Original subtitles

GIGGLING Hello. Hello?

Hello? Testing, testing, testing.

It's good.

Sound, camera, we are rolling whenever you want to go.

OK. Sorry, two seconds!

I do this every shoot! I'm overcome with giggles!

It just takes me a couple of minutes to compose myself.

Take as long as you need. You don't have to explain yourself.

I don't know why. Oh, God!

SHE EXHALES OK.

SHE EXHALES REPEATEDLY

Here, think about why you're doing this.

My name is Lyra McKee.

I'm a freelance journalist from Northern Ireland.

You may know me as the face of The Muckraker,

a blog about investigative journalism.

My passion in life is for investigative journalism.

But I came into the industry at a time when

there didn't seem to be any places left for people like me.

Someone who wanted to go off and chase a story for months

and ask questions and find answers

and try and find out what was really going on beneath the surface.

I really need your help.

I need more time to keep asking questions.

DISTANT SIRENS WAIL

REPORTER: In the last half-hour, there have been reports of

a serious disturbance in Londonderry.

There are reports that the trouble broke out after police raids

on houses in the Creggan area of the city.

FAINT CHATTER

Lyra and I, we'd been out doing our usual.

We've gone to Slimming World and then we'd gone to McDonald's.

And a message comes through about rioting in Creggan.

Our friend saying she's going up

if anybody wants to go up with her.

So we went up.

It was holy Thursday night, the night before Good Friday,

and we had a mass here in the church.

As we were coming to the end, my colleague, Father Paul Fraser,

send word to me to say, will you tell the people not to be going up

Fanad Drive, there seems to be a riot up there.

Literally 200 yards up the road from the church.

SOUNDS OF RIOTING

TANNOY: ..move back down the street.

RAUCOUS LAUGHTER

GLASS SHATTERS

We drove up and the streets were really jammed,

cos everybody was off to watch the riot.

RAUCOUS CHATTER

There were loads of people.

Lots of kids.

Journalists.

YELLING AND BANGING

GLASS SHATTERS

JEERING

FLAMES ROAR

TANNOY: Stay away from the vehicle for your own safety.

Get back, get back!

We were only there for eight minutes from start to finish.

We were sort at the back end of the last set of two Land Rovers.

Lyra has gone into journalist mode,

so she was, like, taking pictures

and she was typing on her phone,

and we didn't really talk very much.

Then I thought, right, we'll move back up a wee bit.

Cos there was stuff on fire

and they were throwing petrol bombs and stones.

YELLING

FLAMES ROAR

We'd moved further back

and the crowd started getting really agitated, and, like,

"Y-o-o-o-o-o-o!"

ANGRY YELLING

GUNFIRE RINGS OUT

ANGRY SHOUTS

GUNFIRE CONTINUES

GLASS SHATTERS

FLAMES ROAR

I turned to Lyra to say, let's move up further,

cos I think they're going to rush towards the Land Rovers,

and she wasn't there.

Lyra! LYRA!

FRANTIC YELLING

She was on the ground.

YELLING AND PANICKED CHATTER

MAN YELLS

I dropped down and then I noticed the wound on her head.

FRANTIC YELLING

SIRENS WAIL

The police took her into the back of the Land Rover.

I was like, "Can I come with you?"

And they were like, "Listen, there's not enough room".

They literally tore off and went

straight through the burning car, and...and flew.

SIREN WAILS

And I was kind of just standing there. I had her phone in my hand

cos I'd lifted it from the ground where she'd dropped it.

And...I was just covered.

My hands were covered in her blood, and...I-I didn't know what to do.

SIGHS DEEPLY

I was just about to get ready for bed and my mobile went.

It was the police.

They said that a woman had been injured

and a priest was asked to attend the scene.

So I came down into the room

and what I saw was the face of a child.

And Lyra's face will never leave me.

Um...it was the face of a child that was...

..29-year-old, but...

..Lyra never looked 29-year-old.

Such a beautiful, beautiful child, dead.

And why?

Some breaking news - a 29-year-old woman has been killed

after shots were fired in Londonderry.

Her name was Lyra McKee.

She was a 29-year-old acclaimed writer and journalist.

Journaliste du 29 ans, Lyra McKee...

Her murder happened on the 21st anniversary

of the Good Friday Agreement.

That's the landmark peace deal

that put an end to Northern Ireland's

decades-long sectarian conflict.

Police blame the so-called New IRA -

a violent, dissident republican group

whose supporters do not believe in the Good Friday Peace Agreement

that was signed 21 years ago today.

The police have now confirmed that witnesses to the murder

of Lyra McKee will be offered anonymity.

Detective superintendent Jason Murphy says

any information could be vital.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God! Mummy still has her dress!

Look how tiny!

Oh, my God.

She hated that dress!

Oh, bless! Oh, my God!

Oh! Thank you!

Oh, isn't this mad?

You'd need a whole house to house at all, you know?

We can't keep everything.

But there's loads and loads of things.

She loved her moleskin notebooks, loved them.

Here's all story leads that she's written down,

so ideas of stories that she could continue to pursue.

There's literally hundreds of them.

Have you kept her Dictaphone as well?

Do you know, I found that as well.

Here, with Lyra, you just never know when a story might pop up,

so she always had it with her.

So it's lovely to be able to play it and...

