R.J. Kerr, the Co Armagh loyalist figure who died in the mysterious explosion outside Newry at the weekend, was at the centre of the loyalist sectarian murder campaign in mid-Ulster during the 1970s. Kerr was also connected with a number of police and British army figures around whom there have always been suspicions of collusion in loyalist murders.
He was reputed to have been associated with Capt Robert Nairac, the undercover soldier killed by the IRA in 1977.
He was firmly believed to have been involved in the murder of the Catholic chemist, Mr William Strathearn, who was shot dead at his home in Aghohill, Co Antrim, in 1977. He and another Portadown loyalist were believed to have carried out this murder along with two maverick RUC officers, one of whom was convicted of the murder.
Kerr was a founder member of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) in the Craigavon area. It became heavily involved in the sectarian assassination campaign in the north Armagh-east Tyrone area in the mid-1970s. A booklet detailing these murders, The Triangle of Death by Fathers Raymond Murray and Denis Faul, led to the area becoming known as the "Murder Triangle".
Kerr escaped conviction for what is believed to have been a string of sectarian murders, some involving torture. One of his earliest victims is reputed to have been Felix Hughes, a Catholic abducted and tortured. An attempt was made to burn his body before he was wrapped in a mattress and dumped in a drain.
Theories connecting Kerr with alleged undercover British activity stem from his suspected involvement in the murder of John Francis Green, a leading IRA figure shot dead in a farmhouse in 1974. Kerr told people that he carried out this murder along with another Armagh loyalist, who is still alive, and the British undercover soldier, Capt Nairac.
Since the late 1970s, when the RUC virtually eradicated the loyalist paramilitary organisations in mid-Ulster, Kerr drifted into crime and served a number of sentences for robbery and other offences.
His loyalist-sectarian background did not prevent him from establishing links with Catholic or even Southern members of the crime world.
He had cross-Border connections with southern criminals and was almost certainly involved in the attempt to sell-on some of the Beit collection paintings stolen by the Dublin criminal, Martin Cahill, from Russborough House in 1986. Kerr is also known to have been closely associated with the Newry drug dealer, Patrick Farrell, who also met an unusual death in August. Farrell was shot dead by a girlfriend who then killed herself.
In recent years, Kerr was said to be drunk almost daily. He is survived by two partners and two families.