'In Ulster, death is not the leveller it is in other parts of the world. Here, there is a hierarchy in death and many of these killings became murder milestones on a bloody road with no end.' These were the words of a veteran murder squad detective who was at the cutting edge of the conflict in Northern Ireland for a quarter of a century. They provided the motivation for the research into Milestones in Murder, which reveals aspects of certain killings that have remained undisclosed until now.
Beginning with the death of legendary IRA figure Sean South of Garryowen on New Year's Day 1957, the book describes the background to what we have now come to call 'the troubles' and paints vivid portraits of the major players whose actions sparked the violence that erupted on the streets of Belfast and Derry in the summer of 1969. Throughout the decades of bloodshed, paramilitary leaders on both sides of the political divide continued to search for more so-called legitimate targets. Milestones in Murder charts how more and more innocent people were unwittingly drawn into the conflict against their will. It examines the killings which marked new lows in the republican/loyalist terror war, from the bombing of pubs and clubs to the advent of 'human bomb' couriers. It revisits the horrific murders of the Shankhill Butchers, exclusively revealing exactly who leader Lennie Murphy's accomplices were. This, amongst other revelations, will piece together several parts of the Irish warfare jigsaw for the first time. The book also covers the more recent murder of the author's colleague Martin O'Hagan, an act which sent shock waves through a battle-hardened media in Northern Ireland. O'Hagan was the first journalist in Ireland to lose his life at the hands of the paramilitaries and his death pushed the parameters of slaughter to new limits.