RECORDING PLAYS, INDISTINCT

..and listen to her voice.

It kind of makes it feel like she's still here and with you, you know?

RECORDING PLAYS, INDISTINCT

So, you were there that day? Yeah.

The way she got people to speak to her and open up to her,

it's wonderful. She had a real, real gift for it.

She really wanted to understand the past and to change things.

And, you know, where many people's voices were ignored,

she wanted to say, actually, do you know what,

I hear you and I care and I'm going to be a voice for you.

It's a wee box.

Little one we had.

Are you ready for it?

One of the things my mummy kept a lot of

was glasses belonging to Lyra.

You can see, this is a pair she had when she was very, very tiny.

And she was so small and her features were so tiny,

that they wouldn't sit on her face.

So she had to have these little rubbery things

that would hug around her ears so that they would stay on.

That was a pair she probably wore when she was about four years old.

This is the glasses that she was wearing

on the night that she was killed.

And she'd only got them two weeks before she was killed.

SHE EXHALES

Why did you do it? Why did you do it?

You know, even my wee granddaughter...

..you know, four years old, coming five...

..even the four-year-old wants to ask that question.

You're getting dizzy, Lyra.

Lyra, put her down!

Was that OK? OK?

Yeah, they were obsessed with each other.

That was lovely.

THEY LAUGH

What would you say to the bad man who killed your Auntie Lyra?

I want to say, why did you kill my Auntie Lyra?

You want to know why, don't you, chicken?

Mm-hm. I don't know why.

I don't know why either.

SHE SIGHS

LYRA:

You know, I think there's truths and there's narratives.

The truth is what actually happened

and the narrative is what everyone thinks happened.

And the two are rarely the same.

I'm trying to piece together what happened.

You're coming with me on the journey as I try to find answers.

TV NEWS: A Catholic man has been shot dead tonight in north Belfast.

The attack happened in the Ardoyne area of the city.

He was shot dead in a part of Belfast

where a fifth of all those who have died

in Northern Ireland's Troubles have been killed.

I grew up in Ardoyne,

a republican community in north Belfast

in the '90s, on the Cliftonville Road.

The people were mostly decent people,

but it was a tough, tough place.

Cliftonville Road was just off a place called Murder Mile.

That was the nickname.

In fact, they say there's more casualties there per square mile

than any part of Northern Ireland during the conflict.

I remember things as a child, like, you know,

just be careful when you're walking to school.

OK, there's a suspect device on Rosapenna.

I often tell Americans that if you've seen images of Belfast

on fire in the '90s, you were probably seeing Ardoyne.

TV NEWS: Northern Ireland has seized the chance of a new beginning.

That's the outcome of the historic agreement reached this evening

at the Stormont peace talks.

BASS GUITAR PLAYS This is for the fucking scum

paramilitaries that run this fucking country!

TV NEWS: The violence which has been part of life in Northern Ireland

for nearly 30 years may be over permanently,

following last week's peace deal.

After a 30-year winter of sectarian violence,

Northern Ireland today has the promise of a springtime of peace.

Today is Good Friday,

and I think, for the people of Northern Ireland,

it will be a very good Friday.

Yes, 71.12%.

JUBILANT CHEERING

71% of people in the North and 94% of the South

said yes to the Good Friday Agreement,

which aims to bring peace in Northern Ireland.

108 members of the new Northern Ireland Assembly

have taken their seats in the Stormont Parliament building.

Enemies across three decades now face each other

across the floor of their own political forum.

It's up to the local politicians to make this peace agreement work.

CHEERING

I sometimes get angry,

because we talk about the conflict ending in 1998,

but I think the peace we have is a peace that doesn't disrupt

the lives of the middle classes.

For the working classes, you know, they're still struggling.

I mean, in the community that I came from,

there's a real poverty of vision.

We didn't seem to have any prospects.

I even remember in primary school,

perceiving that there was a difference in how the middle class

treated the working-class kids.

So, when a working-class kid says, you know, "I want to be a lawyer",

they're told, "Get back in your station.

"You're not going to be a lawyer, you're going to be a glue-sniffer."

I literally heard that said to people.

And I think that's the difference.

I was told to have ideas above my station.

MUSIC: Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus

WATER SPLASHES

A-A-A-Argh! You weren't close enough.

WHOOPING

Yo! Huh-huh!

I'd always wanted to be a writer.

Even as a child, my granny used to buy me books.

My granny was this great character.

She was kind of like Hyacinth Bucket in Keeping Up Appearances.

I remember being six years old and Granny saying,

"You're going to be a writer".

And I was like, "No, I'm not, Granny. Why would you think that?"

She always had this in her head. And for my ninth birthday,

she said to me, "I got you two books for your birthday".

She said, "They're called Harry Potter".

And I swear, there wasn't a peep out of me after my birthday

for, like, in the month or something that I read those books.

I'll never forget, one day, I got this...

"Lyra, your granny's on the phone!"

"OK. Hi. What's up, Granny?"

"I just seen JK Rowling on the TV!

"She was really bad in school, just like you."

And I was like, "Really?! JK Rowling? Wow! OK."

And my granny would say, "And she's a single parent".

Cos I was from a single-parent family.

"And she didn't have any money, and look at her now.

"And you can be just like her."

It was the realisation that, OK, I can do this.

You know, I was so lucky.

