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Body in Freezer. Last month the naked body of a Catholic dairy worker was found in an East Belfast alley with the letters I.R.A. branded on his back. Also in December, a Protestant councilman from Armagh was kidnaped, taken for a ride south of the border, shot in the head, and his body was returned to Northern Ireland; a Catholic butcher was shot in the head and his body dumped in the meat freezer of his shop in Derrylin, County Fermanagh. Five days before Christmas, in apparent retaliation for the killing of a Protestant by an unknown sniper near a Londonderry reservoir, two masked men burst into the Top of the Hill, a Catholic-owned bar in the city's waterside district. They sprayed the room with a submachinegun and a pistol, killing four Catholics and one Protestant.
Authorities trying to investigate the sectarian killings have been frustrated by Mafia-like walls of silence. But the walls may break down as public horror mounts. Last week the Catholic Primate of All Ireland William Cardinal Conway and the leaders of the three major Protestant churches jointly urged all Christians to help "root out this evil and tell the murderers and assassins they are on their own." In Belfast three Protestants were charged with the gunshot murders of three Catholics between August and October. They are among only a handful of defendants to be brought to trial since the wave of assassinations began.