Sunday Life
By Johnston Brown
23 October 2005
He fought to put terrorist killers like Johnny Adair behind bars and was the victim of dirty tricks from sinister elements inside the RUC’s Special Branch. Now former top CID detective Johnston Brown has written a gripping account of his career. Adapted by Sunday Life’s Stephen Gordon from Into The Dark: 30 Years In The RUC…
Ken Barrett
LOYALIST serial killer Ken Barrett sat in his house telling me he was sick of the UDA and wanted a new life in Canada.
“I’ve had it, Jonty. I’ve seen enough,” said the senior Shankill Road UDA man.
“I’ve seen them with big boxes of money from their drugs and their racketeering . . . there are no soldiers in it. It’s all a waste of time.”
Barrett was offering to work for CID for six-nine months - to blow the Shankill UDA wide open - before disappearing.
That conversation, on October 1, 1991 was to spark an incredible chain of events that included:
• Barrett confessing 48 hours later that he had murdered Pat Finucane in 1989.
• Special Branch blocking my attempts to bring Barrett to justice.
• Special Branch dirty tricks against me.
• Sir John Stevens finally bringing the killer to justice in 2004.
It had actually begun a short time earlier that evening when Barrett called me out of the blue at Greencastle CID.
I hadn’t recognised the deep voice at the other end of the line. The voice was chilling. He spoke slowly and deliberately.
“Save a life, you said, Jonty. You told me to ring you if I could save a life. Well, I want to save a life. I need to talk to you,” he said.
My interest mounted when the caller revealed his identity.
Ken Barrett was suspected of commanding ‘B’ company of the UFF in west Belfast - one of their most vicious units.
My CID colleague, Trevor McIlwrath, and I had interviewed him many times about terrorist crimes, and each time we finished by inviting him to ring us if he ever had information that could save a life.
“Jonty, I’m taking my life in my hands here ringing you. The only reason I trust you is that the UDA hates you, the UVF hates you. Look, I even know some peelers who hate you - you’ve got to be straight,” he said.
“Come up to my house in the Glencairn. I want to ‘empty’ these bastards. Come up here on your own, Jonty,” he said.
“No problem,” I replied. I had no intention of going on my own. That was not an option.
It was a shock to me that a killer like Barrett should come forward. I feared an ambush. Trevor and I decided to go into Glencairn estate backed up by armed Mobile Support Unit officers.
When Barrett opened the door to Trevor and I at 11.30pm, two burly uniformed RUC armed with Heckler & Koch submachine-guns were standing either side of us. Uniformed officers were crouching nearby and others were covering the back door.
“We’re off to a great start here, Jonty,” said Barrett, glaring at us. “How am I going to explain all this?”
He was not happy, but he invited us inside and began to talk of his disgust for the UDA.
Barrett claimed he was so well-placed that no operations were mounted anywhere in Belfast without his knowledge.
He said he was second-in-command to Jim Spence, the ‘brigadier’ of 1 Battalion UDA/UFF. He was offering to hand over arms dumps, give details of UFF operations and expose RUC and UDR officers involved in collusion.
“I’m willing to hand over all I know if the RUC will come up with a deal,” he said.
“How much do you want, Ken?” I asked.
“I was thinking of a grand or so, Jonty. As a token of our deal, if you know what I mean.”
I nearly laughed out loud. Trevor and I could easily scrape up £100, but he had no chance of getting £1,000. I explained that CID only paid on results. We were not like Special Branch, who paid informants monthly retainers.
“No Branch, Jonty. I want nothing to do with them scumbags,” Barrett said.
I explained that we had to involve Special Branch at an early stage in accordance with our regulations. Barrett lost it.
“No Branch, Jonty. The back roads of Northern Ireland are littered with their mistakes.”
It was useless to argue with Barrett. Our hands were tied.
Before we left, Barrett said: “It is as simple as this, Jonty. I have the commodity. You want it. It’s a seller’s market at my level because I can ruin the UFF.”
