![\"Jimmy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/461.jpg\")
Jimmy Graham. Photograph: SEFF<\/p>\nWhen the gunmen came for Jimmy Graham they were thorough. They fired the first two shots as he parked his bus in the school yard, then boarded the bus and fired another 24 shots. As the killers sped away they whooped in delight. \u201cYahoo,\u201d they screamed. \u201cYahoo.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was 1 February 1985 and the IRA team had special reason to celebrate: it had bagged a third Graham brother. They had killed Ronnie Graham in June 1981, Cecil Graham in November 1981 and now, just over three years later, they got Jimmy. A hat-trick.<\/p>\n
Jimmy Graham. Photograph: SEFF<\/p>\n
Even in the grim annals of Northern Ireland\u2019s Troubles, what unfolded in the bucolic landscape of County Fermanagh was unique: three Protestant brothers targeted in separate murders.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe torture never ended,\u201d their sister Pam Morrison, 78, said this week. \u201cFirst Ronnie, then Cecil, then Jimmy. You never really got a chance to get yourself sorted out.\u201d<\/p>\n
She will mark the 41st anniversary of Jimmy\u2019s murder on Sunday the same way she has marked all the other anniversaries: with memories, prayers and a dogged determination to go on, to live a life scarred by grief and absence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe older you get, the worse it gets, the more you want them,\u201d she said. \u201cTime never helps. No matter how long it is, that\u2019s something you just can never forget. The pain is still there, something you just have to carry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ronnie Graham. Photograph: SEFF<\/p>\n
For more than three decades Morrison did not speak publicly about the murders. It was too painful, too dangerous. Other relatives, like her slain brothers, served part-time in the Ulster Defence Regiment, the local wing of the British army which attracted mainly Protestants, and she feared any publicity \u2013 condemnation of the crimes or airing of the family\u2019s anguish \u2013 might galvanise further IRA attacks. \u201cYou just had to keep your mouth closed and say nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Photograph: Paul Faith\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Now, however, Morrison feels a responsibility to speak and keep memories alive. Of eight Graham siblings, she is the last left alive. A sister, Hilary, who also served in the Ulster Defence Regiment, died in 1979 after being run over while manning a checkpoint. It was an accident. Three other siblings died of natural causes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes an awful lot out of me to try to talk,\u201d said Morrison, speaking from her home outside the town of Lisnaskea. \u201cBut I want to try.\u201d<\/p>\n
She has all but abandoned hope of justice. No one was convicted in connection with the murders and she does not expect changes to legacy legislation \u2013 the government plans to overturn conditional immunity<\/a> for those accused of wrongdoing \u2013 to make any difference.<\/p>\n In this small rural community, the family had suspicions about who was responsible. \u201cIf you were in the town, you\u2019d see them,\u201d said Morrison. \u201cOne of them, he was there all the time. He\u2019d just stare at me. He knew who I was.\u201d<\/p>\n Elsewhere the IRA often targeted police and soldiers without knowing their individual identities, but in Fermanagh victims were screened, selected and typically attacked while off-duty and unarmed, fuelling a perception of sectarian score-settling.<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t by chance that those three brothers were murdered one by one,\u201d said Kenny Donaldson, of SEFF, a Fermanagh-based group that works with victims<\/a>. \u201cThere was a purpose to it.\u201d The Grahams\u2019 fate was a warning to others to not join the security forces or marry across the religious divide, said Donaldson.<\/p>\n Photograph: Paul Faith\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Ronnie, a 39-year-old father of two, was shot while delivering coal and groceries to a shop. Cecil, 32, was visiting his wife and newborn baby at the home of her parents \u2013 Catholics who lived in a Catholic area \u2013 and ambushed when he emerged.<\/p>\n Jimmy, 39, a father of two, was due to drive primary schoolchildren to a swimming pool when the killers riddled his bus. \u201cThat was the hardest one,\u201d said Morrison. \u201cHe was that badly damaged none of us ever got to see him. It was a complete outsider who had to identify the body.\u201d<\/p>\n An SEFF memorial. Photograph: Kenny Donaldson<\/p>\n In 1988, while researching a book about the border called Bad Blood, the writer Colm T\u00f3ib\u00edn encountered local people who attributed a spate of car accidents that killed young Catholic men to divine retribution for what was done to the Grahams.<\/p>\n Morrison, who first spoke publicly about the family\u2019s suffering in 2019<\/a>, said she never wanted revenge, only justice. She has Catholic friends and has contributed to a memorial tapestry at SEFF\u2019s office<\/a> that recalls victims from all sides.<\/p>\n![\"Cecil](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/315.jpg\")
Cecil Graham. Photograph: SEFF<\/p>\n