses and presented a small amount of evidence. The prosecution faced further difficulty when some of the little identification evidence presented was dismissed by the court after police errors. A firewall was constructed between Murphy’s team and other PSNI officers tasked with identifying suspects.
“Unbeknown to me, one of my team had visited the office of some of [these] officers,” says Murphy. “Those conversations should never have taken place.”
Had that evidence been considered, Murphy concedes case outcomes “could have been” different against some defendants, though there were “multiple strands the judge didn’t agree with”.
View image in fullscreenLyra McKee’s sister Nichola Corner said she felt let down and that some people were ‘withholding evidence’. Photograph: PAHe believes McKee’s family are likely to feel let down by the police and prosecution. “I felt ashamed to be part of a system that failed this family and community,” Murphy says. “I hoped the judgment would be the start of the grieving processes for Lyra’s family.”
He says the case raises uncomfortable questions for the Northern Irish authorities. “How do we bring terrorist cases before the courts, with a realistic chance of conviction?” he asks. “If we can’t convict on the basis of five hours of documentary footage that has almost the totality of events, what else can we do?”
He believes the outcome risks reinforcing “fears from the public: ‘Why put my head above the parapet, give evidence in court, to have them found not guilty?’”
Nichola Corner, Lyra’s sister, says she feels “really, really let down”. She adds: “Some people have evidence that would assist us and are choosing to withhold it.”
The Murder Detective starts on 26 August at 9pm on Channel 4
