Interview with Agnes McGladdery, Corry Square RUC Station, 2nd February 1961
My name is Agnes McGladdery. I am the mother of Robert McGladdery who was born out of wedlock on 18th October 1935. From the start he was a sickly baby who would not feed and the midwife made comment. Other woman have a loving other half to stand by them in such a time of ordeal but I have been on my own since the day and hour the child was took out of me.
As a boy he was always at something. He was fit to put the heart sideways in you. The day he took the mother-of-pearl box from the bedroom and left it all night in the rain. When I says what did you do that for he said that it was to catch a meteorite that would tumble from the sky at night. Such a notion that the stars would fall from the black vault of heaven at your command.
Other times he’d sit so still you’d scarce think he’d any breath left in him. There is talk of neglect in his upbringing but if there was any it was that I neglected to put the belt to him when he give back cheek. And the school attendance officer was at me night and day but what could you do when your offspring took to the road when he was meant to be in school? The word they used was absconding from school and by his behaviour he absconded from a mother’s tender heart like his father before him.
It is my opinion as a mother that he came back from London changed. That he fell among perversion of some kind or other. God knows what creatures roam them streets at night. He took to working in places of ill repute. He wrote to me about women of low morals who frequented his workplace as if it was all a laugh and made no odds. He sees the odds he made for himself now. A son that would relate these matters to his mother. He told me about the friends he had but I think these were lies. He was always a boy to let a lie slip out when the truth would land him in trouble. There were stories about Russians and agents I never heard the like. He was always a child for reading and in my opinion he has his head filled.
Before he went away he was backward with women, he’d go tongue-tied if one looked sideways at him. Now it was all chat and how are you doing today girls.
Some of the newspapers said that he was good-looking. Handsome is as handsome does I says. They said the same thing about his father who was a dancer he’d take your breath away to look at. Your breath is not all he’d take away if you let him under your guard, they says to me at the time, but I paid no heed. In the first days it was always your eyes your hands your lips until he got what he wanted, then it was the cold shoulder in the street and words like brazen.
The time that Robert came back from London he was secretive in his habits. There was also literature he kept in his room I do not wish to describe except to say that to bring such matter into a house. He was all stories of London and swank clothes you could tell it had gone to his head. He was about the town all hours of the day and night acting the dude.
You wish me to address the night of the murder. Murder is a word to put in someone’s mouth when flesh and blood is absolved. I mind he was out in the pubs and dives of the town all afternoon. He came home then with Will Copeland who was his friend from childhood to get ready to go out. He always had to be dressed to the nines. I says it’s only an old hop you’re going to. He says, you never know, my princess could be there. Princess my eye I says you’ll end up with some old crow.
When Robert left this house he was wearing a black suit. I never seen what his pal Copeland was wearing.