The Ludlow family was honoured to have in their company at the Commemoration two highly respected priests who have long supported them in their search for justice.

Originally from nearby Camlough, south Armagh, Father Brian McCreesh (pictured left, above), is a brother of the late Raymond McCreesh who died  in the hunger strike of 1981. The McCreesh family also has  much to remember in 2001, twenty years after Raymond's tragic  death.

A young Father Brian McCreesh, now at Kilkerley,  County Louth, was assigned to Lordship Parish at the time of Seamus Ludlow's murder in May 1976 and he was called upon  when the body was discovered.

Monsignor Raymond Murray (pictured right, above), Parish Priest of Cookstown, and a leading figure in the Belfast-based Relatives for Justice, has also had long associations with the Ludlow family. Many years ago he published his book The SAS in Ireland, in which he mentioned briefly the murder of Seamus Ludlow. 

He published an account of the late Kevin Donegan's ordeal at the hands of the British Army soon after his brother-in-law Seamus Ludlow was buried. The Donegan family has no idea about how the then Father Murray heard of this incident, because he did not hear of it from them.

Kevin Donegan was airlifted by British military helicopter from Forkhill to Bessbrook for interrogation about the murder and the gardai's line of inquiry. The British Army had earlier called to the Donegan home at Dromintee and attempted to question his wife Kathleen, a sister of Seamus, about her brother's murder. 

The murder of an Irishman in the southern jurisdiction should have been no business of the British Army - unless, of course, it was their business. As for the gardai's line of inquiry, the British Army need not have worried, because the gardai abandoned their murder investigation after only three weeks without ever informing the Ludlow family. 

Monsignor Murray has been a valuable supporter of the Ludlow family's campaign since 1998. He kindly supplied a copy of a pathologist's report which they had never seen before. Monsignor Murray also chaired the Ludlow family's public meeting at  Dundalk Town Hall in 1999.

The Ludlow family appreciates the great kindness that Father McCreesh and Monsignor Murray have done by joining them for this occasion to help them remember and commemorate the late Seamus Ludlow.

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