Still raw from the 1998 bombing, the people of Omagh are reeling at the thought of a family of seven being murdered, writes Kathy Sheridan.
On Thursday, outside the skeletal, blackened remains of the McGovern-McElhill family home, the air still carries the sickly whiff of wet embers and dying lilies. The little school car park beside the burnt-out house is colonised by police vehicles and a crane, used to access the upstairs bedrooms with their buckled bunk beds and blown-out roof.
Groups of wan schoolgirls and little families trudge by in the drizzle to lay their offerings. Amid the growing pile of letters and cellophane-wrapped flowers sit a family of cheerful teddy bears, a purple Barney the dinosaur, a Supermouse, a small football. Many of the letters are protected by transparent plastic, signifying a community all too familiar with the modern ritual of communal grief. The notes, most in childish handwriting, many of them addressed to seven-year-old Seán, tell of a premature acquaintance with the brutal reality of death. "You were my bestest friend in the classroom. You were the best Supermouse too." "Seán: Hope you're playing football with the angels in heaven."
WAITING FOR THEsolemn removal of the bodies from the house, Ann and Godfrey Wilson, a couple who lost their teenage daughter, Lorraine, in the 1998 Omagh bombing, stand forlornly under a bus shelter.
In a town still raw from the barbaric murder of 29 people - including a woman pregnant with twin girls - nine years ago, silence hangs like a shroud as, finally, after 60 hours of painful sifting through the debris of a family's life, two white transit vans emerge slowly from the terrace of old Housing Executive homes, through a guard of honour comprising teachers, fire and police officers. They contain the remains of 39-year-old Arthur McElhill, his partner Lorraine McGovern, aged 30, and their five children, Caroline (13), Seán (seven), Bellina (four), Clodagh (19 months) and baby James (nine months).
This is no ordinary funeral cortege, a fact highlighted by those at the head of the procession: teachers and priests but no family members. Several distraught men, doubled over with wracking sobs, are led away from the crowd by their families. One of them, John McGlinn, who was treated in a nearby ambulance, was among the first of the rescuers on the scene on Tuesday.
It was the words of his brother, Mark McGlinn, that first raised public suspicion that this went beyond tragedy. He described how he and John had used their window-cleaning ladders to attempt a rescue. Repelled by the inferno, he recalled making eye contact with Arthur, through an upstairs window. "I witnessed [ him] down low on his hunkers. I banged the ladder off the windowsill and shouted and roared. He turned and looked out the window at me. I roared at him to get someone out or to get out or do something. But the man was just helpless and shocked. He didn't reply but he acknowledged I was there because he turned around. He stared at me for a good three, four seconds . . ."
One of the most chilling parts of Mark McGlinn's testimony at that point was the absence - in a house of five young children - of any sight or sound of them. "There was no sign of the children and no screams from the children . . . I didn't actually see [Lorraine], I just heard the screams, the screams of a mature female . . . The minute I was on that ladder would have been the last minute those adults were alive". Then there was silence.
By this account, Arthur turned away before meeting his death. It may be, as Mark McGlinn later added, that he had decided he was not leaving his doomed family. "You can't blame him, being a family man. You can't really pick and choose who you want to get [out] first. He was in a bad way."
Omagh town councillor and retired firefighter Paddy McGowan attempted to explain how people felt as the hours moved on, and further details were revealed: "Initially, it seemed like a tragic fire, in an ordinary house, that could have happened any time, any place . . . and what we heard then was that [Det Chief Supt] Norman Baxter suspected a crime - and people were saying, 'Oh my God, who would do the like of that?'. Then, a few hours later, they were calling it a murder scene. That finished everything off, people were just in awe, numb. There was nothing left for people to understand anymore, all had gone for them . . ."
McGowan, with his 25 years' experience in the fire service, observed immediately that "the seat of the fire looked to be on the first floor, the bedroom area. I couldn't understand why the burning was so ferocious on that floor or why the roof went up the way it did until I heard the chief saying that they had found an accelerant, which was petrol." Police sources also suggest that the fire began in an upstairs bedroom.
Much of the speculation surrounding the source of this petrol centres on how, or even why, an intruder from outside would have accessed the first floor and managed to escape unseen. Police, however, are resolutely maintaining the line that they are investigating seven murders and are urging caution on those ready to point a finger. One of their lines of inquiry is believed to be into threats that were made against Arthur in recent months.
