Winston Rea 'highly likely' to be man recorded confessing to crimes

Winston 'Winkie' Rea denies the 19 charges against him

A voice expert concluded it was "highly likely" Winston Rea was the speaker confessing to involvement in murders and other crimes, his trial has heard.

The 69-year-old loyalist from Springwell Road, in Groomsport, County Down, faces up to 19 charges.

They include aiding and abetting the murders of two Catholic men.

The charges are based on interviews he allegedly gave to Boston College in the US, on the understanding they would not be published until after his death.

On Monday, his no-jury trial at Belfast Crown Court was told samples from the seven Boston tapes of 'Interviewee L' were compared with known extracts of Mr Rea's voice taken from several sources.

The prosecution told the court that those source extracts included material from audio visual recordings of police interviews from various custody suites, and from a UTV Counterpoint programme from 1981.

However, in the case of the UTV programme, while counsel said Mr Rea's presence could not be "independently verified", his alleged appearance in the documentary was mentioned and referred to by 'Interviewee L' on the Boston tapes.

'Gravely voice'

Mr Justice McAlinden also heard that, with regard to the expert's conclusions, the expert himself said voice analysis "can only rarely categorically identify a speaker" and that such evidence should not be compared to the likes of DNA or fingerprint evidence.

However, in his statement, the expert said having analysed and compared the various samples and cross-matched them, it allowed him to make a speaker profile, with distinctive speech patterns, in particular an extremely low pitch and gravely voice of the taped speakers.

According to the expert, "striking similarities" were found in these speech patterns, which were 'highly distinctive' and that, taken together with all materials considered, it was "highly likely" that the speaker in question was Mr Rea.

Based on the Boston Tapes, the prosecution claims Mr Rea is "L" and heard him confessing to the terror crimes committed between 1973 to 1996, including membership of the Red Hand Commando, aiding, abetting and conspiring to murder Catholic men John Devine in July 1989 and John O'Hara in April 1991, and conspiring to threaten to kill LVF leader Billy Wright in August 1996.

In all, Mr Rea denies all 19 charges, which also include attempted murder and other terror-related charges, including conspiring to possess firearms secured from the Ulster Resistance paramilitary group on dates between November 1986 and October 1994.