Murder of Robert Mc Cartney - Forensic Cover-up and Investigation

Forensic Cover-up and Investigation

When Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officers arrived at the scene, their efforts to investigate the pub and surrounding area were met with an impromptu riot. Rioting by youths, specifically attacking the police, forced them to pull back from the area, which delayed initial investigation. Police with riot gear arrived later in the evening, and were also attacked. Alex Maskey of Sinn Féin claimed, "It appears the PSNI is using last night's tragic stabbing incident as an excuse to disrupt life within this community, and the scale and approach of their operation is completely unacceptable and unjustifiable." There have been suggestions that the rioting was organised by those involved in the murder, so that a clean up operation could take place in and around where the murder took place. Clothes worn by McCartney's attackers were burned, CCTV tapes were removed from the bar and destroyed and bar staff were threatened. No ambulance was called. McCartney and Devine were noticed by a police car on routine patrol, who called an ambulance to the scene.

When the police launched the murder investigation they were met with a "wall of silence"; none of the estimated seventy or so witnesses to the altercation came forward with information. This is not an unusual attitude among Irish nationalists, who have mixed views of the new police force. In conversations with family members, seventy-one potential witnesses claimed to have been in the pub's toilets at the time of the attacks. As the toilet measures just four feet by three feet, this led to the toilets being dubbed the TARDIS, after the time machine in the television series Doctor Who, which is much bigger on the inside than on the outside.

Sinn Féin suspended twelve members of the party and the IRA expelled three members some weeks later.