**Kenova, Scappaticci and Kincora. The Kenova Inquiry did not investigate the murder of a Westminster MP by Freddie Scappaticci. Scappaticci was a sexual deviant, sadist, MI5-IRA torturer and serial killer. The Kenova Report also misses Scappaticci’s true barbaric value to MI5.**
*By David Burke*
The Operation Kenova Report took seven years to complete. It looked at a string of murders committed by Alfredo ‘Freddie’ Scappaticci. It ignored the most important murder Scappaticci committed: the slaying of Robert Bradford MP.
Bradford was a member of the Ulster Unionist Party and the Vanguard Progressive Unionist Party. He represented Belfast South.
The Bradford killing was linked to the cover-up of the Kincora Boys’ Home child abuse sex scandal.
[This article is an updated and expanded version of a report on the murder of Robert Bradford which appeared in Village magazine in 2023.]
**1. Scappattici, a sexually deviant, sadistic torturer and mass murderer.**
Scappaticci was a cold blooded killer without a single redeeming feature. He was an ideal asset for an organisation such as MI5. He lusted after children and spent hours masturbating in front of pictures of extreme pornography, some of which involved animals. He was convicted at Westminster Magistrates Court in 2018 after he admitted two counts of possessing extreme pornography.
The Kenova report states that:
As part of the Kenova investigations, Freddie Scappaticci was first arrested on 30th January 2018 in relation to offences connected with the Kenova [terms of reference]. A search warrant was executed at his home address following his arrest. Searching his property, we recovered numerous exhibits including electronic devices.
A laptop recovered from the sitting room at his address contained 329 images of an extreme pornographic nature. Kenova officers and Hi-Tec crime forensic experts were able to prove that Mr Scappaticci was responsible for accessing and downloading these images.
On 1st February 2018, while in police custody, we further arrested Freddie Scappaticci for being in possession of extreme pornographic material contrary to section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. Mr Scappaticci admitted viewing the material but not storing the images, he accepted that he was the sole user of the laptop. He was charged with two specimen counts of possession of extreme pornographic images contrary to section 63, covering a period from October 2015 to January 2018.
On 4th December 2018, at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London, Mr Scappaticci pleaded guilty to possessing extreme pornographic material. The Chief Magistrate sentenced him to three months in custody suspended for 12 months. In sentencing, the Magistrate said, “You have not been before the court for fifty years and that’s good character in my book”. These remarks frustrated many victims and families who have engaged with Operation Kenova and I can understand why.
Richard O’Rawe, a former IRA hunger striker turned author, published, Scappaticci’s Dirty War, in 2023. One IRA man interviewed by O’Rawe told him:
I think Scap was turned because of a lust for young children … he was reported to the RUC for having abused a child in west Belfast, but they never acted upon it.’
**2. A cascade of death.**
The stench of death surrounding the Kincora scandal is heady. A string of murders and suicides related to Kincora help place the shooting of Bradford into its correct context. One of these was the killing of John McKeague. The modus operandi in the murder of McKeague was similar to that of the Bradford hit, i.e., McKeague was murdered by Republicans who were British agents. On this occassion the proxy assassins were in the INLA, not the IRA. McKeague was shot because he threatened to spill the beans on the Kincora scandal.
McKeague was most significant Loyalist terrorists of the period 1968-82. He was a violent and sadistic serial killer and a paedophile. He was deeply involved in the rape of children.
The cascade of death connected to Kincora did not end with murder. Sex-abuse victims were driven to commit suicide. One Kincora boy took his life after being violated by Lord Louis Mountbatten.
