29/07/2025
There can hardly be a more life-defining moment than facing a row of heavily-armed men on the side of the road in the dark. Suddenly there is the flash of an exploding bomb and a fusillade of gun fire, then the smell of burning rubber and stillness.
Not even a moan escapes from the bullet-ridden bodies strewn by the roadside.
That, in essence, is the story of the Miami Showband massacre on the morning of July 31, 1975. Fran O’Toole (29), Brian McCoy (32) and Tony Geraghty (24) were murdered at the side of the Belfast/Dublin road at Buskhill in Co Down.
Two of their UVF ambushers, Harris Boyle and Wesley Somerville, were blown up by their prematurely exploding bomb.
Bass player Stephen Travers was blown clear by the bomb and was shot in the bloody aftermath and left for dead.
The other survivor Des Lee went on to have an afterlife in the music business, in Ireland, South Africa and Lanzarote, but the horror of those moments 50 years ago has never left him. “I have never escaped from the memories of that night, the pain has never failed to ease,” he says from his home in Belfast. “Apart from having my friends killed and my life shattered, I had to leave Ireland because of the threats to me and my family.”
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📸: Matt Mackey
