missing | 

On-the-run killer under threat after he ‘kept drugs he was meant to smuggle into prison’

Thomas McCabe has been missing for over a week

Yesterday at 10:20

An on-the-run murderer is under threat from drug dealers in Maghaberry Prison.

Thomas McCabe has been missing for over a week after being let out of the high-security jail on day release and failing to return.

Criminal sources said the convicted murderer is terrified of being brought back to prison because he fears a beating from other inmates.

One revealed: “Tommy is in debt to other criminals in Maghaberry. In order to pay them off, he was told to pick up a package of drugs while he was out on day release and smuggle it back into the jail. Tommy picked up the drugs alright, but then he went on the run.”

Insiders predict McCabe, who was jailed for life with a minimum 17-year term for the 1990 murder of Richard Hunt in London, will try and avoid police for as long as possible.

“He’ll be in even more debt by the time he’s caught and gets back to Maghaberry,” added our source.

“It’s not the police or prison officers who Tommy has to worry about, it’s the criminals who he owes money to.”

McCabe, who would have been freed on licence 22 years ago if he had behaved himself behind bars, is now in double figures for going on the run.

The 59-year-old, from Newry, has absconded more than 10 times while on temporary release programmes.

He was returned to Maghaberry jail in 2020 after being arrested by gardai, having spent more than two years on the run in the Republic.

McCabe fled across the border after accusing fellow killer Dennis Hayes of attacking him during a drinking session at a north Belfast flat.

The claim resulted in a furious Hayes being recalled to prison, with McCabe going into hiding to avoid the same fate.

“McCabe is hated in Maghaberry, so much so that the other lifers call him ‘Tommy the tramp’ because he cannot be trusted,” said our Maghaberry source.

“He’s being moved around wings all the time for his own protection, usually because he of threats from other inmates.”

Richard Hunt — the man who McCabe murdered 33 years ago — was his then girlfriend’s cousin.

In a drunken rage he falsely accused him of being a drug dealer and carried out a merciless attack on his victim with an iron bar.

Richard died the following day from a series of blows to head.

In a short film made inside Maghaberry Prison in 2007, McCabe recounted the night he committed the murder and admitted he had drunk a bottle of vodka neat.

He said: “When she [his then girlfriend] said to me her cousin was in the living room, I automatically assumed he was there giving her drugs.

“It’s hard to explain what happened next. It would be best to say a red mist clouded my eyes.”

McCabe’s disappearance came in the same week that dissident republican Sean Megaw also went on the run from jail.

The 35-year-old was released from Maghaberry on August 26 to attend a funeral but failed to show up and instead went on a two-day bender. He was eventually arrested last Monday.

Megaw is serving a 25-month sentence for a punishment-style beating in west Belfast carried out by the shadowy gang Arm Na Poblachta. The ragtag group is made up of criminals formerly connected to the Continuity IRA.

In 2015 Megaw was cleared by a court of possessing a pipe-bomb found in a garden in the Lagmore area of west Belfast. He had previously been acquitted of having a gun, stolen during a house burglary, that was used in a Continuity IRA punishment-style shooting.