**3. MI5 controlled Scappaticci. Kenova has ignored his real value to MI5.**
Scappaticci was handled by the Force Reconnaissance Unit (FRU) of the British army. It worked closely with MI5. The Kenova Report discloses that:
A former Commanding Officer in the FRU has stated that everything it did was done with MI5’s knowledge and consent. [67.2]
MI5, a notoriously deceitful and dishonest organisation, tried to distance itself from Scappaticci by responding to what the FRU officer revealed thus:
Senior MI5 officers and the various [directors-general of MI5] I interviewed deny this categorically. [67.2]
The most important service Scappaticci’s performed for these officers and D-Gs of MI5 was the framing, torture and murder of loyal members of the IRA, a strategy that sometimes paved the way for the promotion of actual FRU-MI5 moles. The Kenova Report ignores this part of Scapatticci’s role as a British agent.
**4. Honey Trap**
Kincora Boys’ Home. MI5 and MI6 used it as a ‘honey trap’ for Loyalist paedophiles.
It is not possible to comprehend why Scappaticci murdered Bradford for MI5 without an appreciation of the depth and depravity of the Kincora scandal.
MI5 and MI6 ran a ‘honey trap’ operation at Kincora Boys Home, a residence in Belfast for boys, aged 14 years and upwards, in the 1970s. Residents were trafficked to Loyalist politicians and paramilitaries, as well as VIPs, for sexual abuse. Some were molested at the home, others at hotels such as the Europa, Girton Lodge and Park Avenue in Belfast, as well as the Queen’s Court in Bangor.
Girton Lodge Hotel where Loyalists abused boys.
‘Kompromat’ or dirt was collected about politicians and paramilitaries. Some were blackmailed into working for the intelligence services.
The Park Avenue hotel. MI5 recorded a senior DUP figure in a bedroom abusing a Kincora boy on the first floor of the establishment.
The British Establishment applied a double coat of whitewash over Kincora in an attempt to cover up the full extent of this scandal decades ago. A lot – but not all of it – has been peeled away by survivors, whistleblowers and obstinate truth-seekers.
**5. Driven to suicide**
Eric Witchell is a paedophile. He now lives in London. In the 1970s he ran Williamson House in Belfast where he preyed on pre-pubescent boys and young teenagers.
Witchell’s rape of these tiny children involved the infliction of extreme pain and terror. What he did was no different to sadistic torture.
He and his accomplices drove at least three of the children to commit suicide in later life; another two to attempt it. A select few were transferred to Kincora when they reached 14.
Eric Witchell, one of the most dangerous and evil paedophiles to feature in the wider Kincora scandal. He supplied the smallest children – some as young as eight – to abusers. Some of the boys later committed suicide. Witchell now lives in London. He has no remorse for his victims whom he slanders as liars. Some of his victims committed suicide. He lives near a park where children play. In recent years he has offered online counselling services to young people. The Metropolitian police leave him alone.
Witchell was very close to two of the paedophiles at Kincora, Joe Mains and William McGrath. Witchell was not interviewed by any of the various inquiries into Kincora.
Stephen Waring, one of the residents of Kincora, ran away from the home in November 1977, a few months after being abused by Lord Mountbatten at Classsiebawn, County Sligo. Waring made it as far as Liverpool where he was captured and put on the Ulster Monarch car ferry destined for Belfast. He never made it home. Apparently, he jumped overboard to his death. His body was never found.
The Garda have retained the security logs which record the visitors to Classsiebawn in 1977 but have declined to disclose them to me and Andrew Lownie, Mountbatten’s biographer. They undoubtedly record the arrival of Joe Mains, the Warden of Kincora, in a vehicle with boys, including Waring, who was seated in the rear. I am frankly aghast that the Irish government – which could intervene – has no interest in helping the survivors of sex abuse committed in Sligo by ordering Garda Commissioner Drew Harris to release the security logs.
See also: The Mountbatten dossier, an ebook by David Burke.
