Davy Payne

H. David Payne (c. 1949 – March 2003) was a Northern Irish loyalist and a high-ranking member of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) during the Troubles, serving as brigadier of the North Belfast Brigade. He was first in command of the Shankill Road brigade of the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), which was the "cover name" of the militant branch of the UDA. The group was responsible for a series of abductions and killings of mostly Catholic civilians in the early 1970s.

He was arrested after being stopped at a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) checkpoint while driving the "scout" (lead) car for his UDA colleagues whose cars' boots contained large caches of weapons imported from Lebanon. He was convicted and sentenced to 19 years in prison.

Ulster Defence Association The Shankill Road neighbourhood of Belfast, as it appeared in the early 1970s. This was where Davy Payne grew up and then started commanded the Ulster Freedom Fighters. Payne was born in Belfast and grew up in the loyalist Shankill Road area of West Belfast. His family belonged to the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster. He remained a member of the church in adulthood and regularly attended services at the Martyrs' Memorial Church, the group's headquarters on the Ravenhill Road in south-east Belfast.

Payne was one of the original members of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) when it was formed from Ulster loyalist vigilante groups in September 1971. These groups, including the Woodvale Defence Association (WDA) and Shankill Defence Association (SDA), had sprung up following the outbreak in the late 1960s of the violent politico-religious conflict known as the Troubles. Payne, who had been a supporter of Gusty Spence and had rioted in 1966 following Spence's arrest, had been a member of both the Ulster Volunteer Force and Tara but took his entire "team" over to the UDA upon that organisation's foundation.

As the civil disorder, rioting, and attacks carried out by the Provisional IRA escalated, many Ulster Protestants felt increasingly under threat, and the groups were created as a means of defending the status quo. These vigilante units merged in 1971 to become the UDA. Author Sarah Nelson stated that "the vigilantism of summer and autumn 1969 was one of the foundation stones of the Ulster Defence Association".

A former British Army paratrooper, Payne had been interned in the early 1970s. as part of their violent, retaliatory campaign against the nationalist population who they believed was giving full support to the Provisional IRA, the group would abduct random Catholic men and women from nationalist areas, then beat, torture and kill them.

Payne was described as the UDA's most violent and feared killer, and was also a member of the Orange Order, belonging to the Old Boyne Island Heroes Lodge. Journalist Kevin Myers called him "one of the most ferocious savages in the history of Irish terrorism". Payne was said to have invented the notorious "romper rooms" where the UDA interrogated and tortured their victims. According to author Ian Wood, Payne was addicted to the use of knives and sadistically tortured his victims before killing them this earned him the nickname of "The Psychopath". Payne was described by Wood as having been a friend of Tyrie.

Fellow UDA member Glenn Barr believed that Payne on one occasion had saved his life

I owe my life to Davy Payne because there had been a plan within a section of the UDA to have me killed because I had been part of a delegation which had gone to Libya to have talks with Colonel Gadafy [sic] in 1974. Davy Payne went to those people and told them I was under his protection and I have no doubt this saved my life. Wilson had offered Andrews a lift home from a Belfast city centre pub. Following a telephone call to a newspaper from the UFF using their code name "Captain Black", Wilson and Andrews' mutilated bodies were found five hours later lying in pools of blood beside Wilson's car in a quarry off the Hightown Road. They had both been stabbed and hacked to death in what appeared to have been a frenzied attack. Wilson was stabbed a total of 30 times and his throat slashed from ear to ear; Andrews was knifed 20 times. The first-in-command of the UFF's Shankill Road brigade, John White was convicted of the crime after he had confessed to it in 1978. It was claimed that Payne would scream at those he wanted to frighten or intimidate: "Do you know who I am? I'm Davy Payne. They say I killed Paddy Wilson".

In 2003, Weir's allegations that Payne, along with senior Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) members, Billy Hanna and Robin Jackson, had led one of the UVF teams that bombed Dublin, were published in the Barron Report which were the findings of an official investigation into the bombings by Irish Supreme Court Justice Henry Barron. Payne, when questioned earlier, denied he had been involved in the car bombings, although he admitted to having met Weir in prison. However, rather than contest the allegations Payne closed down his operations and, having rebuilt his relationship with Tyrie, accepted his invitation to return as North Belfast Brigadier. Tyrie reportedly worried that the Brigade was making no money and also feared a small group of members who were carrying out a series of sectarian murders under their own steam and felt that Payne could restore order to the area. Payne was not popular with many local members, who resented his bullying techniques. In that same year, the police were aware that he was involved in an operation to steal weapons from an army base. The load consisted of 90 Browning pistols, 161 AK-47s, 250 grenades, 6 RPG 7'S, 184 magazines and 11,000 rounds of ammunition, along with 200 lbs of deadly lebanese semtex. According to journalist Peter Taylor, there was no doubt at the time that he had been set up by an informer within the UDA. Payne was sentenced to 19 years in prison.