ABSTRACT
Lost Lives, a thick book whose Bible-thin pages document every Troubles death, attributes the attack to the UVF ‘according to reliable loyalist sources’. The bus attack would indirectly lead to the murder of the O’Dowds, as Declan was one of several local men questioned by the police about a car which he had sold that evening, which eyewitnesses claimed resembled the car used by the gunmen. The Troubles and the sectarianism that is also part of the North’s brand would continue to cast a shadow over an entire childhood. At the funeral, Kathleen’s grief-stricken face told in a few etched lines of the toll the Troubles took. The weapon used to shoot the O’Dowds was a standard British Army–issued Sterling submachine gun (SMG), the same gun was used in nine other murders, all but the last attributed to the Glenanne Gang, made up of UVF men and rogue serving or former RUC and UDR members.