**6. A dismembered child’s body in the Lagan**
Brian McDermott, aged 10, disappeared from Ormeau Park on 3 September 1973. Part of his dismembered and charred body was found in a sack in the River Lagan a week later. The RUC discovered evidence that he was abducted and murdered by Alan Campbell, a founding member of the DUP. Campbell was also in Tara, a Loyalist paramilitary organisation, and was a friend of the paedophiles who ran Kincora. Colin Wallace, who worked at the British Army’s HQ at Lisburn, has told me that the British Army, which had an interest in Tara, was alerted by the RUC that they were about to arrest Campbell. Then, suddenly, the police were ordered to stand down. Only the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) possessed that sort of authority. The security apparatus of the NIO was run by MI5 and Ministry of Defence officials. The manoeuvre ensured that the Kincora ‘honey trap’ operation did not unravel at that time.
Significantly, Campbell was a British agent. Authors Jack Holland and Henry McDonald, referred to him as the ‘Demon Preacher’ in their books, describing him as an obvious British agent.
Campbell and his cabal are suspects in the abduction of four other Belfast boys whose bodies were never recovered: Jonathan Aven, age 14, who disappeared on 20 September 1969; David Leckey, aged 12, who went missing on 25 September 1969; Thomas Spence, age 11, and John Rogers, aged 13, who both vanished on 26 November 1974.
Had the RUC been permitted to arrest Campbell, it is probable that young Spence and Rogers would still be alive today.
Alan Campbell and Brian McDermott. Former RUC officers told the BBC in 2020-21 that they were prevented from arresting Campbell for the child’s murder. The BBC refuses to broadcast the footage.
The BBC commissioned a documentary about the disappearance of these boys. It was completed in 2021 and entitled, ‘The Lost Boys of Belfast’. It was scheduled for broadcast in May 2021 but was pulled by management. It was finally shown in a number of cinemas in 2023 to huge acclaim.
Campbell was not interviewed by any of the various inquiries into Kincora.
See also: Kincora’s Darkest Secret.
**7. The gunrunning operations of the ‘housefather’ of Kincora, William McGrath**
Colin ‘Jay’ Wyatt, joined Tara following the publication of the Tara ‘Proclamation’ of 1973 by William McGrath. Wyatt has revealed that McGrath sent him and another Tara member to Holland in 1977, to make contact with people from the extreme Right, who had supplied weapons to Tara previously.
According to Wyatt, after he returned to Belfast, a debrief was held at McGrath’s house. A distinguished-looking Englishman, whose name was not volunteered to Wyatt, was in attendance. McGrath later told Wyatt that the stranger was an ‘Under Secretary’ at the NIO who was involved in intelligence work.
Wyatt also revealed that McGrath was involved in attempting to obtain arms from South African sources.
MI6, Britain’s overseas intelligence service, must have been involved as McGrath’s mission comprehended links to the Netherlands and probably South Africa. The Chief of MI6 at the time of these endeavours was Sir Maurice Oldfield. The overall operation was probably a joint MI5-6 mission. MI5 (which is attached to the Home Office) would have taken care of the UK end of the operation, including the distribution of the weapons. How many people were shot dead by the guns McGrath imported is imponderable.
Wyatt was not interviewed by any of the various inquiries into Kincora.
**8. The ‘Pastor’ who took his own life**
The Kincora scandal finally came to light in January 1980. One of the abusers, another close friend of Ian Paisley, a pastor called Billy Mullen, committed suicide the following December. He was found dead with a gun beside his corpse.
**9. Robert Bradford MP, a politician with the inside track**
In 1980, Robert Bradford, a Unionist MP, became appalled at what he was learning about the abuse at Kincora. He had campaigned against child pornography.
Bradford was ideally placed to inquire into the seedy world that lurked in the shadows of Kincora. He knew William McGrath. Both men were British Israelites, people who believed that the Protestants of Northern Ireland were the descendants of one of the Lost Tribes of Israel.
Peter Robinson of the DUP and Robert Bradford.
Alan Campbell was also a British Israelite, as was Ian Paisley. So too were many in the DUP. Bradford and Campbell knew each other well and often worshipped at the same church.
