Shooting Crows: Mass Murder, State Collusion and Press Freedom

Everyone knows where they were when Ray Houghton outfoxed the Italian goalkeeper in the 1994 World Cup finals. Every television in the country was tuned in to the match, and The Heights Bar in Loughinisland, Co. Down was no exception. But two miles down the road, three men with no interest in Ireland’s footballing progress were planning a deadly massacre. Shortly after half-time they burst through the door of the bar and opened fire, spraying bullets indiscriminately. As they fled the scene, six innocent men lay dead or dying. In 2017 journalists Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey produced a groundbreaking documentary, No Stone Unturned, about Loughinisland and allegations of collusion between the RUC and the loyalist terrorists behind the attack. However, it was Birney and McCaffrey, not the perpetrators of violence who then found themselves the target of PSNI anger. Shooting Crows tells a shocking story of collusion and betrayal, and of a State still willing to corrupt justice and persecute the innocent to hide the sins of its past.

Trevor Birney is an Emmy-nominated film producer, director and journalist. In 2017 he produced the ground-breaking documentary No Stone Unturned, about the 1994 murder by UVF gunmen of six Catholics in Loughinisland, County Down. Birney’s work resulted in their wrongful arrests by the PSNI, who later paid the producers significant damages. His book Quinn (Merrion Press, 2022) was a bestseller and longlisted for Eason Book of the Year 2022. He produced the 2024 film Kneecap, which won the NEXT Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival.