Mr. Eugene Reavey:

Good afternoon. I thank the committee for inviting me. We were a Catholic nationalist family living in south Armagh. We had no interest whatsoever in the politics of the day or anything like that. We were a small humble family earning a living. That is all we were. There were eight boys and four girls in our house with our mother and father, so 14 altogether. I do not know if it was because of those big numbers or what it was, but on 4 January 1976 at 6 o'clock my mother and father headed off to visit her aunt in Camlough and brought three or four of the children with them. Normally we would have all been at home on a Sunday evening but only three of the boys were left. They were sitting watching "Celebrity Squares" at about 6.10 p.m and the next thing a gun came in at the top of the door. Our lads did not pass any remarks. They thought perhaps the soldiers were doing a canvas. Sometimes they would come around filling in forms and such things, but before they could speak a big burly fellow at the door opened fire and put three bullets into John Martin first. I did not know this until a few years ago but I was talking to a fellow in the coroner's office and he told me that three bullets went in and out the back and the other 40 bullets just riddled him. They just emptied whatever they had into him. John Martin died instantly. He would not have known anything, but the gunman was very experienced because the bullets were all on target. Brian and Anthony were sitting in an armchair. Brian was in the chair and Anthony was sitting on the side of it and they tried to make a getaway up to the bedroom but in doing so Brian was shot in the back. One bullet went right through his back and out through his heart and he fell into the fireplace on the other side of the door and was also killed instantly. Anthony ran up into the room they were trying to reach and he dived under the bed and the gunman came up after him and stood on the bed and riddled the bed. He emptied a whole magazine into him. He was shot 17 times. The gunman came back into the kitchen and tried to get into the other rooms. Anthony heard him shooting off all the other doors looking for the rest of us. Then he heard the boots of the men running down the pathway and getting into the cars and they sped away. Anthony then crawled out from under the bed bleeding heavily and he had to crawl over Brian, Lord have mercy on him, to get into the kitchen. When he got into the kitchen he could see John Martin was just like a rag doll. He was cut to pieces and there was no point in going over to check on him. He made his way outside on his hands and knees. He crossed the road and was making his way up to the neighbours' house when a car he knew well passed him.

The man did not stop but he told me why he did not stop. He said that he thought that Anthony was a cod-acting - you know young fellas. Anyway he went to the neighbours house. He crawled up on his hands and knees and banged the door and shouted, "Angela, I'm shot, everybody's shot". He fell into her arms and was unconscious. She cared for him as best she could until they rang for the ambulance, the priest and the doctor. I was living a couple of miles over the road from it and a friend of mine, Fr. Malone, was home from Africa. Normally when he came to my house he was full of beans and in great form but this night when he came in, I knew rightly that something was not right. He said to me, "Throw your jacket on Eugene, there has been an accident over at the cottage." When we were half-way over the road, I said to him, "Colm, could you tell me what is wrong or what has happened?" He then told me there had been a shooting and he thought that there was one fatality. I drove home and as I was going through the door two policemen stopped me and said, "You'll not get in there". Obviously I was going in and was not taking no for an answer and I went in passed them. The first thing I saw was John Martin lying on the floor. I did not see anything else. I was on my knees saying a prayer. I looked up and saw this policeman poking through the china cabinet. I knew this policeman and I said to him, "Excuse me, what are you doing searching through that?". He said he was looking for ammunition and that they had intelligence that there was ammunition in this house. I said, "Really?". I got up and caught him by the neck and a cousin of mine, Kevin Reavey, gave me a hand and we threw him outside. We then had to go to the hospital and identify the bodies. That was all right.

