The men and women who know some of Northern Ireland's darkest stories are dying. Will they take their secrets to the grave?, asks Susan McKay
IT LOOKED like the ordinary rural funeral of an elderly farmer. In bright May sunshine, the cortege passed by his steep hilly fields in south Armagh, and by the gate to the narrow lane that led to his farmhouse, a stone hen on one of the gateposts, an eagle on the other. There were few mourners, but then the arrangements had been swift.
Less than 48 hours after his death in hospital, James Mitchell (88) was buried in the graveyard at Tullyallen.
"I'm not saying he was lily-white, but he was a decent man. . ."
It was a strange obituary, but this was what Willie Frazer, well known in the North as a campaigner for the rights of "innocent victims", said to a reporter after the funeral. All the evidence suggests that James Mitchell was a key figure in one of the most brutal gangs to have operated during the bloody 1970s in the North.
The cars and Land Rovers that rolled out past those stone birds were on missions to murder. Guns that had taken the lives of local Catholics were stored in those outhouses. Explosives were mixed in that yard, and masked men were drilled there. Plans were made in that kitchen that would make the blood run cold.
James Mitchell's farm was the hub for the Glenanne gang, a collection of RUC and UDR men who joined forces with loyalist paramilitaries in the mid-Ulster area, notably the UVF in Portadown, to carry out atrocities including the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, the Miami showband massacre, and the slaughter by shootings and bombings of Catholic civilians in bars, shops and homes across mid-Ulster and across the Border in Louth and Monaghan.
Mitchell was a reserve RUC policeman, and claimed in 2000 that since the second World War his farm had been a "calling house", providing cups of tea for the security forces.
However, after one of the gang, a policeman, had broken down after a murder, in 1978, Mitchell was prosecuted and convicted of keeping a major UVF arms dump. He got off lightly, with a one-year sentence, suspended.
Lily Shields, the timid young woman who came to work on the farm as a poultry hand, stayed as a housekeeper and was described after his death as Mitchell's partner, admitted in 1978 accompanying a policeman to pick up some other men one night in 1975, posing with him as a courting couple while they waited. She knew it was "something to do with the Troubles" but didn't ask any questions.
"I thought it was better if I didn't know," she told police.
When she heard on the news about the murders of three Catholics at Silverbridge, she had her suspicions. Charges against her, and the policeman, were dropped.
The Glenanne gang always got off lightly, and in circumstances that suggest collusion not just in the security forces but in the prosecution service and even including the then Lord Chief Justice, Lord Lowry.
Take the bombing and shooting at the Rock Bar, a short drive from Mitchell's farm. A gang of RUC men carried out the attack in 1976, seriously wounding a local farmer. A police radio was used to clear the escape.
The getaway vehicle was a police car, and one of the gang boasted that they were back in the local RUC station in time to take the emergency call.
Evident links to other attacks were not explored. The injured witness was not called to give evidence. Three of the gang got suspended sentences.
James Mitchell was a religious man. When I called with him last summer he was just back from a 25th anniversary gospel service.
Repentance is, we are told, required of those who wish to be "born again", but Mitchell was entirely without it.
"What happened round here was terrible and it should never have happened, but sure all that is settled now," he told me.
When I asked him about the Glenanne gang, he replied: "There was no such thing."
But the authorities knew there was such a thing as long ago as 1972, according to a former British army intelligence officer. Mr Justice Barron found that ballistic evidence showed "a continuous course of conduct existing since at least 1973".
The 2007 Barron report into the Dublin-Monaghan bombs found that soon after the bombings, which killed 33 people, the authorities knew that Mitchell's farm had been used as a staging post by the perpetrators. By January 1976, the farm was under surveillance. Yet the killers were still free to strike.
Among their victims one night that month were three members of the Reavey family from nearby Whitecross, and three of the O'Dowd family, from Gilford.
The day after those murders, the IRA carried out the Kingsmills massacre of 10 Protestant workmen on the road not far from Mitchell's farm. The death toll rose inexorably.
Why was the Glenanne gang not stopped? Why, even in 2000, did the RUC say it was unable to locate Lily Shields, when she was, in fact, still living with Mitchell? Why did it not push Mitchell, whom they described as a "cantankerous old man" on admissions he made in 1978?
Mitchell has taken his secrets to the grave. The PSNI's Historical Enquiries Team has stated that it intended to interview him, and that it would continue its investigations into the Glenanne gang.
Its powers are limited, as are those of the Police Ombudsman, while the fear of prosecution could deter those who might otherwise give information.
Some new mechanism is required to find out who really was in charge of the Glenanne gang.
The families of many of those killed are elderly now, and deserve to know the truth. Or are we going to be like Lily Shields, not asking any questions because we reckon we'd be better not to know?
Susan McKay's latest book, Bear In Mind These Dead, is published by Faber Faber