The Crumlin Road Courthouse where the Shankill Butchers stood trial has now been abandoned. Though a developer has said he plans to restore the Georgian facade, life in Belfast has taken its toll. Vandals, be they Catholic or Protestant, have had their way with the place. It's covered now with graffiti and the windows -- virtually all of them -- are shattered.

In an odd way, it's almost a metaphor for the fate of the Shankill Butchers. Though they all faced life behind bars, one by one, thanks to the mercy that is the soul of law, they were released.

Some have continued to trade on their infamy. Moore, the dullard who took the helm for Murphy while Murphy was in jail, still hangs around his old haunts in Belfast, regaling youngsters with tales of his days as a Loyalist killer. To some, apparently, he's viewed as a kind of senior statesman of mayhem. A gang of young thugs from Ulster, for example,   who had recently moved to Scotland, abandoning any pretense of political struggle for the more lucrative world of narcotics trading, claimed Moore as their patron saint, even as they were sentenced last month to prison for drug dealing. Moore has denied any connection to the young pushers.

All the same, the rough justice of the street has visited some of them. On June 11, 1997, just a few weeks after he was released from prison after serving 15 years out of 11 consecutive life sentences, Bobby "Basher" Bates was gunned down in an apparent hit by former comrades in the Loyalist community. He claimed to have found God in prison, lost Him just as quickly, and apparently was reclaimed by Him soon after he gained his freedom.

Three years later, it was Murphy's turn to be released from prison.

Always a bit reckless when it came to asserting his rights within the movement, Murphy is believed to have become embroiled in a feud with other Loyalist factions. Perhaps, some have speculated, he was making a bid to reclaim power.

Whatever the case, on November 16, 1982, Murphy turned up unannounced at his girlfriend's house, making sure that he traveled only "safe" Protestant streets as he went. His precautions were, to put it mildly, inadequate. Before he could step out of his car, a squad of gunmen leapt from a nearby van and sprayed him with bullets, killing him instantly.

It looked like an IRA hit, and in all likelihood it was. But Belfast is a place where irony carries a gun, and it is hardly likely that the Catholic Nationalists worked alone. In a report published a month after Murphy's death, the Irish News quoted an unidentified IRA source as saying that "Murphy was killed in a unique joint operation by the IRA and the Loyalists to eliminate a 'mutual problem.'"

Though the allegation that the two mortal enemies joined forces to kill Murphy has never been proven, authorities and commentators have long been tantalized by the notion that, in 300 years of mutual mistrust and hatred, the Protestants and Catholics and their paramilitaries could agree on one thing. Hugh Leonard Murphy, the man who spawned the Shankill Butchers had to die for his crimes.