William Moore (1949 – 17 May 2009) was a Northern Irish loyalist. He was a member of the Shankill Butchers, an Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) gang. It was Moore who provided the black taxi and butcher knives which the gang used to carry out its killings. Following ringleader Lenny Murphy's arrest, Moore took over as the de facto leader of the gang and the killings continued.
Shankill Butchers
Moore was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland and brought up a Protestant in the staunchly Ulster loyalist Shankill Road. Moore, who had a few previous convictions for petty crime, worked as a meat packer at Woodvale Meats on the Shankill. When he quit his job, he took with him an assortment of butcher's knives and a meat cleaver. He then became a taxi driver, having bought a black taxi which he drove around the Shankill area. Murphy, who was assembling the gang that become known as the Shankill Butchers, recruited Moore into the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).
Beginning in November 1975, the gang started abducting and murdering Roman Catholics, apparently in retaliation for the killing of four British soldiers by the Provisional IRA that same month. Moore was ordered by Murphy to drive around Catholic areas of Belfast in his taxi with the other gang members looking for prospective victims. Murphy and the other Butchers would bundle victims into the back of the taxi, then beat and torture them, before Murphy would finally drag them out into an alley and cut their throats with the weapons supplied by Moore. McLaverty had also told police that the car into which he had been abducted was a yellow Ford Cortina, a vehicle they knew from their surveillance that Moore drove. Moore and the rest of the members broke down and confessed to the killings, although they were too terrified to name Lenny Murphy as the ringleader. However, during one police interview, Moore sought to put the blame solely on Murphy. "It was that bastard Murphy who led me into all this. My head's away with it". It was alleged that Moore became involved in loyalist drug deals, including a visit to a notorious Edinburgh gang.
Death
Moore died in his home in the loyalist Mount Vernon area of north Belfast on 17 May 2009 as the result of a suspected heart attack; his dog was at his side. He was buried at Carnmoney Cemetery where Lenny Murphy also lies. Murphy had been gunned down by the IRA in November 1982 four months after his release from prison. Moore's grave is not far from that of one of his victims, Stephen McCann, a student whose throat he had personally cut. A press photographer covering his funeral on 21 May 2009 was attacked and beaten by a group of men, and received hospital treatment.
At the time of his death, Moore was due to be questioned by the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) over his role in the 1974 killing of a 52-year-old Catholic man, John Crawford of Andersonstown, who had been abducted then beaten and shot dead by a UVF gang in the vicinity of Milltown Cemetery.