Case Studies in Murder I - A Set of Car Keys and a Set of Golf Clubs

Those of you who follow the twitter feed faithfully will have noticed that I paid tribute to the contribution of Thomas Cooke’s son in helping me with this project. When I started this blog I always intended to write one of the early posts about the case of Thomas Cooke as a case study in how the IRA operated.

In one sense the story of Thomas Cooke’s murder as far as documented history goes begins on 23rd March 1987.

IRA murder victim Leslie Jarvis

IRA murder victim Austin Wilson

IRA murder victim John Bennison

Around 9pm that evening 61 year old Leslie Jarvis, a prison lecturer in Magilligan, was sitting in his car outside Magee College where he was attending night classes when three masked men approached. Six shots were fired through the windscreen, hitting Jarvis in the head.

The gunmen were then seen casually walking away.

Just under an hour later students were leaving the college when a boobytrap bomb on the back seat of the car exploded, resulting in the murders of RUC officers Austin Wilson and John Bennison.

John Bennison and his wife had just bought a new home in Limavady where they intended to settle with their 15 year old daughter.

Lost Lives quotes the Irish Times as saying of Leslie Jarvis:

“Late in life he experienced the same fate as many of his fellow citizens - unemployment. He had worked as a mechanic in the shirt industry and then in a shoe factory which closed down. He decided to get a job as a leatherwork instructor in Magilligan prison. He was in the third year of a five year part time degree course in psychology”.

Commenting on the murders Catholic Bishop Edward Daly said:

“To use the body of a person who has been murdered as a lure to murder police officers, or anyone else, demonstrates a degree of lack of respect for both the living and the dead which is hard to comprehend”.

The IRA said they murdered Chief Instructor Jarvis because the regime in Magilligan was “violent and inhumane”.

In 2001 Liam Clarke published a biography of Martin McGuinness entitled From Guns to Government. In it he includes the following story told to him by an IRA man about the murders: 

"Everybody was on the other side of the road watching as the bomb went off. McGuinness was in the house opposite watching everything.

"He quite often liked to be close when things went off, to watch and see how they react. It was part of his strategy, his way of refining operations."

When I tweeted about this case I incorrectly said that Leslie Jarvis left a son. In fact he left a daughter. Those who follow the account may also recall that a nephew of Mr Jarvis posted a moving poem about the incident entitled A Simple Set of Car Keys.

Exactly one month after the triple murder Thomas Cooke, an off duty RUC sergeant, was getting into his car outside City of Derry Golf club. He was probably thinking about spending a lot more time improving his handicap. He was only days away from retirement after all. 

IRA murder victim Tom Cooke

Two IRA men approached and shot him ten times at close range. They then escaped in a car which they had stolen from Foyle Road - the family of the owner was held hostage while the murder was being carried out (hostage taking and theft are themes which I plan to return to in a post specifically about those aspects of the IRA campaign).

As Trevor Ringland noted last year:

“Thomas Cooke knew the names and addresses of those who would kill him, probably including Martin McGuinness. Yet he, and the vast majority of the security forces worked through the justice system to counteract the paramilitary threat. He left a wife and three children.” 

The link with the triple murder a month earlier? It was later established that one of the guns used in the murder of off duty sergeant Cooke was also used to murder Leslie Jarvis.

Yet that wasn’t the end of the story. 

Margaret Cooke and her sons pictured at Tom Cooke's funeral

Four years later, in March 1991, the IRA attempted to murder Cooke’s wife Margaret as she drove home. 

Mrs Cooke was a civilian administration assistant in Strand Road RUC Station. She was never armed. 

Her car was hit  by 55 shots.

When I contacted Mark Olphert who wrote the poem about his uncle’s murder before posting this blog he pointed out to me that not only did he lose his Uncle Leslie to the PIRA murder campaign but also his father, off duty RUCR John Olphert. 

John Olphert was serving customers in his shop and post office when two masked murders appeared. He ran to a door closing it behind him but was wounded by a shot fired through the door. They then pushed open the door and shot him again. 

He died in his wife’s arms.

IRA murder victim John Olphert

Like the Jarvis murder this wasn’t the only time the gun was used. The weapon had been stolen from a RUC officer during trouble in the Bogside area of Londonderry two years earlier and was employed in a number of murders. It was eventually recovered from the body of William Fleming, an IRA man shot by the SAS in the grounds of Gransha Hospital in December 1984.  Fleming was attempting to murder an off duty UDR man who worked in the hospital.

What does all that say about the IRA campaign?

Here are a number of thoughts:

1. All four of the people named above who were shot were off duty. One while working for the RUC worked purely on admin, she never carried a weapon with which she could have defended herself. The targeting of off duty security force personnel is something I will return to in my Patters of Evidence series.

When you see a table of deaths during the Troubles remember that most of those members of the security forces who were murdered were off duty and usually unarmed. They didn’t use that gun to murder a prison service employee or an RUC officer. They murdered a student and a golfer.

In the other linked cases they didn’t murder an RUC officer. They murdered a shop keeper - who incidentally had tendered his resignation from the RUC Reserve to spend more time at his business. They attempted to murder an office worker on her way home to sons who they had robbed of a father a few years previously.

2. The two on duty members of the security forces were not confronted by the IRA in some sort of “fair fight”. They were killed after a murder scene was boobytrapped. The use of secondary devices is something I will return to in my Patterns of Evidence series.

3. The links between murders mentioned above were established due to the use of the same weapon. As we now approach a period when it looks like a political deal will be struck on “dealing with the past” it is worth remembering that a treasure trove of forensic evidence was lost due to decommissioning. The guns not being around is now a positive advantage for the PIRA in keeping the secrets of their campaign under wraps.

4. We often forget that members of the security forces were not just work colleagues but friends. In a situation where they were fighting a terrorists campaign those who they could trust were fellow members of the security forces. It’s not surprising therefore that Margaret Cooke for example knew John Bennison not just as someone who she would have seen round the RUC station but someone she knew socially as a badminton partner.

5. Finally, when you read any of the stories I tweet about remember that for many families that was, like the Cooke and the  Jarvis families, just one of the occasions when the IRA’s brutal campaign visited their door. 

Joseph Stalin is alleged to have said “A single death is a tragedy. A million is just a statistic”. I hope that by means of my twitter account and this blog we get away from the statistics of the IRA campaign and back to the tragedy which it visited upon so many innocents.