John Toland atrocity: ‘It is hard to tell of the devastation of John’s murder on my life and the lives of my children’

She was 17 and he a year her senior.

"We fell in love, but my mother made me wait until I was nineteen years old before I was allowed to marry him.

“John was such a happy person. He was the happiest person on this planet. He adored his family and his home. He never stopped working,” says Marie.

The young couple wed on April 4, 1961. They moved in with Marie’s aunt Molly in Creggan Street.

"We wanted a big family, and had seven children one after another, around 11 months apart. As our family grew, we moved to a house in Windsor Terrace along with Molly,” she says.

"Me and John had our lives planned. We wanted a whole gang of children, and we also wanted to work as hard as we could so that we could give them the best life,” Marie adds.

Danny Toland was the eldest of the gang. He recalls his father packing them all into the car during the endless summers they used to enjoy in the 1970s.

“I remember my father was the only man on the street with a car. On a Sunday, he would take us all to the beach. His kindness didn't stop there. He would have dropped us off and returned home and took all the other families without a car to the beach,” he says.

John was always impeccably turned out and unfailingly courteous.

"My father was a very polite and well-dressed young man. He always dressed in a very professional manner - and wore a shirt and tie,” says Danny.

He was also a devoted son to his widowed mother Madge who had had to raise seven boys alone after John’s father had died young.

“John was so kind and caring,” says Marie. “Every night, religiously, John would visit his mother.”

"John provided for two households, for us and for his mother and Joe. He gave her money and brought food parcels, and she really relied on him,” she explains.

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Through Marie’s uncle Billy, John learned that the owner of a pub in Eglinton was retiring and looking for someone to take over his lease.

John saw it as an opportunity to have his own place.

“Although Eglinton is a predominately Protestant village, John wasn’t apprehensive in the slightest. He was more excited than anything. It didn’t cross our minds to think anything would happen. John had no interest in politics or ‘the Troubles’.

"He wasn’t a member of any political group and wasn’t in the IRA or any other organisation. He was too busy working to even know they were there. They weren’t on his radar. The loyalists weren’t on his radar either.

“John’s sole focus was to work hard with the aim of getting the children grown up and to then have ‘thelife of Riley’. That’s what he would say. We work hard now and, then, we will have ‘the life of Riley!’”Marie recalls.

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The young father threw himself into his work at The Happy Landing, says Danny.

“I often remember him working seven days a week to build a very successful pub. He worked into the small hours of the night.

"I have fond memories of sneaking downstairs to see him late at night just to tell him I missed him. He would leave us to school the next morning, and that was him until the evening.”

In 1976, Marie and John enjoyed a holiday overseas.

“We went to Spain for a week. Just me and John. His mother Madge kept the children and we had the most magical holiday together. He promised that we would do the same thing every year – go away, just the two of us,” she says.

Early on the evening of Monday, November 22, 1976, John was serving drinks in The Happy Landing when two gunmen who were not wearing masks fired four rounds into his back. He died almost immediately.

“It is hard to describe the devastation of John’s murder on my life and the lives of my children. He had done everything for us, he took care of everything, and I was completely lost without him,” says Marie.

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The loyalist murder gang, the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), an adjunct of the then still legal, Ulster Defence Association (UDA) – the British Government didn’t see fit to proscribe it until 1992 – was responsible.

In a statement, the terror group claimed the murder had been carried out in retaliation for the shooting of 37-year-old Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) member William Derek Kidd in the Waterside on November 18.

“I knew it was loyalists responsible for the murder,” says Marie. “They said something like John was giving information to the IRA. It was completely untrue.

"Glen Barr, who was in the UDA, was a regular in the bar. He used to drink there… Glen came out and publicly condemned the murder and said John was innocent.

"I was very pleased that he did this, but I was sure that, by standing up and saying this against his own, that he would have been targeted then.

“I believe John was targeted because they didn’t like seeing a Catholic doing so well, running the bar and thriving. I think they wanted one of their own running the place, and that’s where the resentment came from.”

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Barr’s public renunciation of the atrocity also sticks in the memory for Danny.

“After his murder, the leader of the UDA, Mr. Glen Barr, condemned his murder. By doing this, he risked his own life. As years passed, he was interviewed on Radio Foyle.

"He spoke about my father again. His words stuck with me forever more. Mr. Barr said, ‘I don't mind if Catholics and Protestants go into a big field and hit one another, but the murder of John Toland was one of the worst atrocities of the Troubles. He was an innocent man doing a day's work’.”

Ten years after the murder, a loyalist named Leonard Campbell told the RUC he had been involved.

He named a UDA Brigadier in Derry at the time – a former B Special – and said that this man had ordered the killing as well as those of other innocent Catholics including James Loughrey, in Greysteel, and Kevin Mulhern in the Waterside.

Back in 2011, the Historical Enquiries team (HET) highlighted serious failings in the investigation of John’s murder and confirmed that there had been collusion in the murder between members of the security forces and the loyalists killers.

This week’s court settlement represents a victory for the Toland family but it does little to atone for what they have suffered over the past 47 years.

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Danny remembers November 22, 1976, as the end of an age of innocence.

“I woke up a young boy. I went to bed that night a man. I left school with no education simply because my mum couldn't run a house alone. I got a job and used my wages to ensure bills were paid, our window cleaners, coal men, etc.

"My younger brother had a little red book, and he wrote who had to be paid and when. To this day, Ialways wonder how life would have been different had I got an education and if my father wasn't taken away so soon.”

A month after the murder, Marie received the first of a campaign of anonymous phone calls.

“I was woken up in the middle of the night by the phone ringing. It was around 3 o’clock in the morning. I thought someone was ringing to say something had happened my daddy, but it was a man who said, ‘How does it feel to be a widow for a month?’

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"The same thing happened at the two-month anniversary. A gloating, sneering man rang the house in the middle of the night. It was so awful and scary,” she says.

Five months after John was killed, Marie’s father suffered a brain haemorrhage and died. Her mother had passed away just a year earlier. Within 18 months, she had lost her mother, her husband, and her father.

"I was alone with seven children and was overwhelmed with grief. The devastation was unbearable.

“My boys, who were just young children, became the men of the house and left school to go to work. They missed out on their education and future because of what happened,” says Marie.

Danny confides: “I speak on a personal level, although I know my siblings are suffering, too.

"I still, to this day, suffer Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from losing my father so young.”

He adds: “My mother often talks about one of her greatest achievements to date – that none of her children ever retaliated nor joined paramilitaries.

"We are a family of seven brothers and sisters who don’t have a bitter bone in our bodies. We respect everyone regardless of race or religion. My mum didn't seek jail sentences - just justice and answers for his death.”

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