Barrett rivals notorious serial killers
A money-hungry gambler who turned informer to get revenge on his loyalist terror bosses, his total lack of remorse even terrified some of the North’s most hardened policemen.
One detective told how Barrett, a top informer, bragged about the bloodshed during nerve-shredding encounters.
Johnston “Jonty” Brown said: “I was responsible for running some very dangerous people, some really bad, evil people. But none of them ever frightened me the way Barrett frightened me. We met at night. The back door of the car would open and he’d be in like a ghost. He used to just jump in and say ‘Drive’.”
During these meetings, the loyalist casually admitted to carrying out 10 murders, Mr Brown said. His boasts would lead to his downfall.
Undercover officers, from the team set up by Scotland Yard chief Sir John Stevens to investigate allegations of police and army collusion in the February 1989 Pat Finucane murder, trapped Barrett into making a confession by posing as international drug dealers.
Barrett bragged that Mr Finucane, a solicitor who had represented republican suspects, had been “f**king massacred”.
Recordings also caught him saying: “I whacked a few people in the past. People say how do you sleep, Ken? I say, I sleep fine.”
According to Brown, his tally of killings stretched into double figures and makes him as famous as either the Yorkshire Ripper or Michael Stone, his fellow Belfast loyalist and Milltown Cemetery bomber.
“Look into Barrett’s eyes and there’s nothing there,” said Brown, who took early retirement in 2001.
“When you have been in the presence of Barrett, you would compare him with Stone or Peter Sutcliffe. This man is a serial killer.
“I asked him how many he was responsible for and he held up both hands ... 10. I have no reason to doubt that.”
The hatred that drove Barrett into a killing spree is believed to have been ignited by the IRA murder of a police officer he had met briefly.
Reserve constable Peter Nesbitt was blown up by a booby-trap bomb in the Woodvale area of north Belfast in March 1987.
Days earlier he had admired Barrett’s dogs when the two men passed on the street, and the officer’s death tipped him over the edge.
When Barrett approached police in 1991 offering information, he wanted two things: money and revenge.
He was a regular fixture at greyhound races in north Belfast but, like most punters, he would lose more than he won on the dogs.
He had been commander of the Ulster Defence Association’s B Company in the Woodvale district of Belfast, but it was stripped from him after he was caught stealing from a racketeering kitty.
Now a rank and file volunteer, Barrett bristled with resentment at his treatment.
A burning desire to get even led him into the arms of police. Demands to be paid for his information were flatly rejected by CID, Brown insisted, although he said Special Branch would later pay out thousands.
“When I first met him, I offered to shake his hand but he refused. ‘I don’t want to be your friend’, he told me, ‘This is going to be short and sharp. I’m going to empty those bastards’.
“He also warned me what would happen if it went wrong and he ended up in jail, or the UDA found out he was an informant.
Barrett told me ‘I will seek you out and put two in your face’.”
Even his long-term girlfriend, Beverley Quirey, with whom he shared a house on the city’s Glencairn estate, had no real influence over the killer.
“Back in October ‘91, when he came to me, he said he wanted enough money to set him up in Canada. “He said ‘never mind about Beverley, I’m going on my own’.”
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