There is no shortage of rumour around Omagh, much of it conflicting.
But in tragedy piled on tragedy for the McGovern and McElhill families, undisputable details about a streak of violence in Arthur's past have emerged in recent days. He was twice convicted of sexual assaults on females, receiving a two-year suspended sentence - pleading fragile mental health - for indecent assault on a woman after entering her home in Co Tyrone in 1993, and a second sentence of five years for indecent assault of a 17-year-old girl in 1998, of which he served 18 months. He was also placed on the sex offenders' register for an indefinite period.
In the second case, evidence was given in court that he was extremely drunk at the time, that he had a problem with alcohol and had sought treatment. Belfast newspapers also report that a woman from Lack village, close to Arthur's home village of Ederney, Co Fermanagh, claims to have reported him to the police several years ago, after she believed he had followed her in his car in a threatening manner.
Despite the fact that these offences took place not far from Omagh, no one in the town who spoke to this reporter seemed to be aware of them. "I can't comprehend why, if he had this record, the neighbours didn't know about it," said one man. "If that was on an estate in Dublin, they'd be up in arms about it. Yet no one seemed to know and he didn't exactly commit them a million miles away. He must have been an unknown quantity . . . and that's a bit of a shock and a worry."
The couple, who lived in a house believed to be owned by a member of Arthur's family, attracted little attention beyond what another man described as "the odd barney" between them.
IT IS UNCLEARwhen Arthur and Lorraine began their relationship, or whether she was aware of his background. Lorraine's cousin, Fr Tom McManus, the parish priest of Corlough, the McGoverns' home place in Co Cavan, told reporters he didn't know Arthur very well but thought the couple had been together about 14 years. Nor is it clear whether Lorraine's 13-year-old daughter, Caroline (born when Lorraine herself was barely 17), is the child of a previous relationship. Her next child, Seán, was born in 2000.
There is no suggestion that the couple's children were affected by their father's history, despite reports that Lorraine's family disapproved of the relationship. "She really did live for them wains, let there be no romance about that. They were her life and she kept them well," said a local woman on her estate. Lorraine, said another, always said she wanted six children before she turned 30: the rumour is that she was two and a half months pregnant when she died.
According to Dr Josephine Deehan, an Omagh GP and member of the Child Protection Panel there, there was no evidence that the children were in any way disturbed or that anything untoward was going on in the family home. "They were happy, well-adjusted, well cared for. They weren't rowdy, just very well-behaved, beautiful children. Also, the McElhills are a very closely-knit, large Irish family so you'd have had the children's [McElhill] aunts visiting that home regularly, dropping in for a cup of tea and bringing gifts for Halloween. I looked at the photo albums in [Arthur's parents'] house on Thursday night of a happy family christening of baby James and what I saw were images of proud parents, two sets of grandparents and all little cousins playing around together . . ." His parents - small farmers - and eight siblings, who all live within seven or eight miles of Omagh, are widely liked and respected.
The day before the fire, Arthur McElhill bought a people-carrier car for his family, which does not suggest any predisposition to suicide at that stage. There are repeated references, however, among friends and neighbours, to an alcohol problem and to the fact that he was on medication for chronic depression, or what one source called "mental health issues". He had been out of work for some time before his death. He worked as a stockman for a local farmer, James Crammond, who told reporters that he would be "totally amazed" if Arthur was a suspect. Crammond said Arthur was "a very capable" worker when he was "fit", ie when he was not drinking.
Despite his alcohol problem, Arthur was not an habitué of pubs. Neighbours say they never knew them as a couple who socialised, but neither was he a classic loner. He enjoying watching motor racing (as a mark of respect, organisers of the World Rally Championship altered its route in order to bypass his home village) and had many friends.
YESTERDAY, AS STConor's primary school reopened its doors beside the tragic skeleton of the burnt-out home, wary parents shepherded their children to the school door. "I don't know what to think any more," said one mother. "Did he burn his family to death? If he did, how can any child ever understand that and recover their trust in adults? If he didn't, we have to believe that someone else out there is capable of pure evil . . ."
The next challenge for the McElhill and McGovern families will be the funeral. Initially, a plan to bury the couple and five children together in Arthur's home village of Ederney was being considered. Yesterday, it was reported that two separate funerals were being discussed. Hard days lie ahead for them and for the people of Omagh.