A path paved with blood: The family of IRA victim Frank Hegarty insist that Martin McGuinness lured him to his death. Now, more than ever, don’t we all deserve the truth? 

By Suzanne Breen
Updated: 12:47 EDT, 25 September 2011

The family of Frank Hegarty, shot in the head by the IRA for ‘informing’, have voiced their horror at the prospect of Martin McGuinness becoming President of Ireland.

The Hegartys, who haven’t spoken publicly about their brother ­for nearly two decades, last night broke their silence to insist that ­Mr McGuinness had lured Frank to ­ his death.

They say Mr McGuinness inveigled his way into their family home with promises that Frank would not be harmed if he came home to Derry and met the IRA. Mr McGuinness is described as kneeling at the feet of Rose Hegarty, Frank’s mother, as he promised that Frank would not be harmed.

Executed: The rain-soaked body of Frank Hegarty, dumped on the side of the road

When Frank did come home in May 1986, however, he was shot in the head by the IRA and his body dumped on a country road. When he was found, the masking tape that had been used to cover his eyes was peeling off in the rain.

The Hegartys said this weekend they wanted to warn others that beneath the Sinn Féin presidential candidate’s charming manner lay a ruthless, deceitful man.

‘We have no party-political agenda – but given our family’s experience of Martin McGuinness, we hope and pray the people of Ireland will see through the façade, too,’ they told the MoS.

Mr McGuinness has repeatedly denied that he promised Frank would not be harmed, saying he warned the family the opposite was the case. However, he has not publicly addressed the claim that it was he who persuaded Frank to return to Derry, or explained other inconsistencies in his account.

The claims against Mr McGuinness are also supported by the evidence of former IRA executioner Freddie Scapaticci and by British intelligence agent Martin Ingram (a pseudonym), who was Frank Hegarty’s ‘handler’.

Denials: Martin McGuinness has said that he did not commit murder during his time as a member of the IRA

And the message is made even more powerful by these pictures, never published in Ireland before, showing Frank Hegarty’s rain-soaked body lying where the IRA had dumped it.

The picture, and the statements by the Hegarty family, will place more pressure on Mr McGuinness to come clean about his IRA past.

Writers, historians and former IRA men have all publicly scoffed at Mr McGuinness’s claim that he left the IRA in 1974. In fact, despite his denials, many say that he effectively ran the Northern command of the IRA until the 1990s – and was, therefore, in charge at the times of the Warrenpoint and Enniskillen bombings as well as a series of other deadly attacks.

However the killing of Frank Hegarty is a rare case where one family has laid the blame for a ­killing directly at Mr McGuinness’s door.

Hegarty was born on August 28, 1940, the third eldest in a family of five boys and four girls. One of his sisters is now dead. Hegarty’s three surviving sisters spoke to the MoS from their Derry home on behalf of the whole family.

Hegarty had been recruited and promoted by the IRA during the 1980s. However he was spying for the British – and in 1986 he became a target for the IRA after revealing to the British the location of three major arms dumps in the Republic.

After he was unmasked as an informer, the 45-year-old fled to England, living in safe houses for the next three months. He left behind his partner, Dorothy Robb, and their two children, four-year-old Ryan and baby Kerri-Lee.

Promises: Martin McGuinness (right) pictured at the funeral of explosives expert Colm Keenan in 1972

However, he wanted to come home – and the Hegarty family say that Mr McGuinness began to visit the family home and insist that he could return safely. On at least one occasion, Mr McGuinness is alleged to have spoken to Frank on the phone, giving him the same assurances and saying that he should come back to ‘straighten things out’.

The Hegartys told the MoS they had been naïve in dealing with Mr McGuinness because they had no republican background.

‘Martin McGuinness was very friendly and charming when he visited our house to talk about Frank,’ they said.

‘He came across as a warm and sincere man, someone you could trust. That is the same man we see laughing and joking now on TV out on the presidential election trail, chatting to people. But we know the real Martin McGuinness, the man behind the mask of civility. We saw the dark side, the ruthless man who tells lies and has no mercy.’

On Friday, April 25, Hegarty ran away from his British handlers after being left in a bookies in England by two intelligence officers. He arrived back at his mother’s house in Derry the next day. Mr McGuinness soon called, saying he’d heard Hegarty was home and asking to talk to him.

After several visits, Hegarty agreed to talk and the pair did so several times. ‘On one visit in May, McGuinness said that Frank had to meet the IRA in Co. Donegal to straighten things out,’ Hegarty’s sisters claimed.

Violent side: Mr McGuinness fires a gun in the early 1970s when he was a member of the Provisional IRA

‘Mammy was crying because she thought Frank would be harmed. McGuinness got down on bended knee and held her hand. He promised her Frank wouldn’t be hurt.’

