Torrens Knight was one of the men convicted over two sets of killings in County Londonderry in 1993. Four men died in Castlerock on March 25, and eight people died after an attack in Greysteel on October 30. On February 24, 1995 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for twelve murders at Belfast Crown Court, where the trial was held without a jury. The group responsible was the Ulster Freedom Fighters.
His case is known for what came after the sentence as much as for the killings. Under the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998, passed to carry out part of the Good Friday Agreement, he was released on licence on July 28, 2000. In October 2009 he was convicted of assault on two women in Coleraine, his licence was suspended, and he was returned to custody. He lost a High Court challenge to the suspension in March 2010 and was released again in August 2010. Each stage drew objections from a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, John Dallat, who in 2006 raised an allegation about police protection that the Police Ombudsman examined and did not support.
The High Court gave his name as Robert Torrens Knight, and he used the second name throughout. He was 36 in 2006 and 40 in 2009, which places his birth around 1969 or 1970.
The setting is clear. The Ulster Freedom Fighters carried out a series of attacks in the north-west of Northern Ireland between 1989 and 1993, and in January 2022 the Police Ombudsman reported on eleven of them, linked to nineteen murders. Two of the eleven were Castlerock and Greysteel. The Ombudsman found that police knew from 1989 of a growing threat from the group, and found that the investigations of the attacks themselves were generally "prompt and thorough" and led to convictions.
On March 25, 1993, four men died in Castlerock, a village on the north coast of County Londonderry. The Police Ombudsman and the local press give their names as James Kelly, James McKenna, Robert (Gerry) Dalrymple and Noel O'Kane. A fifth man survived with serious injuries and has spoken publicly in recent years of his focus on securing justice for the families of the four.
The men were Catholic, and the attack was attributed to the Ulster Freedom Fighters. Knight was convicted of the four murders in Castlerock, and they form part of the twelve for which he was sentenced in 1995.
The families of the four men did not stop asking questions after the convictions. The 2022 Ombudsman report on the north-west attacks, which included Castlerock, concluded that there was "no evidence that the RUC had any prior knowledge of the attacks" but identified what it called collusive behaviours, among them members of the Ulster Defense Regiment passing information to loyalists. The survivor later said he felt the Ombudsman had not been able to use the word collusion outright.
Greysteel is a village in County Londonderry where Catholics and Protestants lived and socialised in the same places throughout the Troubles. On October 30, 1993, a week after the Shankill Road bombing in Belfast, members of the Ulster Freedom Fighters carried out an attack in the village. Eight people were killed: seven died at the time, and an eighth, a man of 76, died of his injuries in April 1994. Others were injured. The dead came from both communities.
The eight were Karen Thompson, 19, and her boyfriend Steven Mullan, 20; Moira Duddy, 59; Joseph McDermott, 60; John Moyne, 50; John Burns, 54; James Moore, 81, the oldest of them; and Victor Montgomery, 76.
A co-defendant, Stephen Irwin, was arrested on November 2, 1993 and remanded in custody.
The Greysteel proceedings were heard at Belfast Crown Court from 20 to February 24, 1995 before Lord Justice Carswell, sitting without a jury. Five defendants appear in the court record: Irwin, Knight, Geoffrey Deeney, Brian McNeill and Derek Grieve. The charges against Irwin, set out in a later ruling on his minimum term, were murder, attempted murder, membership of the Ulster Freedom Fighters and other offenses. Irwin was re-arraigned on February 23 and pleaded guilty to all charges; Lord Justice Carswell declined to recommend a minimum term for any defendant who had pleaded guilty.
On February 24, 1995, as the High Court later recorded, Knight was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for twelve murders. The twelve murders were the eight at Greysteel and the four at Castlerock. Three men, Irwin, Deeney and Knight, and a fourth, McNeill, were convicted over the Greysteel attack, and all four received life sentences. Statements Knight made in interviews with the Royal Ulster Constabulary were among the court papers used in deciding sentences.
Two features of Northern Ireland law in these years shaped the case.
The first is the non-jury court. The Greysteel trial was heard by a single judge, Lord Justice Carswell, sitting without a jury, which was how scheduled terrorist offenses were tried in Northern Ireland at the time.
The second is the early release scheme. The Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998 and the Sentence Review Commissioners Rules 1998 were passed in late July 1998 to give effect to the Good Friday Agreement commitment on prisoners. The Act provided for the appointment of Commissioners, set the criteria for release on licence and calculated release dates for life-sentence prisoners. A panel of three Commissioners gave a preliminary indication, either side could challenge it at an oral hearing, and the outcome was a substantive determination. Once made it could not be reconsidered except by revocation of the declaration, and a challenge was open only by judicial review. The Secretary of State could suspend a licence if a condition had been or was likely to be broken. Knight's licence conditions were that he must not support a specified organisation, must not become concerned in acts of terrorism connected with Northern Ireland, and must not become a danger to the public.
The last releases from the Maze took place on July 28, 2000. Seventy-eight prisoners were freed that day, among them members of the Ulster Volunteer Force, the Ulster Defense Association and Ulster Freedom Fighters, the Loyalist Volunteer Force and the Irish National Liberation Army, and the Provisional IRA prisoners were the last to leave. In all, 428 prisoners had been released under the programme, 143 of them serving life sentences. Torrens Knight was named among those due out, as a loyalist convicted of a total of twelve murders.
The High Court later recorded his release on licence under Section 6 of the 1998 Act on July 28, 2000, just over five years after the sentence. Counting the time held before trial, his time in custody came to about seven years for twelve murders.