Hello! Everybody here...?

This is Lyra McKee reporting for home videos.

If you can see me.

Goodbye!

My mum's amazing. She's great. I love my mum.

Are you camera-shy?

So, you're camera-shy?

My mum always said, "You can be anything you want to be".

My big sister as well. My big sister's amazing.

# She's so lucky

# She's a star

# But she cry, cry, cries... #

She works with kids from deprived areas,

and she's an absolute hero.

# Missing in her life

# Why do tears come at night?

# Hey! #

From my mum to my granny, to my big sister,

they were amazing. They were all amazing.

They believed in me when I didn't believe in me.

RADIO NEWS: The paramilitary group the New IRA

has said it murdered the 29-year-old journalist Lyra McKee,

who was shot dead as she was observing a riot last month.

In a statement, the dissident republican organisation apologised

to her family and friends.

How are you feeling, you two?

I'm really nervous. Are you? Yes.

It's almost like we're going to see our Lyra collecting an award,

in my head, kind of, in a way. Yeah.

Rather than us going and getting an award on her behalf.

You know, that's what it feels like to me.

How about you, Mummy?

QUIETLY: Yes. Yes, love.

Oh, goodness.

With a heavy heart.

As long as I don't start crying.

I wasn't going to go.

Cos I'm still so full up, you know, with...

..grief.

And then I thought about it and said, "No. It's for Lyra, so...

"..I'll go for her".

It's not sinking in that she's gone.

You know what I mean?

I still think that, um...

..that she'll be running in the door and...

SHE SIGHS DEEPLY

So hard.

Yeah, I know.

So, so hard.

Hello, Ramsay.

We'll not be long. Not be long.

On 18th of April this year,

headlines emerged that left us in disbelief.

A journalist, Lyra McKee,

going about her work in public, had been shot and killed.

Through her work, Lyra championed the underrepresented.

She gave a voice to those that weren't being heard,

and she held those in power to account.

Now, we are honoured that Lyra's mother Joan and sister Nichola have

travelled from Belfast to be here today,

at what is an incredibly difficult time,

but it is our privilege to present to you

the Journalists' Charity Special Award

for Outstanding Commitment and Contribution to Journalism.

This is for Lyra.

APPLAUSE

Hi. My name's Lyra McKee

and I work as an investigative reporter.

I think my priorities as a journalist

are quite different to most journalists.

Cos, I mean, you know, the latest celebrity news,

like, if I'm honest, I really don't care who Madonna has adopted next.

You know, I don't want to know about that.

Like, I want to know about, you know, how the...

You know, the young mother who's lost her son to suicide.

How does she feel? You know?

Like, I mean, the corrupt businessman

who's screwing the working classes unbelievably,

and no-one's holding him to account. You know?

And no-one knows about it. How do I break that story?

I want to know about real issues.

I am the most annoyingly curious person I know.

I remember my mum saying that some mothers say all they can hear in

their sleep is, "Mummy, Mummy."

She said all she could ever hear was, "Why, why?",

because apparently that was all I ever asked.

I mean, I can remember hearing on the news when I was fairly young,

like, about people being killed in the local area.

You would have thought most kids

wouldn't have paid attention to that stuff.

But I'd be like, "Mummy, why? Why? Why was he shot? Why...?

I just asked the most difficult questions.

I suppose my big break came when I was 16,

I won the Sky News Young Journalist of the Year Award.

Where I'm from in north Belfast,

at that point, suicide had reached epidemic levels.

It was something very close to my heart

cos a lot of my friends had tried to commit suicide.

I'd had to help a lot of them

through really difficult times, you know.

Like, they were almost dropping like flies around you, you know?.

Can I just set this right here, if that's OK?

That's fine.

LYRA:

MIKE:

LYRA:

Yeah.

MIKE:

LYRA:

Yes.

MIKE:

Lyra was certain that 30, 35 years of conflict

had to have had an effect on this society,

and she's absolutely right about that.

I did a study of suicide rates across the UK and Ireland,

looking at the period from 1998,

the year of the Good Friday Agreement, and up to 2017.

And what I found was quite astonishing.

Everywhere else, suicide rates went down.

But in Northern Ireland, they rose sharply.

Here in Northern Ireland, we'd asked people

a set of special questions about their experience of conflict.

Do you know somebody close to you that's been in prison?

Was your house ever raided by the police or the army?

Had you witnessed violence?

Had you ever seen anybody murdered?

One of the things we were able to observe is

that one in five children are growing up

in a household with an adult

who has high-level experience of the conflict.

High conflict experience means far lower mental health

and far lower mental health resilience.

If you don't come from a working-class community,

you aren't necessarily aware of what's going on in that community

or the problems that they face.

We need the people from that community

to be presented and represented.

MALE VOICE:

RADIO NEWS: Police investigating the murder of journalist Lyra McKee

have arrested four men in Londonderry.

The men were arrested under the Terrorism Act this morning.

Detectives investigating the murder have today renewed calls

for the public to help them bring Lyra's killers to justice.

This is a major development.

It absolutely is, it's a major, major, major development.

And...oh, wow.

It's me, and I've got Alison with me.

Will I get an extra one?

Oh, love you!

So, Joan, how are you feeling?

I'm OK, I suppose.

I think if I wasn't a wee bit unwell, I'd be all right.

