A PRESS photographer was treated in hospital after he was assaulted while trying to cover the funeral of one of the Shankill Butchers, William Moore.
Moore (60), who was discovered dead in his flat in Mount Vernon in north Belfast last Sunday, was a member of the notorious UVF Shankill Butchers gang which was responsible for at least 10 mostly sectarian murders in the mid-1970s. Police believe there are no suspicious circumstances to his death.
The word had gone out that press and photographers would be unwelcome at the funeral in Rathcoole in north Belfast on Thursday.
The photographer, who is in his 20s, was attacked by a suspected group of UVF members as he attempted to take pictures with a long range lens of what is understood to have been a paramilitary funeral for Moore, according to press sources.
The PSNI confirmed that a “brief altercation” took place during the funeral and a man was assaulted. It is also understood that serious threats were issued against the photographer who decided not to make an official complaint to police.
Some of his camera gear was stolen during the incident. It was later recovered.
Moore was a butcher who was a member of the Shankill Butchers led by Lennie Murphy. Most of the groups victims were Catholics abducted and subjected to torture before they were murdered, their mutilated bodies dumped in loyalist areas of Belfast.
Most of the gang were finally caught when one of the victims, unknown to the gang, survived such an attack. Murphy was eventually murdered by the IRA.
In 1979 Moore was given 11 life sentences for his part in the killings. He was released under the terms of the Belfast Agreement in 1998.
Moore’s trial heard that he supplied knives for the gang to use on the victims. It also heard that he cut the throats of a number of the victims and encouraged the gang to torture them.