Annie's Bar massacre: Victims of 'forgotten tragedy' forgotten no more - Rev. Latimer

Reverend David Latimer thanked the families for inviting him to join them at the anniversary Mass, and spoke of the importance of a new booklet remembering the victims and what happened at the pub on Top of the HIll on December 20, 1972. The booklet was launched at a special event following the Mass and vigil on Tuesday night.

Rev. Latimer told those gathered at St Columb’s Church, Chapel Road: "Just a few days before Christmas in 1972, five homes and five families were forever changed when five innocent men were murdered in Annie’s Bar, often referred to as the ‘forgotten massacre’.

"The booklet of interviews and photographs compiled by Sarah Duddy from the Pat Finucane Centre will, I believe, serve to ensure the memories of Barney Kelly, Charlie McCafferty, Michael McGinley, Charles Boyd Moore and Frank McCarron will never die.”

Rev. Latimer said father-of-seven Frank McCarron was remembered as a “good father and as a very funny man who had time for his family”.

“Christmas for the McCarron household was a happy time but after the shooting was every year understandably dreaded.”

Michael McGinley, the second youngest of four brothers was remembered as “such a gentle soul and snooker fanatic”.

"Christine in the interview recalls him teaching her to make toffee apples which she then sold in the back lane.”

Barney Kelly was a “a twin who weighed only three pounds when he was born”. "Barney was the youngest of seven surviving children and was his mammy’s “blue-eyed boy. Relatives describe Barney, who was always well dressed, as the funniest person you could ever meet”.

Charlie McCafferty was a “gentle giant” and “first and foremost a family man”, and his death impacted so deeply on his family.

“A comment from the McCafferty family in the interview booklet reads: ‘It wasn’t just Charlie who died that night; our whole family changed. I wonder sometimes what lives we would have lived if he hadn’t been killed. It’s not just what they buried, it’s what they left behind.”

Charles Boyd Moore was the fourth youngest of nine from a townland between Newbuildings and Cullion. His mother bought the schoolboy Charles a red bike that he would fly along in ‘thinking he was Jeff Duke’.

"Every Tuesday would call with with his mammy, it was pension day and she would give him two pork chops and a pound of frying steak and then she would slip 20 Regal cigarettes across to him. He was her blue-eyed boy.

"These human stories connect with us because we are all part of the human family created by God.”

Rev Latimer spoke of the impact on the families left to deal with the horror and trauma and loss after “what took place on that fateful night all those years ago.”

"The Lord bless you and keep you.”