Qualla: Murder of the Quinn brothers

Murder of the Quinn brothers: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DColt, CC BY-SA 3.0. Richard Quinn was eleven years old. His brother Mark was ten. Their younger brother Jason was nine. The night before they died, the three boys had been outside in the Carnany estate helping to build the Eleventh Night bonfire - the traditional loyalist celebration that lights up Protestant neighbourhoods across Northern Ireland on the eve of the Twelfth of July. They went to bed sometime after midnight. At about 4:30 in the morning of 12 July 1998, members of the Ulster Volunteer Force pulled up at their house and threw a petrol bomb made from a whiskey bottle through a rear window. The petrol caught and the smoke filled the upstairs bedrooms within seconds. Their mother Chrissie escaped by jumping from a first-floor window. The boys did not. They died in their beds.

Image: DColt | CC BY-SA 3.0

Murder of the Quinn brothers: The Boys

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DColt, CC BY-SA 3.0. Richard, Mark and Jason were children. That has to be said first, because the killing was political enough that the children sometimes get lost inside it. Richard liked to go to school. Mark was the middle brother. Jason was the youngest. They attended a local state primary schoo...

Image: DColt | CC BY-SA 3.0

Murder of the Quinn brothers: A Mixed-Religion Family

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DColt, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Quinn family was what Northern Ireland calls 'mixed' - a Catholic mother, a Catholic father, but after Chrissie separated from her husband Jim Dillon she raised the boys as Protestant 'to avoid the hassle', as the inquest later heard. She lived with her Protestant partner Ray...

Image: DColt | CC BY-SA 3.0

Murder of the Quinn brothers: The Attack

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DColt, CC BY-SA 3.0. It happened at half past four in the morning. A car pulled up at the rear of the house in Carnany Park. Men got out. A petrol bomb - a whiskey bottle filled with fuel and stoppered with a rag - was lit and thrown through a rear window. The bottle broke on impact and the petrol sp...

Image: DColt | CC BY-SA 3.0

Murder of the Quinn brothers: Drumcree's Shadow

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DColt, CC BY-SA 3.0. The attack on the Quinn family did not come out of nowhere. The summer of 1998 was dominated by the Drumcree standoff in Portadown, where the Orange Order's traditional march was being blocked by the Parades Commission from passing through the predominantly Catholic Garvaghy Road...

Image: DColt | CC BY-SA 3.0

Murder of the Quinn brothers: The Reckoning That Didn't Come

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DColt, CC BY-SA 3.0. Garfield Gilmour, a local loyalist who had been involved in the attack, was arrested soon afterwards. He admitted driving three other UVF members to the Quinn house. He named the three men - Johnny McKay and the brothers Raymond and Ivan Parke - and was convicted of murder in Oct...

Image: DColt | CC BY-SA 3.0