Editing Shankill Butchers (section)

===Background===
{{unreferenced section|date=December 2015}}
Much of what is known about the Butchers comes from [[Martin Dillon]]'s ''The Shankill Butchers: A Case Study of Mass Murder'' (1989 and 1998). In compiling this detailed work, Dillon was reportedly given unlimited access to the case files of the [[Royal Ulster Constabulary]] (RUC), who eventually caught the gang. The commander of the Shankill Butchers was Lenny Murphy. Murphy was the youngest of three sons of Joyce (née Thompson) and William Murphy from the loyalist Shankill Road area of Belfast. At school, he was a known bully and would threaten other boys with a knife or with retribution from his two older brothers. Soon after leaving school at 16, he joined the UVF. Murphy often attended the trials of people accused of paramilitary crimes to become well acquainted with the laws of evidence and police procedure.

On 28 September 1972, Murphy (aged 20) shot and killed William Edward "Ted" Pavis (32) at his home in [[Belfast|East Belfast]]. Pavis was a Protestant whom the UVF accused of selling weapons to the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA). Murphy and an accomplice, Mervyn Connor, were arrested and held on [[Remand (court procedure)|remand]] in Belfast's [[Crumlin Road (HM Prison)|Crumlin Road prison]]. After a visit by police to Connor, fellow inmates suspected that he might cut a deal with the authorities. On 22 April 1973, Connor died by ingesting a large dose of [[cyanide]]. Before he died, he wrote a [[Confession (law)|confession]] to the Pavis murder, reportedly under duress from Murphy.{{Clarify|date=December 2015}} Murphy was brought to trial for the Pavis murder in June 1973. The court heard evidence from two witnesses who had seen Murphy pull the trigger and had later picked him out of an identification parade. The jury acquitted him due in part to Murphy's disruption of the line-up. Murphy's freedom was short-lived as he was re-arrested immediately for a number of escape attempts and imprisoned, then interned, for three years.<ref name="Connor">Dillon, pp. 31–38</ref>