Irwin, one of the other men convicted of the Greysteel murders, later had a different outcome in a separate case. After a conviction in 2005 his licence was suspended and he was ordered to serve his original life sentences; the Lord Chief Justice set a minimum term of 30 years in March 2008, and Irwin was released again in 2013 after applying to the Sentence Review Commissioners.
In February 2006 a Social Democratic and Labour Party member of the Assembly, John Dallat, claimed that Knight had been a double agent shielded by police Special Branch before the Greysteel killings. He said a serving soldier had telephoned him with the claim. The Police Ombudsman, Nuala O'Loan, was examining the allegations at an early stage, and a police spokeswoman declined to comment.
Mr Dallat had also complained that crucial information he had given detectives had not been acted on. In October 2007 the Ombudsman reported that detectives had not had enough information that could have prevented the Greysteel murders and that there was no evidence to support his complaint. On Knight, she found no evidence that he was protected from the law as an alleged informant. She said whether he had been a police informant was outside her remit, but that his convictions for both sets of murders suggested he had not been protected. Mr Dallat said the report put on record his efforts to bring the group to justice before the attack.
In May 2008 an incident took place in licensed premises in Coleraine involving Knight and two sisters. He was arrested on June 1, 2008 on suspicion of assault on two women, released without charge and the file sent to the Public Prosecution Service. Later he was summonsed to Coleraine Petty Sessions on two counts of common assault and one count of disorderly behaviour in licensed premises. He pleaded not guilty and said he had acted in self-defense. After a contested hearing on October 22, 2009 he was convicted on all counts.
The district judge, Austin Kennedy, did not accept the self-defense account and described Knight as having behaved as a bully. When Knight was sentenced on December 2, 2009 the judge called the offense "nasty and vicious" and said it had been "extremely traumatic for the victims". The sentences were concurrent terms of four months for the assaults and three months for disorderly behaviour. Knight was granted liberty pending appeal over the objection of the Crown, and a notice of appeal against conviction was lodged on December 3, 2009.
The appeal was listed for January 6, 2010 but did not proceed. It was re-listed for February 11, 2010. At Antrim County Court the judge, David Smyth QC, again rejected the self-defense claim and found that Knight had lashed out after losing his temper.
On October 27, 2009, five days after the convictions, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Shaun Woodward, suspended Knight's licence under Section 9(2) of the 1998 Act and ordered his recall. Knight was arrested in Coleraine that day. Mr Woodward said the convictions showed Knight had breached the terms of his life licence and that he "presents a risk to the safety of others", adding: "My priority is public safety." Mr Dallat said he was very relieved. On October 28 the Sentence Review Commissioners asked Knight to submit application papers, and on December 23, 2009 he filed applications seeking a review of the suspension.
Knight also applied to the High Court for judicial review. His lawyers argued that the suspension infringed his right to liberty and should not have been imposed before his appeal was heard, and his barrister said he had changed his ways and cut his ties with former associates. On March 5, 2010 Mr Justice Treacy rejected all three grounds: the challenge under Article 5(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights, the claim of legitimate expectation and the claim of unreasonableness. Leave was refused, the judge saying that Knight "has not made out any ground of challenge and leave must therefore be refused". The court found that the Secretary of State had acted rationally and in good faith. Whether Knight remained a danger to the public was left to the Sentence Review Commissioners.
Mr Dallat's response was that Knight "has not reformed", had shown no remorse and should remain in custody.
In early August 2010 a decision of the Sentence Review Commissioners led to Knight's release. His licence had been suspended and not revoked. Mr Dallat described the damage done to democracy by the decision as "horrendous", said the Commissioners and the Northern Ireland Office needed to explain themselves, and said he had telephoned the two women himself because he believed they had not been told. A spokesperson for the Commissioners said that they do not comment on individual cases.
The allegation that Knight was a police agent is unproven. It was made by an Assembly member in 2006 on the basis of a telephone call, the Ombudsman found no evidence that he was protected by police, and she said the question of whether he was an informant was outside her remit. The Ombudsman's 2022 report found collusive behaviours in the handling of loyalist paramilitaries in the north-west but no evidence of prior police knowledge of the attacks; it did not address the allegation about Knight.
March 25, 1993: four men die in Castlerock; a fifth survives with serious injuries.
October 30, 1993: eight people die in Greysteel (the eighth in April 1994).
November 2, 1993: Stephen Irwin arrested in connection with Greysteel.
20 to February 24, 1995: trial at Belfast Crown Court, non-jury, before Carswell LJ.
February 24, 1995: Knight convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for twelve murders.
July 28, 2000: released on licence under Section 6 of the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998.
February 2006: allegation by John Dallat MLA that Knight was shielded by Special Branch.
October 17, 2007: Police Ombudsman reports no evidence Knight was protected by police.
May 2008: incident in Coleraine; June 1, 2008, Knight arrested, released without charge.
October 22, 2009: convicted of two counts of common assault and one of disorderly behaviour in licensed premises.
October 27, 2009: licence suspended; recalled to custody.
December 2, 2009: sentenced to four months and three months, concurrent; notice of appeal lodged December 3.
March 5, 2010: High Court refuses leave for judicial review ([2010] NIQB 30).
August 2010: released following a decision of the Sentence Review Commissioners.
January 14, 2022: Police Ombudsman reports on eleven north-west attacks including Castlerock and Greysteel.