1983 escape IRIS
24/07/2008
15:01
Page 49
IRIS
THE GREATEST ESCAPE wasn’t found for over two weeks. I couldn’t sleep all that time, willing him to walk in the door. I have a photograph of us together with his parents, taken not long before he died. I miss him still. “I remained on the run in the first half of 1985. On St Patrick’s Day I was in a house in Mayo when I saw the Gardaí coming up the lane. I ran out the back of the house, halfdressed, and over the fields. The Gardaí came after me but I lost them in the fields and hid in a ditch. It started to snow. I could hear the cars and a helicopter, but they didn’t find me. I lay until dark and headed off across the fields again. I got to a farmhouse, but the dogs started to bark and I had to get away from there. I fell into water and it was freezing. When it started to get light, I dug into a ditch again. It snowed all day and I could hear the searching going on near me. “When it got dark again, I got up to go, but although my brain said ‘move’, my legs wouldn’t work. I was literally frozen stiff. I started to think about Kieran Fleming, about him drowning. I thought: ‘Am I going to die here?’ That got me going. I got to the road, and to a phone box near a shop. It took me an hour to make a call to a friend, my hands were shaking so much with the cold. “By the time my friend got to me, I was unconscious, lying in the phone box. He took me to a safe house which ironically, and unknown to me, was only 50 yards from the phone box, and the people called a doctor. All I can remember of the next few days is being wrapped in tinfoil. I came round once, and the woman of the house was sprinkling me with holy water! The doctor said that another hour and I’d have died of hypothermia. I had frost bite in my toes. It took me a month to recover. Those people in Mayo saved my life. “In July 1985, 1 was staying with Jim Boyle in Killybegs. He gave me a lift to a house one day. I didn’t know there was anything in the house but the Gardaí were waiting for anyone to go there. Jim and I were arrested and charged with possession of stuff in the house. He was framed, I felt really bad about that. He got four years. His daughter died while he was in Portlaoise, she was a lovely young girl. “We both got bail before the trial, and I went to Bundoran, and on 5 August at a disco, I met Marie. A friend introduced us. It was love at first sight.” Marie explains, however, that with the noise in the disco she didn’t hear the friend’s introduction properly, which was: “This is Tony Kelly, who is out on £20,000 bail.” “I
thought she said he had £20,000! I thought he was a good catch. Little did I know! I didn’t realise who he was, but we saw each other every day that week and although I had to go home I came back down the following weekend. That was it. We got a place to stay in Donegal. “In October I found I was pregnant. Tony told me everything about himself and what it would mean if I stayed with him. I had no hesitation. It wasn’t that I accepted it, just that I knew what he was and I loved him. We got engaged before Tony jumped bail in November. He was back on the run from then.” Tony takes up the story: “I was delighted Marie was pregnant because I loved her, but as well as that, I never thought that I would have the chance to have a family. If I hadn’t escaped, I would still be in the blocks. I had no release date. Here was a whole new life opening up. Marie had to meet Tony secretly. She describes being taken to see him when she was eight months pregnant, having to climb over ditches and hedges in the dark. She went home to have the baby, but Tony was unable to see his daughter until she was a few months old. Tony recalls: “I was only able to see the baby three times in two years, though I saw Marie more often. Our relationship is very strong, in spite of not having a normal life all those years. When I was arrested in Dublin on 26 November1987 [with fellow escaper Séamus Clarke] I had just left Marie. In January 1988 I was sentenced to seven years for the Killybegs charge. Marie was in court all through the trial. I got two days’ parole to get married in May 1990, and I was released on 1 April this year. “People don’t recognise what women go through. All the time I was in Portlaoise, Marie never missed travelling from the North for a visit. She got up at 4am to get to the jail in time. Once the bus broke down in Dundalk, and she hitched all the way to Portlaoise and back again. And she reared our daughter on her own, with all the pressure and responsibility of that. In our struggle it often seems that it’s ‘men, men, men’. But it is the women who are the strength and direction.” Tony still lives in Donegal.
ately and savagely beaten. Rab was released on licence in the 1990s, however in November 1996 he was arrested at his Twinbrook home and charged possession of documents. Rab was eventually acquited on these charges but his licence was revoked and he was returned to prison. In 1997 his case went before the Life Sentence Review board and he was re-released on licence.
TERRY KIRBY Serving a life sentence at the time of the escape after his conviction in 1978, Terry Kirby from Belfast was one of the group of escapers who trekked across country. He was arrested in the United States and held with fellow escapees Kevin Barry Artt and Pól Brennan until all three were released. Following a fight on his behald by supporters in the United States, Kirby was allowed to remain in America.
BRENDAN MEAD Recaptured with Paul Kane outside Castlewellan, Brendan Mead, from West Belfast, was released on licence in the mid1990s.
TONY McALLISTER One of the escape group that walked to South Armagh, Tony McAllister from Belfast had originally been jailed for life in 1979. He was never recaptured after the escape.
JIM McCANN Caught within minutes of the escape, Jim ‘Jaz’ McCann from Belfast was one of the longest-serving sentenced prisoners following his arrest in June 1976. 1n 1993, while on pre-release parole, he was awarded an Open University first-class BA (Hons) degree in Humanities, in a ceremony at the University of Ulster. Jaz was finally released in 1994.
RAB KERR Amid the confusion at the tally lodge, Rab Kerr, as part of the tally lodge rearguard, bought vital time for the other escapers. He was overpowered by screws almost immedi-
GERRY McDONNELL ‘Blute’ McDonnell from Belfast, sentenced in 49