1. www.sundaylife.co.uk
18 | NEWS
Ombudsman
ruling is to be
challenged
Sunday Life 17 NOVEMBER 2013
50 YEARS ON KILLING
www.sundaylife.co.uk
17 NOVEMBER 2013 Sunday Life
NEWS | 19
OF AN AMERICAN ICON
PERVERT’S HOME: Ventry Lane hostel
‘Dangerous’
paedo back
behind bars
By Alan Murray
THE Police Ombudsman’s ruling
that RUC officers violated the
human rights of a man killed in
the ‘Good Neighbour Bombing’
in Londonderry 25 years ago will
be challenged in the Assembly
tomorrow.
Lagan Valley MLA Paul Givan
will demand that Justice Minister David Ford brings forward
an appeals mechanism to allow
members of the RUC and the
PSNI to challenge the Ombudsman’s rulings.
The DUP’s Paul Givan said:
“The Good Neighbour Bombing
report by the Police Ombudsman has raised serious concerns.
Particularly, that the Ombudsman may have exceeded his legal
remit by finding a breach
against the ECHR Article 2 Right
to Life and at the moment that
ruling cannot be challenged”.
Ombudsman Dr Michael
Maguire's report published last
month said that 54 year-old Sean
Dalton’s right to life had been
breached because the RUC had
known for five days about the
bomb that killed him.
Judge Jeremy Richardson QC
said that the IPCC had far exceeded its remit because the language used in a report amounted
to a suggestion of determination
rather than opinion in a case
brought by the mother of a man
sprayed with CS gas in Yorkshire.
In the 1988 IRA bombing in
Kildrum Gardens Sean Dalton,
Shelia Lewis and Thomas Curran died when they triggered the
device in a missing neighbour’s
flat.
Former Assistant Chief Constable Raymond White said:
“This case in England related to
a road traffic offence and the
Judge said that the IPCC should
not have acted as judge and jury
as well as investigator.
“How much more pertinent is
this in a right to life issue? The
Ombudsman’s report should be
referred to the Attorney General,
or at least the PPS for consideration.”
By Ciaran Barnes
A SEX beast once branded ‘Ulster's most dangerous paedophile' is back behind bars
amid police concerns over his
behaviour.
Richard McFarland, 45, has
been charged with breaching his
Sexual Offences Prevention
Order (SOPO) after allegedly
contacting young men from his
Ventry Lane hostel home.
He appeared in Belfast Magistrates' Court via video-link on
Friday for an update on his case.
Hulking McFarland has a long
history of sexually motivated behaviour stretching back a
decade.
He was first jailed for three
years in 2004 for dragging an
eight-year-old boy into a public
toilet in Ballymena.
The brute was convicted of
falsely imprisoning the lad who
he warned “not to panic”.
The child was only rescued
when his frantic mother started
calling his name forcing McFarland to flee.
In 2007 the pervert was back
in the dock to be convicted of
SECONDS FROM DEATH:
President JFK’s motorcade
driving through the streets
of Dallas just moments
before he was shot and
(above) The Kennedy
Detail movie poster
SLOW TO REACT: Limo driver William Greer
did not speed away after Kennedy was shot
CONCERNS: Richard McFarland
By Julian Brouwer
President Lyndon B. Johnson, was also
very critical of Greer.
He said: “When the noise of the shot was
heard, the motorcade slowed to what
seemed to me a complete stop.
“After the third shot was fired, but only
after the third shot was fired, the cavalcade
speeded up, gained speed rapidly, and
roared away to the Parkland Hospital.
AS America prepares to mark the 50th anniversary of the
murder of John F Kennedy, the role of the President’s
Tyrone-born driver and bodyguard is back in the spotlight.
An accusing finger was pointed a JFK’s driver and bodyguard
William Greer in a recent best-selling book that is currently being made
into a movie directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal, father of Hollywood star
Jake Gyllenhaal.
The Kennedy Detail: JFK's Secret Service Agents Break Their Silence examined the actions of Kennedy’s driver, William Greer, a
farmer’s son from Stewartstown, Co Tyrone who joined the US Secret
Service in 1945.
Greer was a driver for Presidents Harry S Truman and Dwight Eisenhower and took on the same role for JFK.
But his alleged failure to respond quickly after the first shot rang
out on that fateful day in Dallas on November 22, 1963 angered
Kennedy’s widow Jacqueline Kennedy who
was bitterly critical of how Secret Service
agents responded to the gun attack.
ORDERS
CRITICISED: William Greer driving
President Kennedy’s limousine and
(right) JFK with his family
New movie points the finger at
SCREAM
The Kennedy Detail repeated criticisms
that had Greer acted faster on that terrible
day in Dallas, the President might have
lived.
