16 people died in County Armagh in less than 24 hours in a torrent of sectarian slaughter spanning January 4 and 5, 1976. 

The round of carnage began when three members of the Reavey family were shot dead after loyalist gunmen entered their home at 6.10pm on Sunday, January 4. 20 minutes later, three members of the O’Dowd family were killed when loyalist gunmen entered their home at Ballydougan.

At 5.30pm the next day, Monday, January 5, 10 workmen were killed when they were ordered from their minibus near Whitecross, lined up at the side of the road and mown down by republican gunmen.

It was a particularly grisly day during a particularly grisly period of the Troubles and since it’s early January, it’s hardly surprising that the pity, the horror and the brutality have been recalled by journalists and commentators in print and online. The odd thing – odd, that is, to an outsider looking in – is that most have decided that just one of these three atrocities is worthy of recalling in depth; and there’s only one of these atrocities whose perpetrators need to come clean about their dark past.

Clues: 
• It isn’t the O’Dowds.
• It isn’t the Reaveys.

When you think about it, it’s actually harder to write something about the Kingsmill murders without referencing what had happened just hours earlier. There’s not a single person who penned a word about that foul deed who isn’t aware that those who carried it out – generally accepted to have been members of the on-ceasefire IRA – were reacting to what had gone before. And yes, things had gone before the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that, ad infinitum…

And since it’s also generally accepted that the Glenanne Gang, which included members of the RUC and UDR, was behind the Reavey and O’Dowd murders, isn’t there more of an imperative for the state to come clean than there is for members of what the state considered a criminal and illegal organisation to open up its non-existent files? 

If a journalist from Our Wee Country goes big-game hunting, what’s the lion and what’s the rabbit: the all-mighty state or (makes quote fingers) a gang of sectarian Provo cutthroats?

On second thoughts, maybe that’s a question whose answer we’re better off not knowing.