“Watch the children until I come back.” - Jean McConville
Last month’s column documented the troubled lives of Dolours Price and her sister Marian. The focus was of their internment and subsequent hunger strikes as well as the hardship they had to endure during the force feeding process that was inflicted on them by the British State. However, despite the sisters being involved in bombing the Old Bailey as well as their hunger strikes this is but one part of their remarkable life. Both were also part of the secret ‘Unknowns’ IRA hit squad and were involved in the abduction and murder of Jean McConville. Jean McConville is the most well-known member of the ‘Disappeared’ group. A group given its name as they went missing during the troubles. Executed by IRA hitmen for being informants. Four out of seventeen ‘Disappeared’ victims have not been found as of today. Jean McConville is the most high profile of this group. Her disappearance at the time December 1972 caused public outrage as she had 10 children. Controversy and media scrutiny around the disappearance of Jean McConville gathered momentum due to the ‘Boston College Tapes’, these were confidential recordings of high profile members of the IRA sanctioned under the implicit instruction that the recordings would not be published until after the participants' deaths. Dolours Price and Brendan ‘The Dark’ Hughes were the protagonists and it was their confessions that brought to light some of the most incredible aspects of the Troubles. The Jean McConville disappearance featured heavily on the recordings and in them Dolours Price made some extremely damning allegations. None more so than naming the people involved in making Jean McConville disappear and the person that ordered her disappearance. It was these claims by Price and Hughes that led to several arrests in three decades after McConville's disappearance as well as the uncovering of her remains. Much to the delight of her family.
The oral history project was directed by the Irish writer and journalist Ed Moloney. Both Republican and Loyalist prisoners were interviewed. Wilson McArthur interviewed the Loyalists and Anthony McIntyre interviewed the Republicans. Ed Moloney began working on the history project very shortly after the peace deal was brokered in 1998 after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. Recordings of these interviews were held in a library at Boston College and became known as the Boston tapes. Among the participants were the former Progressive Unionist Party leader David Ervine, former IRA commander Brendan Hughes and former IRA member Dolours Price. All three have since died. Which under the terms of the contract, meant the release of the tapes was now legal. The tapes were highly critical of Gerry Adams. Brendan Hughes, one of the main interviewees, was formerly a close friend of Adams. However, they had fallen out over their opinions of the GFA, Adams was pro the agreement and Hughes was anti the GFA and wanted to continue the armed struggle in the North. Brendan Hughes admitted to organising Bloody Friday, the day in 1972 on which the IRA detonated more than 19 car bombs in Belfast in the space of an hour. Nine people were killed and 130 were injured. Images of police officers shovelling the mutilated bodies of the victims into bags are some of the most enduring of the Troubles.
Hughes also spoke of his former close friend, Gerry Adams, claiming the former Sinn Féin leader was once the overall commander of the IRA's Belfast brigade. He also claimed Mr Adams had controlled his own squad within the IRA, known by the organisation as "the Unknowns", this, according to Hughes, was the group responsible for the deaths of the so called ‘Disappeared’ - victims who were kidnapped, murdered and secretly buried by republican paramilitaries. Gerry Adams, strenuously denied these allegations and said that Hughe’s accusations were concocted as a means of retribution over their disagreement of the peace treaty in the North. Adams said they had entirely different views and their friendship had deteriorated as a result. In the latter years of his life, Hughes had become an ardent critic of his former friend.
Dolours Price in her interviews with Ed Moloney admitted to taking part in the disappearance and murder of Jean McConville. When asked about the disappearance of McConville, Price said that she was involved by driving her across the border. The IRA suspected that McConville was an informant for the British, and the IRA was keen on sending a message that “touts” are not tolerated. Three members of the ‘Unknowns’ group were directed to kidnap and shoot Jean McConville in the head. Price admitted to driving McConville across the border and said that all 3 members agreed to shoot Jean McConville so that there could be no guarantee of which one of them fired the fatal shot. This was a tactic used by some hitmen squads to help with the guilt of the killing. Particularly if they believed the victim was innocent, but were ordered to carry out the execution regardless. Dolours Price believed McConville was an informant.
Price claims that under IRA interrogation Mrs McConville confessed to becoming an informer "for money". However, she did not believe she should be killed as she was the mother of 10 children. She said she had a change of heart when McConville was in her car. Price said that she intentionally missed the shot because she felt uneasy about killing McConville. Price’s information certainly served as a major revelation in the kidnapping and murder of Jean McConville, however it did not provide the identity of the I.R.A. volunteer that fired the fatal shot. While the murder is still classified as an open case and Dolours Price was never arrested or charged with assisting the murder, there is a hunch that it could have been Dolours’s sister, Marian Price. Marian was the third member of the Unknowns that was present at the murder of Jean McConville. Ultimately, Dolours Price places the lion’s share of the blame on Gerry Adams and asserts that Adams was the commanding officer that ordered the abduction and murder. Since Price announced Adams as her commanding officer, Adams was arrested by the PSNI shortly after for his involvement in the McConville murder. In a conversation with journalist Liam Clarke, Price spoke negatively about Gerry Adams. She said: “The man is an ignoramus and his ego has affected his head. He has lost all sense of proportion in his greed for attention.” Adams has always denied all these allegations. He was arrested by the PSNI after the release of the Boston College Tapes based on their contents. He was released without charge.