We've just been sort of sitting waiting.

We like to say patiently but there's no patience about it.

I don't even know how I feel about it.

You know? I felt, like, nothing, because they've taken her, you know.

She's not coming back. And...

It's OK.

Lyra will make sure that there's justice. I know she will.

She's going to make sure that the buggers go away for a long time.

Yeah. You OK?

Yeah. We have to be positive.

It's just nerve-racking, isn't it?

It is. It's a hard time.

Your man, the Secretary of State at the time.

Obviously, Lyra, like.

Isn't that a beautiful photo? Lovely.

Look at her wee face.

She never aged a bit.

Marie?

Hello?

Marie, please. I just want to eat the sandwich alone. That's all.

All I want to do is eat a sandwich on my own

without you trying to rip into it.

Can you let me do that? Please?

Meow! No?

LYRA SIGHS

If I look back over the last three years, it's been really tough.

You know, I don't often talk about this.

I have anxiety disorder.

Writing is like, almost...

It's my great... One of my greatest loves, but also my biggest fear.

I choke up. Like, I literally...

I feel sick sometimes when I sit down at that computer,

cos I'm like, "Oh, God, what's coming today?"

It can cripple you, you know.

I'm trying to get a publisher and I keep falling,

you know, falling flat on my face, all of that.

But you just keep showing up and you just keep doing the work.

Do you know Sylvester Stallone?

He was rejected 1,500 times by agents.

Rocky... Well, they told him it was soppy,

it was rubbish, it would never work.

And he said, "I wrote down everything they said

"and I read it on the night of the Oscars when we won".

And sometimes I think we need to be like Rocky Balboa.

We need to keep fighting.

We need to be like Sylvester Stallone. We need to not give up.

She was always writing, even from whenever she was a wee kid.

She wanted to be a poet,

and then we joked that poets will always be alone.

They'll always be alone and have no money.

So she was like, "Fuck it, I'll be a journalist".

Who wants to see a penalty?

Yahoo!

In your face, Michael Jordan!

HE HOWLS

Lyra, she's my auntie,

but three years' difference between us.

Three years and 18 days.

They used to call us the twins because we were never separated.

Lyra was the first person that I told directly that I'm gay.

She was saying that it was all OK,

and then she's like kind of half said something,

you know, about herself.

And it was like, the way she would always, like, talk about it,

it always, like, played my head. It was like, I know.

CONGREGATION SING

Lyra!

Come on, we want to get some nice photos of you now, stop it.

Religion still plays a massive role in this country,

and the messages we constantly get from our public figures

is that being LGBTQ is wrong.

Can anything be plainer?

God condemns homosexual and lesbian practices.

It is perversion in his eyes.

It is unseemly. It is against nature.

Two lesbians living together are not a family,

they are sexual perverts playing Let's Pretend.

RADIO: A letter written by a local journalist

to her 14-year-old self has been getting a huge reaction online.

Lyra McKee hopes other young people will take heart from her letter

and that some Christians will think twice

before making negative comments about members of the gay community.

Have you got this letter in front of you?

I do.

Maybe you can just read the first paragraph or so for us?

No worries.

Kid, it's going to be OK.

I know you're not feeling that way right now.

You're sitting in school, the other kids are making fun of you.

You told the wrong person you had a crush,

and soon, they all knew your secret. It's horrible.

They make your life hell.

They laugh at you, whisper about you, call you names.

It's not nice.

And you can't ask an adult for help

because if you do that, you'd have to tell them the truth.

Three months before your 21st birthday,

you will tell Mum this secret.

You'll be sobbing and shaking

and she will be frightened because she doesn't know what's wrong.

You'll have to tell her because you met someone you like

and you can't live with the guilt any more.

You can't get the words out, so she says it.

"Are you gay?"

And you say, "Yes, Mummy. I'm so sorry."

And instead of getting mad, she'll reply...

"Thank God you're not pregnant."

I was aware of her writing.

I had read Suicide Of The Ceasefire Babies,

and I'd read Letter To My 14-Year-Old Self.

And I remember I was kind of like, "Wow! You know, she's young,

"she's from Northern Ireland, she's gay and she's THAT talented.

"Like, she's phenomenal!"

Um...never in a million years thinking I'd ever come across her

on, you know, Plenty of Fish of all places.

I was sitting one day and a like came through on my profile.

It's one of the things you could do if you fancied somebody or whatever,

you sent a wee like, and it's kind of a hint to say, "Hey!"

So I clicked on her profile.

She was called scribblesanddoodles.

She asked me, she said, "If you're a true Harry Potter fan,

"you'll know what your American house is".

And I was like, "Of course I know what my American house is,

"it's Pukwudgie!"

And that started it.

And then I did Google her, probably that night, to be fair.

And I was, like, you know, Forbes 30 Under 30.

I was, like, no, there's not a hope in hell

this is going to go anywhere. She is way out of my league.

But there was no awkwardness.

From the very beginning, it was just two chatterboxes together, like.

How many pancakes do you want?

Do ten more squats, and I'll have three.

Jesus!

You know, she was so...

She was... She was just such a tonic, she was so funny.

We dressed as nuns for a charity night.

We learned the songs from Sister Act.

Lyra was very reluctant.

God love her, she had no rhythm at all

and she was giving it her all, she was dancing away.