Written by former Secret Service agent
Gerald Blaine and journalist Lisa McCubbin,
it tells how instead of accelerating the limousine when the first gunshot rang out,
Greer hit the brakes and slowed the car
down to a virtual standstill. One heavy critic of Greer in the book is the secret service
agent closest to Kennedy, Clint Hill, who is
the last surviving passenger of the presidential limousine which arrived at Parkland Hospital, Dallas.
Hill says he had to scream at Greer to hit
the accelerator and get the stricken JFK to
a hospital.
In subsequent interviews, Greer said he
thought the first shot was a motorcycle back
firing.
In his testimony to the Warren Commission in 1964, Greer said: “I heard a noise that
I thought was a backfire of one of the motorcycle policemen. And I didn't... it did not affect me like anything else... we had had so
many motorcycles around us. So I heard
this noise... and then I heard it again. And I
glanced over my shoulder. And I saw Gover-
Tyrone-born bodyguard Greer
nor Connally like he was starting to fall.
Then I realised there was something wrong.
I tramped on the accelerator, and at the
same time Mr Kellerman said to me, ‘Get
out of here fast’. And I cannot remember
even the other shots or noises that was.”
Special assistant to Kennedy, Kenneth
O'Donnell, who was riding in the motorcade, said: “If the Secret Service men in the
front had reacted quicker to the first two
shots at the President's car, if the driver had
stepped on the gas before instead of after
the fatal third shot was fired, would President Kennedy be alive today?
“Greer had been remorseful all day, feeling that he could have saved President
Kennedy's life by swerving the car or speeding suddenly after the first shots.”
Senator Ralph Yarborough, who was
also in the motorcade that day with Vice
“The cars all stopped... I don't want to
hurt anyone's feelings but for the protection
of future Presidents, they (the Secret Service) should be trained to take off when a
shot is fired.”
Secret Service procedures did not allow
Greer to take action without orders from
senior agent Roy Kellerman, who was sitting to his right. Kellerman has said that
after the first shot he yelled, “Let's get out
of line, we've been hit,” but that a disbelieving Greer apparently turned to look at
Kennedy, causing a vital delay, before accelerating the car out of the danger zone.
Said Kellerman: “Greer then looked in
the back of the car. Maybe he didn't believe
me.” Though none of the secret service
agents were officially blamed for JFK’s
death, First Lady Jackie Kennedy was bitterly critical of the agents' performance. She
particularly blamed Greer, comparing his
dithering efforts to those of her children’s
nanny, “Maud Shaw”. Greer later delivered
a heartfelt apology to her.
Another writer William Manchester has
claimed that hours after the shooting,
Greer told Jackie at Parkland Hospital:
“Oh, Mrs Kennedy, oh my God, oh my God.
I didn't mean to do it, I didn't hear, I should
have swerved the car, I couldn't help it. Oh,
Mrs Kennedy, as soon as I saw it I swerved.
If only I'd seen it in time.”
Greer emigrated to the United States in
1929. He worked for more than a decade as
a chauffeur in Boston and New York before enlisting into the Navy in 1942. After
being discharged, he joined the United
States Secret Service on October 1, 1945 and
became a driver for Presidents Truman
and Eisenhower before working for JFK.
Greer retired on disability from the Secret Service in 1966 due to a stomach ulcer
and in 1973 he moved to Waynesville, North
Carolina, where he eventually died of cancer.
His son, Richard Greer, was interviewed
in 1991 and added to bizarre conspiracy theories about his father’s role in Kennedy’s
death. When asked, “What did your father
think of JFK?” Richard responded: “Well,
we're Methodists... and JFK was Catholic.”
Gyllenhaal’s movie the Kennedy Detail
is scheduled to be released in 2014.
having child pornography. By
this stage he was living in Belfast
where he would go on to infiltrate a Christian church group
so he could get access to kids.
Between February and April
2010 McFarland — who was living in the Fortwilliam area —
regularly attended events run by
the religious organisation.
He was eventually snared
after an eagle-eyed member of
the public spotted him handing
out Bible tracts with a 15-yearold in the centre of Belfast.
McFarland was arrested and
jailed for three years for breaching his SOPO that bans him
from having unsupervised contact with kids.
Caging the predator, Judge
Tom Burgess said it was clear
that McFarland had “no self control” when it came to his sexual
target — young boys.
McFarland ended up being
freed half-way through his sentence under the 50 per cent remission rule. He lived in the
notorious Ventry Lane hostel in
the centre of Belfast until his arrest again last month.