Barrett was a despicable, low life thug. I was under no illusions as to why he was offering his services. He wanted money.
But I also knew we could exploit his weakness to gain information that could save lives.
He sat in a police car and confessed to the brutal murder of Pat Finucane - but Special Branch were not impressed
KEN Barrett’s offer to blow the UFF wide open didn’t appear to impress the group of Special Branch officers I was ordered to brief at Castlereagh.
They behaved like children, going out of their way to let me know that no one was interested in what Barrett had said two days earlier.
I looked up from my notes to find them winking and nudging each other. I hadn’t been speaking long when a Special Branch detective chirped up: “Thanks for that, Jonty. Now, this is how we handle this.”
My partner and I were told Branch officer Sam (not his real name) was to accompany us to pick up Barrett in a car at Nutts Corner that night.
“Sam will use a concealed tape recorder to record the conversations,” said the detective.
When we arrived that evening the area was swarming with undercover police. Nothing could have prepared me for the debacle that was to follow.
At 8.50pm Barrett opened the back door of our police car and was seated beside my partner Trevor in a flash. As Sam drove off towards Nutts Corner roundabout, cars coming towards us and others parked at the side of the road flashed their lights.
Barrett twigged exactly what was happening. Sam swung the car into the first lay-by, and as he switched off the ignition more headlights flashed from a car parked 300 yards up the main road.
Sam reached for his radiotelephone: “The bird is in the nest.” “Roger,” came the reply.
I couldn’t believe it. It was almost as if Sam and his colleagues wanted Barrett to be aware they were Special Branch.
“Who are these c****, Jonty?” asked a furious Barrett. “I spotted at least four police cars and there’s another one up there flashing lights! Say there’s three of them boys in each car, that’s five cars and 15 men, plus you three. That means at least 18 people know I’m here, and how many more?”
“Those people are here as much to protect you as they are to protect us,” I lied.
“And who is he, Jonty?” Barrett asked, pointing to Sam, who we were pretending was a CID man from HQ in charge of the cash.
“He’s a f****** Branch man,” an agitated Barrett shouted, after Sam asked him a series of questions that no CID man would have asked. Barrett knew that Sam and his watching colleagues were not CID.
He was not happy, but gradually he began to settle down and answer our questions. His knowledge of the UDA/UFF was profound.
We sat in that car for two hours. I cannot recall exactly at what juncture it happened, but he was in full flow when I decided to ask him who had murdered Pat Finucane?
Barrett’s composure left him. The look on his face was one of shock. I realised I had touched a nerve.
“Hypothetically, me,” he said without hesitation. Sam pushed his knee into mine as if to indicate that I should say no more. I did not know what his problem was and I couldn’t have cared less.
By now Barrett was reliving that traumatic event. He was obviously back there in that kitchen, committing the murder all over again.
He was gloating, boasting of how he had murdered Pat Finucane. In Barrett’s own sinister world, he was a hero.
“I stood right over him, Jonty, straddling him, and I fired shot after shot into his face.”
Barrett looked at me with his scary, cruel eyes. He seemed to be seeking approval. I think he expected me to congratulate him. The fact was, he made me feel physically ill. But I knew better than to let him detect that. Ken Barrett was the stuff of nightmares.
“Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,” he said, holding his hands in the shape of a gun. “Them bullets were going into his f****** head and coming straight back up at me. I heard them whizzing past my own head. The stone floor in the kitchen, Jonty. The bullets were going through his face and into the stone floor and whistling back up again past me.
“I nearly shot myself dead,” he said, with a sudden expression of concern. All I could think, was how could anyone do such a thing to a fellow human being, let alone do it in front of screaming and terrified witnesses, like Pat Finucane’s wife and children?
“I’ll tell you something else you won’t know,” Barrett said.
“I killed that c*** so fast, he was still holding his fork in his hand,” he gloated in a sickening manner.
With facts like these, we would be able to further incriminate or eliminate Barrett from our murder inquiry.
People had made false confessions before. But, personally, I was in no doubt that we were sitting in the presence of a psychopath. I was also totally convinced that this was not the only murder he’d done.
