TWO Armagh men have been acquitted of murdering a Newry postal worker, Mr Frank Kerr, and of a £130,000 raid on his sorting office.
However, Declan McComish and Kevin Patrick Donegan, both from Jonesboro, were convicted at Belfast Crown Court of assisting his killers and of helping in the November 1994 robbery. Sentence will be delivered today.
Lord Justice Nicholson told McComish (28), of Regina Park, and Donegan (39), of Bayview, at the end of his two hour judgment, he had "given them the benefit of the doubt" on the murder charge.
"It is just possible that they were given information only on a need to know basis and that until the robbery was completed they were kept in the dark," he added.
McComish and Donegan were arrested in McComish's car, from which a third man escaped. In the back of the car police found a bloodstained post office uniform.
Lord Justice Nicholson said Mr Kerr had been murdered by one of the robbers, and the gang of robbers was guilty of murder. He said both men had lied to police, but there was no evidence either man had been involved in the robbery.
He had formed conclusions concerning the evidence, the first being that "both accused were trusted by the gang leader or other members of the gang to keep secret what they knew beforehand".
Secondly, they had been "entrusted with a dangerous and important task, namely to take one of the robbers away with his gun, or at the very least to take a third man away".
Lord Justice Nicholson said they were also entrusted, or Donegan was, with disposing of the uniform covered in Mr Kerr's blood, and he had brought gloves and a trowel to bury it and possibly the gun; that both men knew where to pick up the "third man"; and that they had to watch for security checkpoints knowing that "the gang were going to stage a major crime that was not a killing or a bombing".