The next morning we went over to the cottage and we noticed that the police, or army, I do not know which, had come back in the middle of the night or sometime and thrashed every bit of furniture in the house. They did not leave a stick unbroken. We were busy on the Monday trying to get the priest organised and permission for the grave, all of that goes along with the death. Anthony was still in Daisy Hill hospital. He had a bullet left in him and they had to operate and take that away. A funny thing happened on the Monday. There were press in Belfast during the Troubles but they all moved up to Whitecross almost as soon as it happened and you could hardly get in through the door. We could not do any live television because there were helicopters above the house all day and the police were stopping people and all of this carry on. The soldiers, the helicopters, the police and the Ulster Defence Regiment, UDR, left at 4 o'clock. Ivan Little, who works for the television company, was then able to get his interview with my father and he called for no retaliation for the death of his sons. We were originally supposed to leave at 5.30 p.m. but this programme was not on until 5.40 p.m. which was a wee bit of time later. We left after that and drove one mile over the road, which only takes a minute. Michael knows it very well. We ran into the Kingsmill massacre. Mine was the first car. We were coming along the road and there were no police or security forces anywhere even though people had been stopped five minutes before by the security forces and directed away in different ways. This man was standing waving and I pulled up and he said to me, "Eugene, jump in quickly there has been an awful slaughtering match just up the road here." I went on up a bit further. It was raining and the lights of the minibus that was sitting on the left hand side of the road were still on and I could see the steam or the smoke rising.

First I thought it was McGee's cows because they were in that field. As I got further up, I could then see that it was bodies. After they shot them, they must have all pulled the bodies out. It was like a big pile of bodies. It was an awful sight, which I will never, ever get over. The smell of death is unbelievable. Nobody knew who these people were. We did not know whether they were Catholics, Protestants or whatever they were. It did not matter who they were. They were human beings. I said to the fellow who was on the side, "Gerry, would you get over to McGee's house and raise the alarm and get all the services here because I am not much good to you because I cannon cope. I had my brothers' murdered last night and there is another fella in intensive care".

We reversed back to the Kingsmill crossroad and then went away on to Newry. To cut a long story short, we went in said our prayers. The two coffins were there. They were not going to open the coffins but Seamus my brother said to them in the hospital they needed to open because my mother would never let them go without seeing them. In the state they were in, nobody could have seen them but fair play to the people in the morgue, they did a really good job on them. We then carried the coffins out and put them into the hearse but we could not get out because the ambulances were all starting to bring in these bodies from Kingsmill. I went into the room they were in and said my name was Eugene Reavey and that I was a member of the Reavey family and that we would like to convey our condolences on behalf of our loved ones.

We all tried to get home but we could not go the way we came in because it was closed off. The two hearses had the bodies of John Martin and Brian in them and the cars following behind but we were stopped at an army checkpoint on the road. They let the two hearses through but stopped them. Seamus's car and my car were stuck in the middle of two Landrovers. They put us out of the cars and put us up against a Landrover. This wee bastard, God forgive me, had a gun in my back and was shaking. Honest to God, if I had made a wrong move, he would have shot me. There is no doubt about that. Mammy was on my left-hand side. I could hear this mockery going on and I looked around.

This soldier was saying to her ''Oh Mrs. Reavey, isn't it well for you that has no trouble. Isn't it well for you Mrs. Reavey that doesn't have to stand out here in the rain looking after these Irish people. Oh, you have only one nose Mrs. Reavey. Where is your other nose, Mrs. Reavey? Oh, you have only two ears, Mrs. Reavey. Where is your other ear?"

I was standing there and I thought that Mammy had reared eight of us and we were good big strong fellas. At the time that she needed us most, we could not do a thing. Mammy knew I was getting very restless and she shouted over to me to not say anything. This happened over a good while. It was not over in a couple of seconds. He opened the boot of Seamus's car, which had three plastic bags full of blood-stained clothes. Michael knows all this. He could tell you all of this. They emptied the clothes out onto the road and they danced on them. The soldiers actually danced on them. If anybody said to me that this was just a spontaneous thing that happened, I would not believe them. I think this was all planned. They would have known who we were. There was venom in them.

We eventually got home and my mother stayed up for two days sitting between the coffins. Thousands of people came. Oh my God, it was desperate. Just opposite our house all through this time, there was a soldier or two with listening devices and all sorts of things. They said that they were waiting on IRA people coming from the South. There were no IRA people coming near our house. Anthony had been doing well and we went to the funeral. There were about 300 soldiers stuck in every hole in the hedge on the three mile journey to the chapel. They photographed everybody that was at the funeral. Oh my God, they made a real cod of it altogether.

