Harris Boyle

There is a mural and memorial plaque dedicated to Boyle in Portadown's Killycomain housing estate, where he had grown up. About 100 people, 16 loyalist bands and a UVF military guard of honour were present at the mural's unveiling on 30 July 2005, following a parade through the estate. The plaque describes Boyle as having been "killed in action".

The Hidden Hand: The Forgotten Massacre documentary about the Dublin and Monaghan bombings which was broadcast by Yorkshire Television in 1993 maintained that Boyle was second-in-command to Hanna. The brigade formed part of what later became known as the Glenanne gang. This was a violent loyalist group which operated out of a farm owned by RUC reservist James Mitchell, and comprised rogue elements of Northern Ireland's security forces as well as the UVF and to a lesser extent, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA). This loose alliance carried out sectarian attacks and killings of Catholics, often, although not always, those seen as upwardly mobile, during the 1970s.

Harris Boyle (1953 – 31 July 1975) was an Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldier and a high-ranking member of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a Northern Irish loyalist paramilitary organisation. Boyle was implicated in the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings, and took part in the attack at Buskhill, County Down when an armed UVF gang wearing British Army uniforms ambushed The Miami Showband at a bogus military checkpoint. The popular Irish cabaret band was driving home to Dublin after a performance in Banbridge. He was one of the two gunmen killed when the bomb they were loading onto the band's minibus exploded prematurely. He is sometimes referred to as Horace Boyle.

Hidden Hand reported that Boyle (along with Jackson and Hanna) was run as an agent by Captain Robert Nairac, the Military Intelligence Liaison officer attached to 14th Intelligence Company. The programme named Boyle as one of the prime suspects in the Dublin car bombings. Former British soldier and psychological warfare operative Colin Wallace confirmed that Boyle had "close social links" to Captain Nairac. John Weir alleged that Boyle was part of the Glenanne gang who shot a PIRA volunteer (John Francis Green) dead near Castleblaney, County Monaghan on 10 January 1975.

Boyle was one of the Mid-Ulster Brigade UVF gang that carried out the attack against the popular Irish cabaret band, the Miami Showband on 31 July 1975. Author Martin Dillon suggested in his book God and the Gun: the Church and Irish Terrorism that Boyle was one of the leaders of the unit. At about 2.30 a.m., as the band was returning home to Dublin from a performance at the Castle Ballroom in Banbridge, their minibus (driven by trumpeter Brian McCoy) was stopped on the A-1 road at Buskhill, seven miles (11 km) north of Newry, at a bogus military checkpoint by UVF gunmen dressed in British Army uniforms. At least four of the other men, like Boyle, were serving members of the UDR. The band members were lined up with their hands on their heads facing a ditch and asked to give their names and addresses.

According to Martin Dillon, Boyle and Wesley Somerville served as role models for Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) leader Billy Wright, and it was their violent deaths which motivated him to join the UVF in 1975. Wright took over the Mid-Ulster UVF Brigade from Robin Jackson in the early 1990s before going on to form the LVF. The RTÉ programme Today Tonight aired a 1987 documentary in which it was claimed that former UVF associates of Boyle revealed to the programme that Nairac detonated the bomb deliberately at Buskhill in order to eliminate Boyle, with whom he had carried out the Green assassination. Sunday Tribune journalist Emily O'Reilly noted that none of the three men convicted of the Miami Showband killings ever implicated Nairac in the attack or accused him of causing Boyle's death.

An international panel of inquiry (headed by Professor Douglass Cassel, formerly of Northwestern University School of Law), commissioned by the Pat Finucane Centre to investigate allegations of collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and the security forces, concluded there was credible evidence that Jackson was the principal perpetrator of the Miami Showband killings. Although questioned afterwards by the RUC, he never faced charges. Two serving UDR soldiers and one former UDR soldier: Lance-Corporal Thomas Crozier, Sergeant James McDowell, and John James Somerville (brother of Wesley) were given life sentences for the killings. At the time the Miami Showband attack occurred, the UVF was not an illegal organisation, the ban against them having been lifted in April 1974, by Merlyn Rees, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. The UVF would be proscribed by the British Government again in October 1975.

Boyle was charged with the possession of weapons and ammunition in suspicious circumstances on 9 September 1972 when he was 19 years old. He was implicated in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 17 May 1974. RUC Special Patrol Group officer John Weir named Billy Hanna, Robin Jackson and Davy Payne (UDA) as having planned and led one of the UVF teams that drove three bomb cars into Dublin's city centre during evening rush hour, killing 26 people. His allegations were published in 2003 in the Barron Report which was the findings of the official investigation into the bombings by Irish Supreme Court Justice Barron. According to submissions received by Mr. Justice Barron, the Monaghan bomb (which exploded 90 minutes after the Dublin bombs), was assembled at Boyle's home in Festival Road in the Killycomain estate.