Devlin murder pair found guilty
Two north Belfast men have been convicted of the murder of Catholic schoolboy Thomas Devlin in August 2005.
The 15-year-old was knifed to death during an attack by 26-year-old Nigel James Brown and 23-year-old Gary Taylor on Belfast’s Somerton Road in front of two friends, one of whom was also stabbed.
It took the Belfast Crown Court jury of eight men and four women just one hour and twenty-five minutes to convict Brown, who is from the Whitewell Road, and Taylor, who comes from nearby Mountcollyer Avenue.
The jury unanimously accepted the prosecution case that Brown and Taylor had acted as “a team” when they attacked the three teenagers during which young Thomas was fatally stabbed nine times.
In turn the jury rejected defence arguments that the prosecution case against Brown was simply a “jigsaw puzzle cut up with scissors”, whilst against Taylor it amounted to nothing more than a “fairytale – grim fairytales.”
During their five week trial the court heard that Brown confessed to his step-father that he’d been involved in an arguement with the three teenage friends and saw Taylor stab the schoolboy “in a frenzy”.
However, Brown also claimed that when they both left their then homes in Ross House in the loyalist Mount Vernon flats complex to walk a dog, he had no idea that Taylor had armed himself with a knife.
However, prosecuting lawyer, London based QC Toby Hedworth maintained that their intentions that night were “crystal clear”, to find “soft targets” after going out together “tooled-up”.
Mr Hedworth had also claimed that Brown’s admission to being at the scene was little more than “a damage limitation exercise”, whilst Taylor’s supposed alibi of being elsewhere smoking dope with friends had “melted away like the snow”.
Gary Taylor, the “principal” killer of schoolboy Thomas Devlin protested his innocence as he and his accomplice Nigel James Brown were both jailed for life.
Clashing with trial judge Mr Justice McLaughlin, the 23-year-old north Belfastman shouted from the dock that “suspicion does not prove guilt”.
The Crown Court judge had just thanked the jury of eight men and four women for their verdicts, which he described as being “entirley in accordance with the evidence”.
Mr Justice McLaughlin said the murder of the 15-year-old Catholic schoolboy “was a murder which completely shocked this entire community, but especially the community of north Belfast”.
The judge said that Thomas and his two friends “were attacked without any reason or provocation whatever”.
They were, he added, “three perfectly innocent young men”, and that “one of them was killed, one was injured, and the two survivors, no doubt severely traumatised”.
Then turning to address Taylor directly, Mr Justice McLaughlin declared: “It is plain that you Gary Taylor were the principal …. you are the killer”.
Mr Justice McLaughlin told Taylor he could “shake your head all you like, but this county with its democratic system and system for fair trials, has heard all of the evidence, considered all of the facts and has determined your guilt”.
It was at this stage Taylor shouted: “Suspicion does not prove guilt”.
However, ignoring the outburst, Mr Justice McLaughlin told him: “You thought you had got away with it, but you have been convicted and you will pay a heavy price for what you did on the Somerton Road.
“You will go to prison for life. And you will have a tariff fixed….It will be a very lengthy tariff you can be sure,” warned the judge.
Turning to Brown, and just before jailing him for life, Mr Justice McLaughlin told him he’d played a “secondary” role.
However, he added that his “conviction demonstrates that those who engage in violence willingly must take full responsibility not just for what they do themselves, but for the actions of others that they go about with and with whom they act in concert”.
