The Miami Showband Massacre: A Survivor's Search for the Truth

Description

The suddenness of the punch had caught me off guard I knew then that something was definitely wrong. On 31 July 1975, members of The Miami Showband were returning to Dublin after a gig in Banbridge when they were stopped at a border checkpoint. For Stephen Travers, the band s new bass player, it was an unusual experience but he wasn t too worried. However, as his band mates were lined up beside their vehicle Stephen noticed that the atmosphere had suddenly changed something more sinister was happening. In a flash their lives were dramatically altered when a bomb that was being placed in the back of their van suddenly exploded prematurely. The events of that night would never leave Stephen Travers being hurled into the air by the explosion, listening to the cries of his friends as they were mercilessly gunned down and the steps of the gunmen getting closer as they approached to finish him off What is it like to survive such an atrocity? To live when all around you others died? In The Miami Showband Massacre, Stephen Travers remembers the highs of being in the most successful showband of the 1970s and how it all ended in a terrifying moment of death and destruction. But he also looks for answers as to why his friends Tony Geraghty, Fran O Toole and Brian McCoy were killed. Who ordered the ambush? What drove them to such an act? Stephen wants to understand, but will he find the answers when he meets the men responsible for the massacre face to face?

In 1982 Stephen Travers left Ireland and settled in London where he co-founded "The Irish World Newspaper". He was also the popular newspaper's first editor. As a radio producer, Stephen received critical acclaim for his interviews with a diverse selection of personalities including The Irish Ambassador to Great Britain, Joseph Small, on his transfer from The Court of St. James to Rome and the hugely emotive meeting with Paddy Hill of "The Birmingham Six". Stephen now lives in Cork but continues with his writing and music while maintaining a hectic schedule running an influential music management business in The U.K. and appeared on TV and radio shows. He still travels extensively. Stephen Travers is one of the surviving members of the Miami Showband. He now lives in Cork. Neil Fetherstonhaugh was born in Dublin in 1971. After graduating from college in 1990. he worked on a number of local newspapers before leaving to go backpacking in the Middle East, North Africa and across Europe. In 1998 he travelled across the United States, Mexico and central America. Neil returned to Ireland in 1999 and took up a job as a reporter with the Northside People newspaper. Since then he has written two books.