McConville was killed by a gunshot to the back of the head; there was no evidence of any other injuries to her body. Her body was secretly buried across on Shelling Hill Beach (also known as Templetown Beach) at the south-eastern tip of the Cooley Peninsula in the north of County Louth about 50 miles from her home. The book ‘Say Nothing, A true story of murder and memory in Northern Ireland’, by New York Times journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, is based largely on the PSNI investigation into the 1972 murder of Jean McConville. The book claims Marian Price fired the fatal shot that killed Mrs McConville, before she was secretly buried in an unmarked grave in Co Louth. Her remains were discovered in 2003. The author says after joining together information contained in transcripts provided by Moloney, he asked a third, unnamed person about the theory. This person confirmed Marian was the person that killer and that Dolours had said the execution of Jean McConville was 'something the sisters had done together', Mr. Radden Keefe states. Convicted along with her sister for the bombing of the Old Bailey in London in 1973, Ms Price was released from prison in 1980 on a Royal Prerogative of Mercy, due to her deteriorating health. This is believed to be the reason Dolours would not name the 3rd person present at the scene of the killing of McConville. She named herself and Pat Mclure as being at the scene as well as a third person and admitted that all 3 fired a shot at the head of Jean McConville, however she refused to name the third member.
Only one bullet was recovered and a post-mortem found Mrs McConville had died from a single gunshot wound to the head. Republican sources have told the Belfast Telegraph that Price and McClure fired to miss, but the third IRA member did not. She admits being haunted by her role in the deaths. "I think back on those who I had responsibility for driving away. "I'm not a deeply religious person, but I would say a prayer for them," she states. This would seem to corroborate Radden Keefe's claims in that it was Marian Price that fired the fatal shot. Jean McConville remained missing for 30 years. After her disappearance, McConville's seven youngest children, including six-year-old twins, survived on their own in the flat, cared for by their 15-year-old sister Helen. According to them, the hungry family was visited three weeks later by a stranger, who gave them McConville's purse, with 52 pence and her three rings in it.
In 1999, the IRA gave information on the whereabouts of her body. This prompted a prolonged search, co-ordinated by the Garda Síochána, the Republic of Ireland's police force, but no body was found. On the night of 26 August 2003, a storm washed away part of the embankment supporting the west side of Shelling Hill Beach car park, near the site of previous searches. This exposed the body. On 27 August, it was found by passersby while they were walking on Shelling Hill Beach (also known as Templetown Beach) in County Louth, at the south-eastern tip of the Cooley Peninsula. McConville was subsequently reburied beside her husband Arthur in Holy Trinity Graveyard in Lisburn. The Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, Nuala O'Loan, published a report about the police's investigation of the murder. It concluded that the RUC did not investigate the murder until 1995, when it carried out a minor investigation. It found no evidence that she had been an informer, but recommended the British Government go against its long-standing policy regarding informers and reveal whether she was one. Journalist Ed Moloneycalled for the British Government to release war diaries relating to the Divis Flats area at the time.
War diaries are usually released under the thirty-year rule, but those relating to Divis at the time of McConville's death are embargoed for almost ninety years. The police have since apologised for its failure to investigate her abduction. In March and April 2014, the PSNI arrested a number of people over the kidnapping and killing of Jean McConville. Ivor Bell, former IRA Chief of Staff, was arrested in March 2014. Shortly afterwards, he was charged with aiding and abetting in her murder. In April, the PSNI arrested three people who were teenagers at the time of the kidnapping: a 56-year-old man and two women, aged 57 and 60. All were released without charge. Following Bell's arrest in March, there was media speculation that police would want to question Gerry Adams due to the claims made by Hughes and Price. Adams maintained he was not involved, but had his solicitor contact the PSNI to find whether they wanted to question him. On 30 April, after being contacted by the PSNI, Adams voluntarily arranged to be interviewed at Antrim PSNI Station. He was arrested and questioned for four days before being released without charge. A file was sent to the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) to decide whether further action should be taken,but there was "insufficient evidence" to charge him. In a ruling of the Belfast Crown Court in October 2019 Bell was cleared of involvement in the murder of Jean McConville. The Boston tapes were deemed unreliable and could not be presented as evidence in the trial. As of today, no one has been charged with Jean McConville's murder.