We now have evidence after all these years. The day books were lost in Newtownhamilton police station, in Bessbrook police station and in Newry. The medical records are all gone. There is nothing left. The inquest came and, as we were walking up the steps into the inquest, a soldier hit me with his rifle and he said ''Go on, yez murdering bastards, yez''. The inquest was a complete mess. I could not hear a thing. It was the last one on the agenda that day. The coroner said that the injuries Anthony Reavey received at the shooting on 4 January played no part in his death. A couple of days later, the coroner changed his verdict. He never advised the solicitors, legal teams or ourselves. We did not know that for about 35 years until the HET came in. The pathologist report clearly states that Anthony's death was a result of the shooting. We had one man saying "Yes" and the coroner saying "No".

We now have documents showing that all these murders, Kingsmills, the O'Dowds, and ourselves, were all planned by British military intelligence in Lurgan. It gives the names of all the people who were at the meeting. I am not going to say those names here because it is part of a legal challenge. They tortured our family for 40 years. Every time we went out the door they tortured us. That is all part of another civil claim.

I and all the other victims I know are not in any way enamoured by this Bill. This Bill will effectively stop us from getting the justice that we so dearly need. My father died in 1981 after 14 heart attacks. My mother died in 2013. She was 89. My father was only 57. I will be 75 on my next birthday and there is no sign of any justice coming.

It is very clear from the records we have that the police knew about these attacks before they actually happened. They cannot say that they did not know who was involved. A couple of nights before my father died, he called me one night and asked me if I knew who shot our boys. I told him that I did not. He told me and made me swear to secrecy and I carried those names with me from 1981 until 2006 when the HET came in and was looking into the murders.

Anthony died two weeks after the shootings in very mysterious circumstances. It is our belief that he was poisoned. One Tuesday morning Seamus and my father were in Newry took a notion that they would go up to see Anthony in Daisy Hill hospital. When they went into the ward, Anthony's bed was empty. The nurse called them in and told them to go up to the sister at the desk. The sister told my father that there had been a security alert that morning. My father could not understand what that meant because he thought that Anthony would be safe. The sister told him Anthony was upstairs in the gynae ward. Just after they got out of the lift, they saw two men running out of the ward. One of these men had a gun. My father recognised the other man. Anthony was not in the bed there either. He was in a linen cupboard, lying flat out with the door closed and the bed pushed up against it. He had given an interview the night before on television and those men must have wanted to finish him off because he was the only living witness to all of this.

I am just saying it will be 47 years next year and we have been fighting and fighting for justice. We have been into this hearing and into that hearing and every time we get close, the British Government closes down whatever inquiry is going on. Now we have Jon Boutcher over and he is doing the Kenova and the Denton inquiries. However, there is no guarantee, if this Bill goes through that Jon Boutcher's report will ever see the light of day. It may never see it. At least the families now know most of what happened. There are two former RUC officers and a file has been sent to the Public Prosecution Service, PPS, recommending capital murder charges. It is some comfort to us, but I have been waiting almost all of my life and I am not going to live forever. I have a sister and she is coming up to 80 and we are never going to see any sign of justice or anything like that. I am just hoping that if this Bill gets through, the Irish Government will stand by its citizens. In south Armagh we all have Irish passports. We are all Irish citizens. We look on ourselves as Irish. We never ever felt part of a British system. We were a nationalist family and we were very fond of our GAA. All of the members of the family played football from way back in the 1940s. A team never came out of Whitecross or Drumharriff that did not have a Reavey playing. I am delighted to say that at the moment, we have six or seven young fellas, grandsons, all playing on the under-17 team. We are not going to be pushed away that handy. The British Government seems to think that after all these years, the evidence will be diminished and be no good.

However, when Jon Boutcher first came, I took him to my brother's house and I showed him his scrapbook, if you want to call it that. Jon Boutcher took that as part of his plan. Every time he went to visit victims, the first thing he would ask them was to see their scrapbooks. He would get more evidence out of them than from trawling through everything.

I thank the committee for giving me this opportunity. I am so sorry that I took so long but even if I was here for a week, I would never get finished.