On Wednesday, May 21, one of Hegarty’s sisters drove him to a hotel car park in Buncrana at the IRA’s request.  ‘Frank was nervous but tried hard not to show it. We said to him, “You don’t have to go to this meeting. We can swing the car around and take you home”. But Frank said it was the only way he’d be allowed to stay in Derry.

‘Even though we had a bad feeling, we never thought we were driving our brother to his death. We took Frank in that car, like the sacrificial lamb to the slaughter.’

The sisters described the scene in the Buncrana car park that night: ‘A man emerged from the side of the hotel. Frank got out of the car and they both walked into the darkness. We never saw him alive again.’

Rose Hegarty, who is now dead, later told how McGuinness had visited her the next day. She alleges he reassured her that her son was safe and that he had just left him eating a Chinese takeaway.

When Hegarty still hadn’t come home from Co. Donegal after three days, the family grew concerned.

‘Then on Saturday night, an IRA woman knocked our door and handed us a tape. It was a recording of Frank which was made when he was being interrogated and tortured. In the tape, he told us he had been working for the British. He said, “I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again”, the sisters said.

Hegarty’s partner, Dorothy Robb, received an anonymous call, stating: ‘You’ll never see Frank again. Don’t go to the police.’

‘By now we were frantic with worry,’ the sisters recalled. ‘But we kept saying to ourselves, “Frank has to be okay. Sure, Martin McGuinness gave his word”.’

That night, the TV news brought word of the brutal truth: ‘It was reported that a body had been found. We knew it was Frank. We felt sick thinking of him lying there in the dark and the cold.

His body was soaking wet from the rain.’

The family’s torment was only beginning: ‘The IRA took his life and left us to live with that and all McGuinness’s lies. We are still haunted by thoughts of Frank’s last hours, of him being ­interrogated and tortured.’

The sisters said Mrs Hegarty never got over her son’s murder.

ROSE HEGARTY: MCGUINNESS IS 'EVIL' 

Asked in a 1993 interview if she holds Martin McGuinness responsible for her son’s death, Rose Hegarty said simply: ‘Well nobody else could be.’

But she told the Cook Report that police hadn’t been told of Martin McGuinness’s suspected involvement, saying: ‘As you know yourself people are afraid, everyone is afraid.’

‘I feel very bitter now and full of regrets that I ever let him in the door, that I ever let him come on over, such an evil man. He said to me there’s nothing going to happen to Frank, I will bring him back. He assured me nothing was going to happen to him. He’s an evil man, evil is too good a word for him. I just hate him, hate him, hate him like poison.

‘During the time of Frankie’s absence, Martin McGuinness visited my home very frequently, practically every other day, he always urged me to get him (Frankie) to come home, that things could be sorted out.

‘He gave me an absolute guarantee that nothing would ever happen to Frankie. I never saw or spoke to Martin McGuinness again. My trust was betrayed.’

‘She told his story to everybody – the milkman, the postman, the coalman. They all heard about Frank and what Martin McGuinness had done. Frank was dead so my mother became his voice.’

A tribute to her dead brother by one of Hegarty’s sisters showed the strength of the family’s feeling against Mr McGuinness.

‘All your earthly pain and suffering is over, the Judas goat can harm you no more,’ it stated. A ‘Judas goat’ is a goat in an abattoir trained to lead sheep to their slaughter.

In 1993, 82-year-old Rose Hegarty gave a powerfully emotional interview to Central Television’s the Cook Report in which Mr McGuinness’s role in luring her son to his death was revealed for the first time.

Mrs Hegarty said she regretted the day she had ever let the Sinn Féin politician across her door. ‘He assured me that nothing was going to happen to (Frank). Evil is too good a word for him. I just hate him, hate him, hate him like poison,’ she said.

Freddie Scappaticci, who appeared anonymously on a follow-up programme, said Mr McGuinness had given the ‘go-ahead’ for Hegarty’s murder.

What was not revealed until years later was that Scap, who was deputy head of the IRA’s internal security unit known as ‘the nutting squad’, took part in Hegarty’s interrogation and murder. In 2003, Scap was outed as the long-serving British agent Stakeknife.

Publicly criticising Mrs Hegarty after the Cook Report would have made Mr McGuinness look callous, however, so he adopted another strategy. ‘He implied our mother was a confused little old lady,’ said the sisters. ‘Nothing was further from the truth. She read the papers every day until she died aged 94. She had no political agenda. She spoke out as an Irish mother who loved her son.

‘And we’re now speaking out too as three sisters who dearly loved their brother and still miss him so much.’