The craic was great.

And it was the night before her birthday,

so the entire place sang Happy Birthday to her.

She was really pleased, though. You can see it in the video,

she's clapping away and it's just so cute.

She just had such a big heart.

She got really attached to the things that she wrote about

and the people she wrote about.

I started in journalism nearly ten years ago.

I never forget going to my university careers fair

and asking the representative from the major, leading

newspaper in Northern Ireland, did they hire investigative journalists?

And she laughed at me and said no, they didn't hire those people

any more, and that was an excess of the past.

So that was what journalism looked like when I was starting out.

So, I had to find another way.

The best bit of advice I ever received was that brick walls

aren't there to keep you out, they're there to see how badly you want it.

I always think a good story can be universal.

To give an example, I don't think the editor that

I was dealing with knew anything about the Troubles.

The story I pitched then was about a woman who spent 20 years

investigating the murder of her father,

looking for evidence that would basically incriminate his murderers.

Hello? Come on in.

My father was shot on the 9th of August 1971, by the

Parachute Regiment in what is now known as the Ballymurphy Massacre.

There wasn't much rioting last night - little stone-throwing

and no pitched battles between the troops and the mobs.

Instead, the bullets flew.

She came in and she just looked around

and she went, "And what's them?"

I went, "They're witnesses, they're this."

"But how did you get it?"

Even when she looked. "Army statements."

"But you can't have army statement." I went, "I do have army statements."

I remember she says,

"Did you ever think about being an investigative journalist?"

I went, "Oh, dear, I think I have enough to do doing Ballymurphy!"

The first time I had asked my mummy if I could get the inquest papers,

she told me, "Love, they'll never give you the inquest papers,

"The British Government will never give you."

You're really starting to go into some of the really

dark things that happened here.

It's funny how a lot of those documents have went missing.

It is an issue, especially in Northern Ireland.

What is it that they don't want us to know?

Around about 2000 and...

..12, 13...

But under further examination, there was a bullet under the tibia bone.

The hairs on my arm stood up.

A deposition from the doctor said that the bullet

that would basically incriminate his murderers

was still encased in his skeleton.

The bullet. They found the bullet.

That was emotional.

I did ring Lyra and tell Lyra.

I was in tears.

That's the bullet, and that's the back end of it,

so that is the bullet.

What did Lyra say to you?

She couldn't speak. She couldn't, um...

What do you say?

When I was telling my story to her,

I felt comfortable, and...

..she helped me through my emotion.

It was just such a nice way with her,

Even when you spoke to her, her voice...

SHE SIGHS

It's just ironic that she was trying to help victims like myself,

and then for this to happen to her and her family,

that's going to face now what my family has faced.

RADIO NEWS: A 52-year-old man has been charged with the murder

of journalist Lyra McKee.

The man is an alleged accomplice of the gunman who pulled the trigger.

He will appear in the city's Magistrates' Court tomorrow.

As well as a murder charge, he is accused of possessing a firearm

and membership of an illegal organisation.

I'm imposing a restriction on yous here under Article 42,

the Public Order (Northern Ireland) Order

in relation to where yous can protest.

Yous are obviously entitled to a protest, a peaceful protest.

Would you just please move back, gentlemen?

You have your right to assembly, your freedom of expression.

I'm going to ask yous to move back under Article 42,

the Public Order Order.

Hey! Hey!

Get back!

SHOUTING

We all know you're innocent!

SHOUTING, CHEERING

SHOUTING, CHEERING CONTINUES

Fuckin' scumbags!

We're here to support Paul McIntyre because we know he's innocent.

Er...

It's wrong.

Er...

We don't want an innocent man going down.

Friend. Friends, aye.

Sorry to hear that. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Aye, well.

Condolences to her friends and family, like, and her partner.

But, at the end of the day,

an innocent man is getting charged - hasn't done wrong.

He didn't do it.

Well, we can't comment on that. We don't know who done it.

We don't know who's done it, so.

No, we don't know who done it but

Paul McIntyre didn't do it and he's completely innocent, so he is.

I'm shaking. I'm totally shaking.

It's the first step in a very, very long journey ahead of us all.

And I suppose...

Was it daunting? How did it feel, all those people?

It wasn't so much the people,

it's just whenever Paul McIntyre came out

and he looked me and Nichola straight in the face,

didn't care.

And his hands up like this to his mates.

And they were doing it back to him, and he was trying to encourage them.

But it was really important to be there to see the person

who has been charged with our Lyra's murder.

I am relieved that they've charged a man now related to Lyra's murder,

but I know he's not the one who pulled the trigger.

Derry's a really small city

and I could walk past the man who killed her at any time.

The police know who the gunman is

but they don't have the evidence to charge him yet.

People know who did it, but they're too frightened to speak out.

And I understand that's how it is,

and how it always has been in this country, in all communities.

It has to change.

That's what Lyra was writing about.

And now we have to do that for her.

We have to find a way to break that silence.

Because our politicians certainly aren't going to do it for us.

On tonight's programme - crisis in Stormont.

For years, power has been shared in Northern Ireland.

It was one of the foundation stones of peace.

Today, that power-sharing government collapsed.

There can be no return to the status quo.

If something is broke, you stop.

What does all this mean? Uncertainty for Northern Ireland.

APPLAUSE

Folks, welcome to our TEDx Stormont Women event this evening.

