Reavey and O'Dowd killings

Reavey and O'Dowd killings
Part of the Troubles
Whitecross Ballydougan
Location	Whitecross and Ballydougan, County Armagh, Northern Ireland
Date	4 January 1976 18:10 and 18:20 (GMT)
Attack type	Shooting
Deaths	6
Non-fatal injuries	1
Perpetrators	Ulster Volunteer Force and Special Patrol Group members

The Reavey and O'Dowd killings were two co-ordinated gun attacks on 4 January 1976 in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. Six Irish Catholic civilians died after members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), an Ulster loyalist paramilitary group, broke into their homes and shot them. Three members of the Reavey family were shot at their home in Whitecross and four members of the O'Dowd family were shot at their home in Ballydougan. Two of the Reaveys and three of the O'Dowds were killed outright, with the third Reavey victim dying of brain hemorrhage almost a month later.

The shootings were part of a string of attacks on Catholics and Irish nationalists by the "Glenanne gang"; an alliance of loyalist militants, British soldiers and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) police officers. Billy McCaughey, a police officer from the RUC Special Patrol Group, admitted taking part and accused another officer of being involved. His colleague John Weir said that those involved included a British soldier, two police officers and an alleged police agent: Robin 'the Jackal' Jackson.

The next day, gunmen shot dead ten Ulster Protestant civilians in the Kingsmill massacre. This was claimed as retaliation for the Reavey and O'Dowd shootings. Kingsmill was the climax of a string of tit-for-tat killings in the area during the mid-1970s.

In February 1975, the Provisional IRA and British Government entered into a truce and restarted negotiations. For the duration of the truce, the IRA agreed to halt its attacks on the British security forces, and the security forces mostly ended their raids and searches. However, there were dissenters on both sides. Some Provisionals wanted no part of the truce, while some British commanders resented being told to stop their operations against the IRA just when they claimed they had the Provisionals on the run. The security forces boosted their intelligence offensive during the truce.