Barrett also told us the name of the second gunman, and said the driver was a young lad from Rathcoole on his first UFF operation.
The problem we had now, was nothing that Barrett had said to us was admissible in evidence against him. He was not under caution. It could only be used to corroborate other evidence.
But we now had a clear duty to put him in jail for life for that murder - and our colleagues in Special Branch had a duty to assist us.
They would. I just knew that they would. This was sheer, unadulterated murder. We had a clear responsibility to the deceased and to his wife and family.
I was in for a shock.
After we dropped Barrett off, both Trevor and myself expressed our intention to put him away.
“No you won’t,” Sam said. “Move away from it.”
“What?” I asked.
“Move away from it,” he repeated.
“We (Special Branch) know he done it, Jonty. We know all about it,” he said.
As a killer this man was stuff of nightmares
My CID partner Trevor and I dubbed Ken Barrett “Freddie Kruger”, after the sinister main character in Nightmare On Elm Street.
Barrett was perhaps the most evil-looking individual it had ever been my duty to meet in 30 years as a policeman.
The cold-blooded serial killer was small in stature, and very thin and gaunt. He used his wild, staring eyes to reinforce points.
It always struck me as odd the way that he would boast openly of his involvement in horrific crimes, including murder.
It was as if he had done so many times to other RUC men, who had done nothing about it.
I had my own suspicions as to which branch of the RUC had been involved.
Fight for justice frustrated… by forces of law and order
KEN Barrett’s graphic description of the Finucane murder fitted perfectly with the facts.
The position of the body, the horrific injuries inflicted, bullet holes in the house - all matched forensic reports.
But, right from the start, my CID partner and I were prevented from trying to bring the killer to justice.
On the morning after Barrett’s startling confession, Trevor and I briefed our supervisors. I noted their apparent lack of enthusiasm for this chance of a lifetime to put a serial killer in jail.
It was obvious that Special Branch had got to these men first. We were told we could not meet Barrett again until six days later, on October 10.
Shortly before that meeting, we were instructed by Special Branch not to raise the Finucane murder case. We were to bleed Barrett of every scrap of information about the UFF. Special Branch had allegedly given senior CID officers the “bigger picture”. My alarm bells never rang louder than when Branch men used the term “bigger picture”.
My experience was that this “bigger picture” phenomenon was used to protect the Branch and their agents from scrutiny. No one was allowed to question the propriety of what the Branch was doing.
I continued to have contact with Barrett. But I had no idea of the lengths Special Branch would go to stop me asking any more questions about the murder of Pat Finucane.
In November, 1991 Barrett told me: “Sam (the Special Branch man) says I’m not to speak to you . . . he hates you, Jonty. He says you are going to put me in jail for the Finucane murder.”
But Special Branch attempts to shut Barrett’s mouth failed miserably. On March 16, 1991 Barrett told me: “Sam says they are going to put a serious UFF threat on you and put the ‘mix’ in with your bosses to get rid of you . . . them boys are scary b*******. Sam told me that, from now on, I’m only to meet Special Branch.”
He claimed Sam asked him if he knew if Johnny Adair and Jim Spence knew where I lived, and where my elderly mother lived.
Barrett was right. Two days later, I was summoned to the detective inspector’s office at Tennent Street where I was officially informed that a serious threat from the UFF had been made against me. The threat alleged the UFF were aware of my address and my mother’s address.
Later, a superior officer told me: “The Special Branch want a meeting at Castlereagh at 2pm today to discuss your alleged betrayal, Jonty. They say you are dropping the names of their informants on the Shankill Road.”
There was “the mix” Barrett had tipped me off about.
But I had already informed a superior officer of Ken Barrett’s warning.
Our CID regional head was later able to stop Special Branch in their tracks, telling them that none other than Ken Barrett had warned me this would happen.
Special Branch were stumped, but quickly concluded there had been “a clash of personalities at a junior level”.
They agreed to remove Sam from the Barrett case in return for CID removing me.