It's lovely to be here tonight.

It's quite symbolic, actually, that we're all sitting in Stormont with

no government, but we'll get there.

So, I want you to give it up for a fantastic freelance journalist.

Her wisdom and maturity at such a young age is incredible.

She is one to watch. Lyra McKee.

APPLAUSE

Thank you very much, folks, it's lovely to be here.

I want to tell you a story about a conversation I witnessed

at a mosque, which changed my life.

But to tell you that story, I have to tell you another story first,

and I've only got 12 minutes.

You are now recording. Hi!

I got the opportunity to go on a trip to the United States...

LYRA GIGGLES

..to learn about American values.

So, the thing about these trips is, they offer you a number of perks.

So, in our case, they took us to Disneyland.

Which I can confirm is definitely one of the happiest places on Earth.

Then they took us to Nasa which, as a Star Wars nerd,

I have to say competed in my heart

for the title of happiest place on Earth.

Oh, my God, that thing is coming for me!

And you're probably thinking, where do I sign up for this trip?

This sounds amazing, it's a free jolly.

Which is what I thought it was.

But I had to go through hell to get these perks.

They offer your carrots they can dangle in front of you

whenever the going gets tough, when you're in the 100th meeting

of the day with someone whose views you find absolutely reprehensible.

For me, though, the hardest part of the trip was when they told us

we were going to be visiting a mosque.

Now, you ask yourself, why would I find it hard to visit a mosque?

Well, for those of you who don't have gaydar, I'm gay.

Don't worry, you can laugh, it's OK!

And the first lesson I learned about being gay was that it was evil,

and that I was going to hell for it.

And I learned that from the Bible.

There were times that I would cry in my bedroom as a teenager,

bargaining with God, asking him not to send me to hell,

because I was so convinced that I was going there.

You know, this text, this Bible,

I know for so many people, it offers them hope

and it offers them salvation.

But for me, it offered a prison sentence.

But I was intrigued by this mosque, because it was in Orlando.

And a year to the week that we were in Orlando,

49 people were slaughtered in a gay nightclub called Pulse.

And this mosque had led the response to that tragedy

and had condemned it.

This was at a time when Christian churches in Orlando

were refusing to bury some of the dead because they were gay.

So I decided that I would go into this mosque with an open mind.

And I did, and we met with this lovely man called Bassem,

who was one of the leaders in the mosque.

And Bassem and I had a conversation about LGBT rights

and what Muslims think of gay people, and...

Difficult, thorny subject.

But there was a young Muslim man,

and he was listening to the exchange between Bassem and I,

and he said, "My best friend was gay.

"He was Muslim and he committed suicide."

And at this point, he burst into tears.

And he said, "I did everything I could to save him, but I couldn't".

LGBT suicide rates are through the roof.

What do we do about this?

I feel the only answer is to change religious teaching of homosexuality.

And I don't mean we berate Christians and shout at them,

or berate Muslims and shout at them.

We need to have conversations, difficult conversations,

and fight for the hearts and minds of those who oppose us.

Don't tell me there's no hope,

because for too many LGBT young people,

that is the only thing they have that keeps them living.

This talk is in memory of the Pulse 49

and all LGBT people who've died by suicide.

Thank you very much, folks.

RAPTUROUS CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Lyra McKee, ladies and gentlemen.

Come out again!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE CONTINUES

Look at that!

You're amazing. You're amazing.

Hey, Ali.

Me and Marie the cat want to wish you a fabulous birthday.

Isn't that right, Marie?

Yes.

Have a great one. I love you loads.

I'd always wanted to write a book,

and I decided I was going to finally do it.

It's going to be one story

that other reporters here would be really afraid to report.

Or wouldn't.

So, how can I help you?

I'm working on a proposal for a book called The Lost Boys.

I'm really curious about this case.

And everyone I speak to, whether they're a journalist or a cop,

it seems that everyone's saying, there's something not right here,

we need to find out what happened.

There's always cases from your career, you look at and you think,

"I wish we'd done that." And this is mine.

It's one I would really like to see solved. OK.

Because I think it is solvable.

Somebody in West Belfast knows where these children are,

or what happened to them.

There's a lot of kids who went missing during the Troubles.

How so? Like, why?

At that time, we had all sorts of bombings,

explosions, killings, everywhere.

And the disappearance of two little boys

would have been noted,

but it wouldn't have been high on the scale of priorities.

Yeah. You know, people were being killed en masse.

From the police point of view, you have virtually no resources,

because they're all tied up with shootings and bombings.

And you're trying to make public appeals for information.

People don't trust the police.

If anybody cooperates with you, they risk being shot.

So with all the other normal problems,

this investigation initially went nowhere.

She was really determined to find answers,

but she really wanted to find those boys

and give their families that closure.

She was so excited every time there was a wee breakthrough

or she heard something that she'd been looking for.

I remember we were in Alicante, actually,

she got a phone call from Father Martin Magill.

Thanks again, Martin. You're a star. Thank you. Bye. Bye, bye, bye.

I'm guessing that was something good.

I'm doing what Ali told me to do. THEY LAUGH

So the priest went and spoke to his parishioner. Yeah?

And, er... This is mental!

There's a number of things.

Apparently, the parishioner gave a statement to the police

saying that the bus came, but the boys didn't get on it.