Bradford also knew Ken Larmour, a paedophile and friend of other members of the Kincora gang including Campbell. When shown a photograph of Bradford, one of Larmour’s former victims told me: ‘I freaked out a little when I saw those old photos of Robert Bradford. That is pretty much what he looked like visiting Larmour’s Shore Road flat in 1969. He and Campbell were close [friends] of Larmour.’
Alan Campbell, a suspected child killer who was protected by the NIO and MI5.
The former victim has also revealed that: “All three [i.e. Bradford, Campbell and Larmour] were close and met at Larmour’s. Larmour brought me to their church once. Seemed like a traditional church. Nothing untoward [happened].”
Larmour was not interviewed by any of the various inquiries into Kincora.
Bearing all of the foregoing in mind, it is safe to say that after McGrath was arrested for child sex abuse, Bradford was in an ideal position to establish what had been going on.
What might Bradford have known about McGrath’s links to MI5 and 6?
Members of the UVF, UDA, Red Hand Commando and Tara knew about, or were highly suspicious of, McGrath’s links to MI5 and 6.
In the early 1970s, the UVF had been allies of Tara. The UVF decided to distance themselves from Tara because of McGrath’s links to Britain’s spy agencies. Publicly, they walked out from a Tara meeting on the basis that McGrath was a homosexual.
UDA marchers. William McGrath was a key figure in the creation of the organisation.
McGrath had once been a protagonist in what became the UDA. The organisation emerged from an array of vigilante groups due in no small part to the encouragement of McGrath. He wrote and distributed a leaflet in which he exhorted Loyalists to formalise their vigilante patrols into a properly constructed ‘army’, something that came to pass in 1971. The UDA undoubtedly knew what the UVF had learnt about McGrath. The UDA placed Kincora under surveillance, a simple task as it was located at a crossroads with plenty of adjacent hedges and fences to conceal observers, not to mention places at which vans could be parked.
By 1980, McGrath’s background as a British spy was an item of gossip in UDA, UVF, Tara, DUP and British Israelite circles.
Bradford and thousands of others knew some or all of this. Bradford, however, was more dangerous than a street corner gossip. He was a sitting Westminster MP, i.e., he could raise the issue in the House of Commons.
Robert Bradford MP who was interviewing Kincora victims before he was murdered by Scappattici and Haughey.
McGrath’s trial was scheduled for December 1981, along with that of two other Kincora staff members, Joe Mains and Raymond Semple. Like McGrath, Mains was a British agent.
Bradford began to interview some of the Kincora boys and compile a dossier of their abusers.
Bradford became fearful for his life before he died, so much so that he took out additional life insurance.
Bradford was murdered a few weeks before the trial commenced.
Shortly before he died, he crossed the Border into the Republic of Ireland, a territory he deemed hostile. He was provided with a minimal level of Garda Special Branch protection. Bradford expected nothing more. His destination was the Roslare car ferry in Wexford. He had – and expected – no protection on the ship onto which he embarked. It was full of Irish passengers and crew. Clearly, Bradford did not fear that he was in any danger from Nationalists. If he had been, he would surely have taken a different route.
by vague_intentionally_
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**10. Inside job, the day Bradford was murdered**
The IRA unit which killed Bradford consisted of Freddie Scappaticci, a British agent, and at least two other gunmen.
A second killer on the hit team, Joe Haughey, is believed by the IRA and journalists to have been a British agent as well.
The murder took place in a community centre in front of multiple witnesses. The assassins did not wear masks.
They also killed a caretaker who worked at the centre.
The smaller of the gang was described as stocky with sallow skin, a good match for Scappaticci, who was 5’ 3 and of Italian descent. The RUC photofit gave the assassin a moustache. One witness has since identified this individual as Scappaticci and stated as much during an interview broadcast online. The police have displayed no interest in any of this valuable first-hand evidence.
Now, Operation Kenova has ignored all of this as well.
