A family demands answers after a Belfast killing
Murder in Belfast: Sisters Seeking Justice revisits the death of Robert McCartney after violence outside a Belfast pub in January 2005. The father of two was thirty-three. The three-part BBC Northern Ireland series, made in association with RTÉ, follows his five sisters and fiancée Bridgeen Hagans as they try to establish what happened.
The opening episode, An Innocent Man, begins with the attack and the disappearance of important evidence. Witnesses are frightened, and police are not the only people seeking to question them. The documentary makes the family's lack of answers central to a case shaped by power beyond the immediate crime scene.
Evidence, intimidation and the politics of accountability
The series obtained crime-scene video and photographs, and includes former PSNI detective David Lowans. RTÉ's account describes the removal of a CCTV recording and a clean-up inside the pub. These details explain why the question of evidence is inseparable from the pressure surrounding potential witnesses.
The family's campaign develops against the background of Northern Ireland's peace process and allegations that those responsible belonged to the Provisional IRA. Directed and produced by John O'Kane, the documentary follows the struggle to make a killing answerable to ordinary justice in circumstances where fear and political loyalty obstruct that demand.
