![]() ![]() “Did they let him die before they put him in the hole? How much did they torture him?” Even now, it’s like you’re stuck and you can’t move forward. “They should have taken my mother that same day,” she says. Philomena McKee, the younger sister of Kevin McKee, who disappeared with Seamus Wright in 1972 from West Belfast told me her mother lost her mind with grief. The ripple effect of the murders continues along the generations, still blighting lives with its backwash of depression and addiction. In fact, it has led to decades of heartbreak for the families who lost loved ones, never able to bury their dead. With chilling irony, the remote burial of victims was the idea of IRA 'modernisers' who no longer wanted to see the mutilated bodies of alleged traitors dumped on Belfast’s streets. The IRA has admitted responsibility for 13 of the killings, while the Irish National Liberation Army has admitted to one of them. “The former paramilitaries want an end to this themselves,” Knupfer told me. ![]() The Commission has so far found six out of 16 victims. Since 2006, the commission has been headed by two ex-British police officers – Geoff Knupfer, the Moors Murders detective who led the search on Saddleworth Moor, and Jon Hill, a former senior Met detective. Last year, I joined the search in the bleak borderland of Bragan, Co Monaghan, where they were digging the bog in driving rain. More than 3,600 died on all sides over three decades, but the group known as the Disappeared refers to 16 people being sought by the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains. The search still goes on daily for bodies buried in remote locations during the Troubles. The story of the IRA’s ‘Disappeared’ casts a long shadow over the peace process. ![]()
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