Crucial fingerprints were not taken by the RUC of those present at the centre on the day of the murder. That would have enabled them to draw up a list of those who were legitimately present at the centre and focus inquiries on any remaining prints. That was the normal procedure in all such cases. The Bradford inquiry looks like it was designed to fail.
There is more: Bradford had a police bodyguard. The hitmen could have killed him but chose not to. This chimes with their being on a mission for MI5.
The hitmen did not take the bodyguard’s weapon. He fired three shots at the getaway car, all of which missed.
Scappaticci and Haughey served as the perfect shock absorbers for the hit: no one suspected the hand of MI5 in the elimination of Bradford.
Neither Scappaticci nor Haughey were interviewed by any of the various inquiries into Kincora.
Eric Witchell must have been at the centre of the storm of gossip that blew through the paedophile network in Belfast after Bradford’s murder. Kenova did not talk to him.
The Bradford murder has never been solved.
**11. James Molyneaux MP spreads a false rumour about the death of his party colleague, Robert Bradford.**
James Molyneaux MP, the former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, was a lifelong bachelor who was attracted to young men. He was also a friend of McGrath. Unlike Bradford, he had no intention of raising the Kincora scandal in the Commons.
Molyneaux instead attempted to spread a rumour that Bradford’s murder was associated with wrongdoing at a Belfast hospital.
For more about Molyneaux and Kincora see: James Molyneaux and the Kincora scandal.
Molyneaux and one of his lovers, Christopher ‘Chrissie’ Luke. The pair met while Luke was still in his teens and Molyneaux was in his sixties.
**12. The article by Martin O’Hagan about Bradford’s papers. O’Hagan was later murdered by the LVF, a paramilitary organisation controlled by MI5 and RUC Special Branch.**
In August 1987, a copy of Bradford’s dossier was reported to have turned up in the hands of a Loyalist colleague in Portadown. The author of the piece was Martin O’Hagan. His report appeared in The Sunday World. O’Hagan was an investigative journalist with a particular interest in Loyalist terrorists and their links to British intelligence. O’Hagan’s piece about Bradford and Kincora was but one of many articles that exposed MI5 and RUC’s dirty tricks. He was assassinated in 2001 by the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), a group once commanded by a British agent called Billy Wright.
Wright was murdered by the INLA in December 1997 – before O’Hagan was murdered. Wright was a prisoner inside the Maze. The assassination of Wright – while serving a prison term – by the INLA involved staggering lapses of security. Many observers suspect MI5 were complicit in Wright’s death. He took many of their most sensitive secrets to his grave, including the names of those he recruited to work for MI5. The odds are high that the LVF was always controlled by MI5 and the assassins who shot O’Hagan were British agents.
Wright is one of a group of MI5/6-military intelligence proxy assassins who died prematurely. Others include Tommy Herron of the UDA (34, shot in the head); Tommy Lyttle of the UDA (aged 56, from a heart attack); Brian Nelson of the UDA (aged 55, reportedly from a brain haemorrhage followed by a heart attack); Robin Jackson of the UVF (49, lung cancer). They all took the secrets of their dealings with British intelligence to the grave with them. John McKeague’s murder will be discussed in sections 13-15 below. He was aged 51 or 52.
**13. Operation Kenova, another failed inquiry**
Scappaticci may have killed over 30 people. Operation Kenova, led by Jon Boutcher, was set up to establish what Scappaticci did while a British agent.
Scappaticci was arrested by Operation Kenova in 2018. It uncovered his interest in bestial pornography, something for which he was convicted. He died in April of 2023.
Joe Haughey passed away in December 2018.
If Scappaticci and Haughey did not kill Bradford because of Kincora, why did their handlers not stop them?
It is not known if Boutcher asked for any information about the Bradford hit from MI5. In any event, the Kenova Report ignores the murder of Bradford.
