Lenny Murphy - Last Months On The Shankill

Last Months On The Shankill

On completing his sentence for the firearms charge, Lenny Murphy walked out of the Maze prison on Friday, 16 July 1982. During his term inside, his wife Margaret had initiated divorce proceedings which were being finalised at the time of his death. Murphy returned to his old ways, killing at least four more people over the next four months. He beat to death a partially disabled man one day after returning to the Shankill. Another victim sold him a car and was shot dead after demanding full payment. Murphy also attempted to extort money from local businessmen who had been sympathetic in the past; however, this encroached on Loyalist figures with established protection rackets. In late August, Murphy killed a part-time UDR soldier from the Lower Shankill area who was closely involved with the UVF in Ballymena and was allegedly an informer. The man's body was not discovered for almost a year In mid-October, Murphy and several associates kidnapped a Catholic man who was then tortured and beaten to death in Murphy own house (temporally vacated due to renovations). Murphy, who had left the house strewn with the victim's blood and teeth, was arrested for questioning the next morning but later released. The sadism of the widely publicised killing led to Loyalism receiving a great deal of bad publicity, and paramilitary figures concluded that Murphy's horrific methods of sectarian murder had made him too much of a liability.