The Roddy's Bar Killings
Introduction from Chronology
Three members of the RIC Reserve Force are shot in their beds in
the Railway View Hotel, Townhall St., Belfast resulting in the deaths of two
(Constable Thomas Heffron and Constable Michael Quinn) and the wounding of the
third (Constable Gilmartin).
Some hours later a Catholic
(Michael McGarvey or Garvey) is shot dead in his bed in Bray St.
More Detail
Parkinson says that the RIC men
were staying at the Central Railway Hotel at the corner of Townhall St. and
Oxford St. – known locally as Roddy’s Bar – and notes that it showed the IRA’s
capacity for accurate intelligence gathering.
The five man IRA team included
Seamus Woods, Rodger McCorley, Joe Murray and Leo Murphy. The three RIC
Reserve members had been attached to the Phoenix Park depot and Constable
Gilmartin was due to give evidence in the trial of an IRA man (Michael Gray)
accused of killing an RIC man in Sligo (Sgt Patrick Fallon – see
Nov-03-20/2). The unionist press quickly
vented its fury at these killings.
A few hours later, a Catholic shop assistant, Michael McGarvey or Garvey, was shot dead in his bed in Bray St., of the Crumlin Road. The woman in whose house McGarvey was a lodger recalled the leisurely departure of his three killers – they stood outside her house chatting to a small group of men before departing in a car. It was rumoured that senior RIC officers (including District Inspector John Nixon, District Inspector Richard Harrison and Head Constable Pakenham) were involved in this killing - they had shot him under the wrong impression that he was another McGarvey, a barman who worked in Roddy’s Hotel, who they suspected of complicity in the shooting of the three RIC men.