Scappaticci visited Dublin in secret in 2007 for a meeting with the Smithwick tribunal. He did little more than use the opportunity to deny he was a British agent. He did not give evidence in public. He was awarded €382,270 in costs.
**14. The RUC cover-up**
In early 1982 the media began to report on a number of the more disturbing aspects of the Kincora scandal, especially the failure of the RUC to halt the rape of the boys, despite their long-standing knowledge of the scandal.
In 2022, the Police Ombudsman ripped apart the tapestry of lies that the RUC had woven over the decades by confirming that the force had known about the abuse of boys at Kincora for years before it was exposed.
Chris Moore, the BBC NI investigative journalist who led the charge on Kincora in the early 1980s, learnt from ‘David’ an officer in the RUC that in the mid-1970s:
David’s inquiries [had] led him to Kincora. He began to watch Kincora. He built up a profile of people coming and going at Kincora who had no legitimate business in going into the building. He told me he took photographs of individuals; captured car registrations and identified the owners. Among those he says he positively identified were Justices of the Peace; two police officers; businessmen and two Englishmen who were officials from the Northern Ireland Office based at Stormont.
‘David’s’ inquiries were shut down by his superiors.
What is clear from the foregoing– and other events – is that the RUC knew all about Kincora before they began the pretence of an investigation. In reality, they were participating in a State cover-up.
**15. The RUC gathers the dirt on MI5, but for their own purposes.**
In early 1982, RUC CID officers began to circle around John McKeague, a well-known paedophile who was a close friend of the three Kincora employees who had been convicted and imprisoned in December 1981. He was also a terrorist and a British agent. He had first worked for British military intelligence and, later, for MI5.
The RUC team, led by George Caskey, was asking some of the right questions but, as events would prove, Caskey was the driving force behind the cover-up. His industry was probably motivated by a desire to accumulate dirt on MI5 so the RUC could rely upon it in their various power struggles with MI5, but only behind the scenes.
George Caskey of the RUC, the mastermind behind the RUC’s end of the cover-up of the Kincora scandal.
As the sex abuse at Kincora was ostensibly a crime, it fell to the RUC to investigate. Of course, it was much more than that, and everyone working as a high level in security and intelligence in Northern Ireland knew it. A performance, however, had to be staged for the public, with the sacrifice of scapegoats. The fact that the RUC was in such a pole position underlines why Scappaticci did not kill the police officer who was acting as bodyguard for Robert Bradford MP. Had he been killed, the rage of the RUC might have been inflamed to the point where they refused to participate in the cover-up.
**16. McKeague, a British agent, is targeted by the RUC**
Jack Holland and Henry McDonald, authors of the highly regarded book, ‘INLA Deadly Divisions’, have described how an “intelligence agent who says he was McKeague’s handler confirmed to the authors the former loyalist leader was supplying information to the British from the early 1970s. This man had been McKeague’s handler up until 1976; after that his contact was less frequent, as the value of McKeague’s information declined, mainly because of the fact that other loyalists intensely distrusted him. Still, his handler would visit him in his shop regularly to pick up whatever McKeague had to offer”.. (p.307)
John McKeague, British agent and serial killer. He undoubtedly knew Mountbatten was abusing Kincora boys.
McKeague was less forthcoming for another reason: in 1976 he was poached by MI5 via blackmail, as revealed by Captain Brian Gemmell. Gemmell worked with MI5 and reported to Ian Cameron at HQNI, Lisburn. Gemmell was present at meetings at which MI5 officers discussed recruiting McKeague via blackmail relating to his sexual activities.
McKeague was involved in multiple abductions, torture sessions and murders. He was commander of the Red Hand Commando (RHC). The RHC was responsible for many brutal slayings, including that of Seamus Ludlow in the Republic of Ireland. The RHC gang that killed Ludlow reported directly to McKeague.
McKeague was picked up and questioned by the RUC in January 1982.
Here was a man who really knew what had been going on.