AN RUC man murdered his wife and two young children as they lay sleeping in their beds, and then blamed his teenage son, a trial in Belfast heard yesterday. Belfast Crown Court was told Mr John Joseph Torney (40) was "infatuated" with another woman.
He denies murdering his wife and children at their home in Cookstown, Co Tyrone, late on September 19th, or early on September 20th, 1994. Police found Mrs Linda Torney (33), her daughter Emma (10) and son John (13) dead in their beds, each with a single gunshot wound to the head.
Mr Torney's personal protection revolver lay beside his son. Mr Torney claimed the teenager had gone "mad" and killed his mother and sister before turning the gun on himself. He gave police two noted in which his son apologised, blaming arguments between his parents and between himself and his sister over the family dog for what had happened.
The prosecutor, Mr John Creaney QC, claimed it was not, the son John, but the father who was the killer after becoming "infatuated" with an RUC officer from Ballymena. Mr Creaney said the Torney marriage was not a happy one and the couple contemplated separating although Mr Torney denied the reason behind it was a third person.
But a month before the murders, the RUC officer, Ms Ailsa Millar, called at the Torney home at about 10.30 p.m. while his wife was staying with her father. Mr Torney later told a minister that Ms Millar had stayed with him until 3.30 the next morning and had "shown me what a marriage could be".
Mr Creaney said the jury was faced with the simple question of who pulled the trigger - Mr Torney or his son. If Mr Torney was right in what he claimed, said Mr Creaney, then he was "the most sinned against man you can ever envisage." But if he were the killer as alleged, then "he was capable of the most diabolical enterprise, and the most diabolical framing of a child".
The trial continues today.