That's not the account that the police have given.

Ooh! So the statement must have been lost.

Second... Yes? The... Apparently, they were coming back from the

cinema one night, John and his mum,

and they saw some men setting the tripwire.

And John said to them,

"I know who you are and I'm going to tell the police".

And it was local IRA men. Ohh!

And she couldn't remember exactly who...

..the exact date...

But that corresponds with what I've been told. Mm.

That one of the boys killed was one of them saying, "I'm going to tell".

Shit.

That's pretty huge.

Oh, my God, that priest was amazing! Yeah!

You know what I say about priests! No, I know.

Especially the way you said it - it was kind of worrying!

LAUGHTER

So, when I answered the door to her,

"Oh, my Lord..." Looked like a wee schoolgirl, actually,

in some ways!

But when I actually heard the story,

when I heard the connection with this parish,

I couldn't believe it. Her...

..desire to do this was really infectious, and at the end of

this conversation,

this meeting with her,

I'm thinking, "I really must help Lyra with this."

What was very clear was

just how extensive the research

actually was and she

certainly was talking to a lot of different people.

And if anybody was going to find out

what had happened to the two boys, it was Lyra.

Five, six, seven, eight... Tap, tap...

One, two, three, four, five, six...

I've never really been motivated by making money.

Making money looks like...

It's OK, but it just doesn't... I can't...

It's nothing I can get out of bed for.

It's really about disrupting the status quo

and trying to fix something that is wrong.

Thinking about money and how to make money, constrains your creativity.

It really takes the soul out of it.

And you don't do the crazy things

that could, you know, change the world.

Three, four, five, six, stand up.

One, two, three, put her down.

Five, six. Cross hands and kick.

Sometimes you get lucky and people pay you to do what you love.

It's rare to read something

that has the immediate feel of a classic.

She has such a kind of striking, er...feel on the page.

As an editor, you're always looking for the next voice of their generation.

You want those sort of next essayists, the next great novelists,

the best thinkers, and Lyra was that person.

She was absolutely the kind of rising star

for Faber's nonfiction.

Lyra, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today.

Thank you very much for having me.

So, people might look at you and think,

high-profile, two-book deal,

look at you as a success within the field.

LYRA LAUGHS I'm not a success! Um...

I'm still chasing my dreams.

Listen, I'm a kid from North Belfast.

There was never any indication that I was anything, you know, special.

And I'd still say I'm not anything special.

The only difference between me and someone else is I'm a cockroach.

You can't kill me.

So she'd started work on the book.

It was all going really, really well,

and we were planning on a holiday.

She said to me, "I got you something amazing today for holidays",

cos we were going to New York, and, um...I said, "What is it?"

"I'm not telling you, but you're going to love it."

"Happy days. That's grand. I can wait."

Lyra couldn't wait.

Pulled up outside the house, she pulled out her phone,

"I can't hold it in any more. I can't keep this from you."

I was like, "What is it?!" Thinking it was something bad.

"I bought your engagement ring today and this is it!"

She showed me a picture of it on her phone and I was like,

"Lyra! What are you doing?!

"You don't show me the picture!

"Oh, no, it feels like a really bad secret!"

"It's the opposite of a bad secret, it's a great secret, it's a lovely secret."

I mean, she'd picked the perfect ring.

And I was, "You can't tell me when... You can't do it any time now.

"I'm going to be suspicious everywhere we go."

Um...but she had planned to do it in New York.

She was going to pop the question.

She was the woman for it, like.

She called me every day, if not ten times a day.

But on the Wednesday, she phoned me

because she'd had a horrible dream the night before.

And we would always talk about our dreams to each other.

She said, um...

"I had a dream that I was shot."

She said, "It felt so real!"

And I said, "Maybe it's just a dream.

"Cos sometimes we just have really frightening nightmares."

And she said, "No. It felt too real.

"It felt like it actually happened."

REPORTER: Good evening. In the last half-hour,

there have been reports of a serious disturbance in Londonderry.

SHOUTING AND SIRENS

It was Andrew's birthday, and, um...

..we were just sitting down and watching the TV in the evening,

and me phone rang.

"Hello?"

"We were down at a riot. Lyra's been hit in the head

"and she's been taken to hospital."

I assumed it was going to be a brick or a bottle

or something of that nature.

And I said, "We need to go and get my mummy."

Off we went, up to my mummy's house.

My phone went again.

And I was told that Lyra has been shot.

And that it wasn't looking good.

So got my mummy then, sorted, and into my husband's car.

My phone went again.

This time, it was a police officer wanting to speak to me.

I said, "Can you tell me something - is my sister still alive?"

And he said, "I'm really sorry to have to tell you this,

"but your sister has passed away."

And my heart just broke there and then.

And my mummy's still sitting in the car.

Lovely. Want to blow it out, Lyra?

CHEERING

Way to go!

Yummy?

My wee mummy,

who adored every cell in that child's body...

..to tell her her baby, she'd been killed!

Killed by a bullet!

We got to the hospital.

My mummy didn't want to see her at that point.

I went in to see her...

SHE SIGHS DEEPLY

..and I couldn't believe it, cos she just looked like she was lying sleeping.

And so, I decided I would just sit beside her till she woke up.

Because my mind wasn't working, probably,

particularly accurately at the time.

