Shankill Butchers (4:39)

The Decemberists’ 2006 album The Crane Wife includes a song about the group, titled “Shankill Butchers”, casting them as bogeymen that mothers tell their children about before bed to get them to behave.

The “Shankill Butchers” were a group of UVF members involved in a large number of loyalist terrorist activities in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in the 1970s. The Butchers’ chief notoriety came from late-night abduction, torture and cut-throat murders of random members of the Roman Catholic community, although they killed upwards of 30 people, including a significant number of Protestants, in sectarian attacks, paramilitary feuds, personal grudges and bombing raids.