LONG time North Belfast MP Cecil Walker provided a reference for the deceased UVF member Joe Coggle ahead of his sentencing after he mowed down and killed a grandmother in west Belfast.
Elizabeth Masterson (middle) pictured with her sisters and sister-in-law on the night she was murdered.
20th September, 2022.
Some of the references provided to the court were “extraordinary”, according to his defence counsel as he pleaded for the a lenient sentence for the then 28-year-old Coggle.
Coggle (64), who died last week, was remembered at a service at the home of his partner in the Shankill Road of Belfast.
Among those who attended the service were convicted UVF member Jake Kane, reputed former leader of the organisation, John ‘Bunter Graham, and Winston ‘Winkie’ Irvine, currently on bail on weapons charges, as well as members of the UDA.
Coggle killed 61-year-old grandmother Elizabeth Masterson, known as Elish, in May 1986 when the car he was driving mounted the pavement and struck her.
A court transcript of the sentencing hearing in March 1987 reveals that Mr Walker, the Ulster Unionist MP for North Belfast from 1983 to 2001 and a friend of the family, was one of several people and organisations to vouch for Coggle.
Church organisations and a senior manager in City Hall also provided references prior to Coggle’s sentencing. His father, Joe Coggle Sr, was at the time an independent unionist councillor, later High Sheriff of the city.
According to his defence at the time, Coggle “finds it difficult to talk about this offence without bursting into tears…not the remorse of a man who has been caught on but the remorse of a man who realises what he has done and realises his shame”.
Five years after the incident, Coggle was caught with three others in a stationary car on the Falls Road with two automatic rifles and an automatic pistol. The judge said he was part of a group “bent on wholesale murder” before sentencing him to 18 years.
Coggle was driving a Lada car that mowed down Mr Masterson, her daughter-in-law Ann and narrowly missed son and husband, John Masterson, as they stood waiting for a black taxi on the Falls Road near the corner with Beechmount Drive.
Ann Masterson has no doubt Coggle deliberately targeted the group and believes he thought they were three males.
“He meant to kill us. I do not care what anybody says,” Ann said. “He should have been done for murder and attempted murder for the rest of us. He murdered her.”
Mrs Masterson was fatally injured while Ann suffered leg injuries when the car hit them in the early hours of a May morning in 1986.
Coggle received his sentence of 18 months, though Mrs Materson’s family did not find out until told by a neighbour after it was reported on the news. The family are still not exactly sure what he was charged with and sentenced for.
The court transcript from the sentencing hearing does not reveal what exactly he was charged with and there is a missing page at the end of the document so the sentence cannot even be immediately confirmed. But it does include arguments from the prosecutor and the defence counsel, along with confirmation the offence carried a sentence of up to five years. It appears the defence was asking for no more than six months.
The prosecutor does detail some of the testimony provided by John Masterson that he saw a stationary car on Beechmount then seconds later “without any warning the Lada car drove up his right hand side and headed straight for the group of people”.
But the prosecutor also referred a number of times to what he described as an “accident”.
His defence counsel claimed Coggle spent the day drinking heavily before an argument with his girlfriend led to him leave the house they shared in the Forth River area of north Belfast. The defence said he drove aimlessly around west Belfast before finding himself parked on Beechfield near the corner of the Falls Road. He then started up the car and somehow immediately lost control before ploughing into his victims, fatally injuring Mrs Masterson, who died later the same day.
With many thanks to: The Irish News and John Breslin for the original publication.
Follow these links to find out more on this story: A FORMER UVF prisoner who warned violence could be used to overturn the Northern Ireland Protocol has died.
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