Pitchfork murders

The killing of Michael Naan and Andrew Murray, better known as the Pitchfork murders, was the killing of two Catholic civilians in October 1972, by two British Army soldiers of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.

Stabbing
On 23 October 1972 at around 4:20 p.m. two soldiers of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, Sgt. Stanley Hathaway and Cpl. John Byrne attacked farmer and civil rights activist Michael Naan (31) and laborer Andrew Joseph Murray (24) with a Bowie knife, while they were lifting hay off a trailer at Naan’s farm in Aughnahinch, County Fermanagh.

Murray was stabbed 13 times in the chest and Naan was stabbed at least 17 times and his throat slashed.

Hathaway and Byrne claimed they attacked Naan and Murray because they believed they were members of the IRA. Although it is possible they targeted Naan because he was a prominent member of the NICRA; the killings could have also been in reprisal for the murder of Pvt. John Robert “Robin” Bell (21) a member of the UDR who was ambushed by the IRA a day earlier at his family’s farm in nearby Derrydoon.