SAS Ambush at Coagh County Tyrone 1991
Monaghan Town was a very strange place when it came to Sinn
Fein/PIRA, Monaghan Town had been a dumping ground for all sorts of Sinn
Fein/PIRA ‘activists’ who would arrive in Monaghan Town and claim to be
On-the-Run. In the 1980s-1990s the majority of information was gathered manually,
so if someone did arrive in Monaghan and claim to be OTR it could take months
to check them out with Sinn Fein/PIRA in the north.
Some people arriving in Monaghan and claiming to be Sinn Fein/PIRA
OTR were in fact Sinn Fein/PIRA members who had admitted to Sinn Fein/PIRA in
the north that they had engaged in sexual crime and they were sent OTR so that
there would be no embarrassing police investigation.
More often than not the
children being abused by Sinn Fein/PIRA members were the children of Sinn
Fein/PIRA members or supporters, so if a victim or their family could not be
silenced then the perpetrator would be moved to The Republic.
Sometimes those alleging to be OTR were in fact RUC or
British Agents, George Poytz in Castleblaney being a good example, he had
infiltrated The PIRA in Castleblaney to the very top. And sometimes there were
genuine OTRs who could be of some value to Sinn Fein/PIRA in Monaghan Town.
Michael ‘Pete’ Ryan had arrived in Monaghan Town OTR in 1981
after he escaped from Crumlin Road Jail, Pete was a serial killer and he simply
enjoyed killing Protestants, this made him a welcome PIRA member in Monaghan
Town. From the mid-1980s Sinn Fein/PIRA was being pulled in two different
directions, all sorts of agendas were at work. In Monaghan Town Sinn Fein/PIRA
had gained some political momentum, and this meant that as Sinn Fein/PIRA
reached out for ‘softer’ votes, the Sinn Fein/PIRA sectarian murder campaign was
viewed as unhelpful by some.
Michael ‘Pete’ Ryan, whether he knew it or not had made
enemies within Sinn Fein/PIRA, while many cheered his sectarian kills, others,
within the ranks felt that both his personal behavior and his thirst for
sectarian murder were not in keeping with the ‘new’ face of politics.
Michael ‘Pete’ Ryan was having sexual relationships with a number
of women in Monaghan, and that was not unusual for Sinn Fein/PIRA members in
Monaghan, there was a well-established Harem.
However, Michael ‘Pete’ Ryan was
doing his dirty laundry in public, he was having a sexual relationship with Dr
Marian Smyth, who was sister-in-law of Owen Smyth (who had murdered Norman
Stronge and his son James). Pete Ryan was also having sexual relationships with other women and children.
Pete Ryan would park his motorbike overnight on the public
footpath outside Marian Smyth’s house/surgery, this was seen by dozens of
parents each morning as they left their children to school, back then this was
viewed as unsavory behavior by middle-class parents, the same parents Sinn Fein/PIRA
were trying to woo.
Michael ‘Pete’ Ryan was not only making a show of Dr Marian
Smyth’s in-laws, but he was making a show of Sinn Fein/PIRA as everyone knew he
was involved with several females. When Michael ‘Pete’ Ryan was shot dead, he
had left Dr Marian Smyth pregnant and a woman from Ballybay called Mary
pregnant. When Dr Marian Smyth gave birth to her son Michael, she falsified his
birth certificate and placed her former husband’s name Brian Smyth on it.
Dr Marian Smyth was the person who initiated the allegations
of sexual abuse against Vincent McKenna and who drugged the alleged victim with
a mind-altering drug called Serotax.
The Ambush who, when where
As the evening sun began to set over Monaghan Town on Sunday 2nd June 1991, there was virtual silence. A 28-year-old
member of Sinn Fein/PIRA made his way to work in Monaghan Mushrooms in
Tyholland on his Kawasaki 250 motor bike. This Sinn Fein/PIRA member had to check the computers on the tunnels in the compost yard to ensure that the pasteurization temperature in the tunnels was correct.
Michael 'Pete' Ryan, Laurence McNally and Tony Doris
The Sinn Fein/PIRA member meet very small numbers of
vehicles on the road out of Monaghan Town and towards Tyholland, he was
surprised when he met a car being driven by a female, which was carrying two
very seasoned PIRA members, all three in the car were in deep conversation so
it is unlikely that they even noticed the motor bike.
Laurence McNally and Michael ‘Pete’ Ryan were on their way
to murder a young Protestant man in Tyrone. The third man in The PIRA Unit
would be Tony Doris who would join them in a stolen Vauxhall Cavalier later
that evening.
At 7.30am on Monday 3rd June 1991, Laurence
McNally, Michael ‘Pete’ Ryan and Tony Doris, arrived at their destination in
Coagh and they prepared their weapons to kill the young Protestant.
However, The
SAS armed with Grade A Intelligence and high-power weapons were waiting on the
would be killers.
The SAS were in position along the main street in Coagh and
in a red Bedford lorry positioned at the scene. As Tony Doris drove the stolen
car towards the centre of the village it was under close surveillance from the
ground and in the air, it had been tracked all the way from Moneymore.
At the scene of the ambush the British Army had set up a
"decoy" target for the IRA to go for in the form of an SAS soldier
who was pretending to be their intended victim, sitting in his car at a regular
spot while waiting to pick up a friend on their way to work, IRA intelligence
had established the routine of the young Protestant.
When the stolen car carrying the IRA men approached the
scene the Special Air Service detachment opened sustained automatic fire upon
it from close range. Doris was immediately hit, and the out-of-control car
crashed into two nearby parked cars. The shooting continued until the car exploded
in flames and set one of the parked vehicles it had crashed into alight. According
to an eyewitness, one of the IRA men in the car returned fire from within the
vehicle after the crash.
Some reports claim at least two of the IRA men attempted to
exit the crashed car and were subsequently found lying half out of its doors by
the later police investigation of the scene. Relatives of the IRA men
subsequently stated that they had received information from the scene that two
of the IRA attackers had fled on foot from the car after the crash, but had
been pursued after and shot down by the British Army in the vicinity, with
their bodies being taken back to the car, which was subsequently reported to be
riddled with over 200 bullet holes.
A Royal Ulster Constabulary crime-scene report stated that a
balaclava belonging to one of the IRA men was found some distance away from the
vehicle.
The bodies of Doris, Ryan and McNally were badly burnt by
the car fire, and had to be identified by police using their dental records. Two
rifles were recovered from within the burnt-out stolen car, subsequent police
forensic examination of them revealing that they had both been used in the
multiple murders at Leslie Dallas's garage in March 1989.
