Thirty-Two Years and No Conviction:
The Murder of Rosanne Mallon Part II
By Judge Michael C. Mentel
(To read Part I of The Murder of Rosanne Mallon, click: https://iirish.us/2026/06/13/a-legal-look-7/ )
Collusion And Cover-up
The subsequent investigation into the murder of Roseanne Mallon by British authorities, and the broad deference given to these authorities in the Coroner’s Court Verdict on Inquest is striking. The multitude of evidence, of destroyed evidence, incompetent forensic analysis, and contradictory information lends itself to only one likely conclusion: that there was collusion between the RUC, Special Branch, and the UVF and that British authorities are covering up these acts of collusion.
It is difficult to illustrate all of the acts of collusion and cover-up perpetrated in Roseanne’s murder investigation. However, several key pieces of evidence are insightful.
First, the presence of the RUC Special Branch camera camouflaged on a hill 550 yards from Brigid Mallon’s home. The camera was specifically directed towards Brigid’s home as part of an operation conducted by the RUC and Special Branch codenamed “Paucity 2.” The camera was not discovered until two months after Roseanne’s murder. Aside from the concealment of the camera from the family and investigators following the murder, inherent contradictions arise in the RUC’s account of the camera.
Looking at the Verdict on Inquest decision, the Coroner Judge determined that the technical capability of the camera and equipment “… did not have the capacity to pick up or transmit images at night nor did it have the capacity to zoom in and out.” Issues of preserving battery capacity was accepted by the Coroner Judge as another reason the camera was not functioning that evening.
However, the Coroner Judge concluded previously that, “[o]n 9 July 1994, some two months after the death of the deceased, an elaborately-concealed surveillance camera was discovered in a field [overlooking Brigid Mallon’s home]. It is clear from the evidence that the camera was part of a surveillance operation that had been initiated by RUC Special Branch (“SB”). The target of that camera was the engineering works at [Brigid’s home] operated by Christopher and Martin Mallon. Its purpose was to identify persons and vehicles at the engineering works.”
Thus, the camera was capable of identifying people and vehicles from 550 yards away. Nonetheless, the assertion was made that the murder occurred at night.
Even if the camera was on, it could not capture anything. Two points of contradiction on this assertion.
Point one, the Coroner Judge was factually wrong. In Dungannon on May 8, 1994, evening nautical twilight—dim ambient light with the horizon still visible—began at 10:03 p.m. BST and ended at 10:43 p.m. BST, when astronomical twilight began. Full darkness – the end of astronomicaltwilight – did not occur until 11:19 p.m. BST.
The coroner Judge found that, “[i]t was around [10:30 p.m.] when [Roseanne and Brigid arrived at Brigid’s home] and so it was by then dark [outside]… [Rosanne] sat on a settee in the lighted living room at the rear of the house with her back to the window on which the blinds were drawn although perhaps not fully. [Brigid] left the room to telephone [her] daughter, Paula… As the two ladies spoke the daughter noticed a large saloon car, dark in [color], stopping around the entrance [to her mother’s driveway] and two men running up its driveway towards the house.”
Clearly, Paula was able to see with the existing ambient light that a dark colored passenger sedan pulled up in front of the driveway and that two men ran up to the house. All of this being seen from inside her home across the road.
It was not dark. It was nautical twilight. The camera could have captured persons and vehicles at or around Brigid Mallon’s home.
Point two, the camera could capture images, not only at twilight but in darkness. As stated by the Coroner Judge, “[a]fter the equipment had been found on 9 July the Mallon family showed it to a man who had previously worked for BBC and UTV who told the family that the equipment had night sight and also the ability to zoom in and out.” It was reported that the equipment being used to surveil the Mallon home consisted of one small camera with a wide angled lens and another camera with a powerful telephoto lens.
Despite UTV’s indisputable expertise in camera and transmission equipment, the RUC and British Army vigorously denied that either camera had a zoom or night vision capability. A fact they asserted given that all tapes were wiped and records doctored or destroyed.
The Coroner Judge nonetheless found that the testimony of the soldier who set up the camaras, and a subsequent laboratory test, confirmed the camera did not have the capacity to capture night images. Albeit the Coroner’s Court made its finding, it begs the question; if “[i]t is clear from the evidence that the camera was part of a surveillance operation that had been initiated by RUC Special Branch” and codenamed “Paucity 2”, that the RUC and Special Branch would employ the most sophisticated camera equipment it could?
The UTV expert identified it as capable of capturing images at night. The circumstances of the surveillance operation evidence that the cameras deployed by the military were sophisticated pieces of equipment that could capture images at night. This is further substantiated by the destruction and erasure of the records and tapes.
Additionally, lack of a camera facilitated the collusion between the UVF, RUC and Special Branch. On May 9, 1994, a telephone call was made to the UTV television newsroom. The caller said, “the Mid-Ulster Brigade of the UVF claims responsibility for the gun attack last night,” then added, “Miss Mallon” before hanging up.
Following the claim made by the caller, as stated in the Verdict on Inquest holding, investigators received information that a “silver Peugeot 309 car had been sighted in the area by at least one and perhaps three people. As a result the investigators followed up all silver Peugeot 309 cars with the partial registration letters “IB”. Only two of these cars could not be eliminated from the enquiry including one owned by a Billy Wright, a notorious sectarian terrorist whose vehicle had the registration “TIB 2365” and the second a car whose owner had moved from his registered address and could not be traced… At [12:35a.m] on 9 May the Peugeot car TIB2365 belonging to Billy Wright was stopped by police at the junction at Sandymount Road and Armagh/Portadown Road. Wright was a passenger in the car along with two others denominated S4 and S6. All three were arrested and taken to Gough Barracks, Armagh. They were forensically examined… and held until being released without charge on 13 May 1994. Forensic tests of their clothing produced negative results, and it must be presumed that their interviews also did so but the court has been told that the notes of the interviews are no longer available having subsequently been destroyed.”
The Coroner Judge was told that the interview notes were thrown out by an asbestos removal crew when they were hauling out asbestos material from Gough Barracks. The Peugeot observed in the area of the Mallon home at the time of the murder is a nationalist rural area of Tyrone. The junction of Sandymount Road and Armagh/ Portadown Road, where Billy Wright was pulled over and arrested, just outside of Dungannon, is also a strong nationalist area.
During our interview, Martin Mallon made the point that “Billy Wright would need to be guided through rural Tyrone. He would not have known the area because it was a nationalist area.”
Taken together, the chain of circumstantial evidence creates a clear case that the RUC, MI5, and Special Branch conspired in Roseanne Mallon’s murder. Martin Mallon was told by an MI5 agent that if he refused to cooperate, a member of his family would be killed.
Martin Mallon
Three weeks before his aunt’s murder, Special Branch officers stopped him and held him until Billy Wright and Tony McNeill arrived. The officers identified Mr. Mallon to them, and Wright then threatened to kill a member of his family.
Buried Below the Surface
The deliberate destruction of evidence, disregard of existing evidence, failure to establish key facts, forensic incompetence, and the RUC, Special Branch, and British military’s rhetorical distortions—accepted as fact by the Coroner Judge—are an affront to the principles of justice.
There is far more evidence demonstrating the collusion and conspiracy by British authorities in this case than can be written about here. To learn more on the murder of Rosanne Mallon please go to www.relativesforjustice.com and to review the entire Verdict on Inquest Judgment go to www.judiciaryni.uk Neutral Citation No. [2019] NICoroner 1.
Truth flourishes in the light of day. It is your opportunity to be the light.