And I didn't want to leave her, I just wanted to stay beside her.

If I could have got up on the bed with her, and died, I would have done it.

Just so I could cuddle her.

I was in the Belfast newsroom last night,

and it became clear around one o'clock this morning,

that Lyra McKee had died,

in the Creggan estate.

This morning, I woke to the sense of disbelief

and the sense of outrage and the sense of sadness.

CALLER: It's just horrible. It's just horrible.

We can't...go past these days.

REPORTER: Hundreds of people across Ireland are expressing their anger

and grief at the tragic murder last night of Lyra McKee.

An outpouring of feeling

that we have not seen in decades.

REPORTER: This evening, vigils are

taking place in Derry and in Belfast,

and books of condolence have been opened for people to pay

tribute to the murdered journalist.

I was standing out in my mum's back garden -

the Irish Government on the phone asking could this one go,

and that one go.

And then the Northern Ireland Office was on the phone,

the Secretary of State

wanted to come, and maybe

the Prime Minister,

and I'm thinking, "Why would

"the Prime Minister want to come to our Lyra's funeral?"

Before Lyra's funeral, it was becoming abundantly clear

this was very different.

This was something that I'd never encountered before,

with the likes of politicians and leaders.

That in some ways helped me to frame what I was going to say.

At the time of Lyra's death, we had no functioning government.

There was a political vacuum.

Lyra's funeral was one of the first times

that all our political leaders sat together in over two years.

The concern was - for that sort of vacuum that we've had in the past,

it gives those who

would use violence as a way to

achieve their ends, an opportunity

and the likes of this ongoing situation,

allowed some of the violence to increase.

It was the most insane

overwhelming thing.

We'd pulled up, and we'd just seen everyone there.

The amount of people who were out there was ridiculous.

And everything begins to feel numb.

Coming into the cathedral, at that stage,

the service was delayed because

the Prime Minister, Theresa May, her flight had been delayed.

And in consultation with the family,

they decided they'd hold the service back a little bit.

Typical politicians, they tend to just nod to everything you say,

but give you absolutely no concrete assurances of anything.

She came in and gave her condolences to Lyra's mum and her sister.

And I thought, while I have you here, you're going to listen to me.

So I spoke to her about the fact that we didn't have a functioning

government in Northern Ireland and we were being left adrift,

and really let down by the British Government.

And I said, "It's not just you, it's been successive Prime Ministers".

I said, "But you're letting us down day and daily,

"and it needs to change"

# Oh, my life is changing every day

# In every possible way

# And oh, in my dreams

# It's never quite as it seems

# Never quite as it seems

# I know I felt like this before

# But now I'm feeling it even more

# Because it came from you

# Then I open up and see

# The person falling here is me

# A different way to be... #

HE SIGHS DEEPLY

I couldn't believe it when I heard the news on Good Friday morning

that Lyra McKee had been shot dead.

The irony could not be more poignant

when we consider the signing of the Good Friday Agreement,

which was about ensuring there would be no more deaths like Lyra's.

And so, we don't need any more innocent blood to be shed.

Many of us will be praying that Lyra's death, in its own way,

will not have been in vain,

and will contribute in some way to building peace here.

I am, however, left with a question.

Why in God's name

does it take the death of a 29-year-old woman

with her whole life in front of her...?!

LOUD APPLAUSE

As our Lyra wrote...

..conflict victims...

..were a unique form of political currency,

bartered by each side.

And when we think about it, you know,

that...that's exactly what she became.

It's...it's so frightening that...

..she would become what she wrote about.

And we, too, her family,

would become what she wrote about.

Because we're now among the many thousands of conflict victims.

RESPECTFUL APPLAUSE

# Soon I will be done

# With the trouble around the world

# Trouble of the world

# Trouble of the world

# Soon I will be done

# With the trouble of the world

# Going home

# To live with God

# No more

# Weeping and wailing

# No more

# Weeping and wailing

# No more

# Weeping and wailing

# Going home

# To live with God... #

They killed my mum the day they killed my Lyra.

She just missed Lyra so much.

She wrote a wee book,

wrote about how her heart's so broken.

I said to Mummy when she was passing away,

"Make sure to tell Lyra we won't ever stop fighting for her."

You know?

"When she comes for you, just go. Just go with her.

"We'll be OK."

And we have to be.

SHE SIGHS DEEPLY

I hope it stops here.

I hope that bullet stops here.

I hope it does not travel any further.

It has to.

Because we've been all through enough.

# I want

# To see my mother

# I want

# To see my mother

# Going home

# To live

# With God

# Soon I will be done

# Oh, trouble of the world

# Trouble of the world

# Trouble Of the world

# Soon I will be done

# With the trouble of the world

# Going home

# To live

# With God. #

My mummy left me with the job of keeping everything going.

And she wanted me to keep sharing Lyra's voice...

..because...

..she didn't want our Lyra ever to be forgotten.

I got into journalism because I loved it,

and because I thought I could change the world.

I still think that.

I'll probably laugh at myself when I look back at this video when I am 40

at how, you know, I really was convinced I could do it, but...

Yeah, I think it's just better to go down fighting.

Listen, do not fucking listen to bullshitters and naysayers.

See if you want to do it, you go do it.

And don't let anyone tell you that you can't do it.

Subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing by Red Bee Media