IRA KILLER SUPPORTS HEGARTY FAMILY'S ACCOUNT

Insider: Frank Scappaticci gave damning evidence

This is the transcript of a conversation between the Cook Report’s Clive Entwistle and Freddie Scappaticci, deputy head of IRA internal security, shown in 1993 − a week after Rose Hegarty’s interview.

Scappaticci: See that woman that came on. She was right in what she said. He is an evil person.

Entwhistle: Rose Hegarty?

Scappaticci: Yes. He gave the go-ahead for Frank Hegarty. Frank Hegarty…

Entwhistle: Can I ask you how you know that?

Scappaticci: (PAUSE)… I know..

Entwhistle: You know?

Scappaticci: Aye. I’ll tell you what I know about it. McGuinness was on the phone to Frank Hegarty when he was in England.

Entwhistle: That’s right, from Mrs Hegarty’s house.

Scappaticci: There was weapons caught in Donegal. There was 150 rifles caught. Hegarty was the one that gave the information and that. He was then taken out, right… brought to England, right… and he missed his common law wife, right.

Entwhistle: That’s right – Dorothy.

Scappaticci: So he kept phoning back, so McGuinness got on the phone and says look, you’ll be okay, blah, blah… convinced him and convinced the mother, right. He then came home and McGuinness was the instrument of him being taken away and shot.

Entwhistle: Do you know that story… we know it because the family told us but do you know it because McGuinness told you?

Scappaticci: I know it because… if I want to be straight… I was at the heart of things for a long time… I know what I’m talking about.

'The standard procedure is to strip them and debug ’em, just to see if they are wired up or anything and they usually put a boiler suit on them or something like that. Put them in a chair, face the wall… go from there.

'See the way people say they use a lot of violence, they don’t really.
Physical violence, they don’t. They use mental violence… It’s a psychological thing you see.

'They get you into a room. They blindfold you. They strip you. Leave you sitting there. Maybe the room is cold. They make you all sorts of promises, right. And… everybody has a breaking point. You know. And they think they’re going to go home. But they don’t.’

McGuinness denies he helped entice Hegarty to his death

Pressure:But Martin McGuinness denies that he offered assurances

In a statement from Sinn Féin yesterday, Martin McGuinness rejected the claims made by the Hegartys, Frank Scappaticci and Martin Ingram.

It said: ‘Martin McGuinness has already rejected these allegations as completely untrue. He understands the very deep hurt of the Hegarty family and their need for truth and justice.

‘He has already said he left the IRA in the 1970s but, of course, he engaged with them after that with a view to bringing about peace and he succeeded.

‘Martin stands for office on his record as a politician, a peacemaker, a patriot and a republican. Some will judge him on his past, some will judge him on his present and some will judge him on what he promises to achieve in the future.

‘He has been part of bringing peace to the North and across Ireland, part of bringing reconciliation to the Six Counties. He has stood against those who would drag us back to the past.

‘Our country’s history is replete with journeys like Martin’s. De Valera, Aiken, Lemass, Collins, Cosgrave and MacBride, to name a few, all travelled historic journeys also.’

Mr McGuinness already condemned allegations of his involvement in the death of Frank Hegarty as ‘black propaganda’ back in 2003.

He told the Derry Journal that he had, in fact, advised a member of the family that Frank Hegarty should not meet with the IRA.

‘These allegations have appeared and reappeared over the years and I could have gone out and said quite a lot of things. ‘But out of sympathy for the Hegarty family − and they are totally and absolutely innocent − I tried not to go into things that must be extremely painful for them.

Pathetic: McGuinness criticised SDLP leader John Hume

‘When Frank Hegarty returned to Derry, he stated quite clearly that he was anxious to meet the IRA in order to proclaim his innocence. Before that meeting took place, I spoke with one member of the family in the kitchen of the family home in Rosemount.

‘I said to that member that if Frank Hegarty was guilty of being a British agent, then my advice would be that he should not go and meet the IRA.

‘I can state quite categorically now that at least one member of the family is acutely aware of what happened in that house. I have great sympathy for the Hegarty family, who found themselves dragged into a situation not of their making.’

When Hegarty was murdered in 1986, McGuinness said: ‘I don’t condemn the IRA action. I understand it and I understand that the IRA have a responsibility to protect themselves and their equipment against the activities of British intelligence.

‘Condemnation from John Hume and clergymen is pathetic… because it has been proven conclusively that organisations like the RUC, Special Branch and British Intelligence have been extensively involved in the trawling of the Nationalist community for the purpose of getting agents and informers within Nationalist ranks.

‘The only out that I can offer people who find themselves being recruited would be to contact me or any member of Sinn Féin who would only be too willing to provide assistance.’