From the Belfast Telegraph:
The killer dad who wiped out his own family in the Omagh house inferno kept a secret sex torture den in his garden shed.
Detectives have now completed their investigations into the blaze started by Arthur McElhill (36) last November and concluded he set the house alight as his wife packed her bag in the middle of the night to leave him.
The parents and their five children all perished in the fire seven months ago.
Most disturbingly police have discovered that a girl was tied up and abused by convicted sex offender McElhill weeks earlier in a garden shed which had its window blacked out and had a huge bolt on the INSIDE of the door.
The girl has told cops of her horrific ordeal at McElhill’s hands.
The 10ft by 8ft shed in the back garden, which appeared in pictures taken after the fire, looked like any normal shed, but had actually been used as a torture chamber by evil McElhill.
As well as the bolt on the inside and window covered with black polythene, he had a large padlock on the outside and furnished the shed with an armchair, music system and TV.
Sources say the discovery he had been abusing a young girl shows how unstable and dangerous he had become before the tragic events in the early hours of November 13, 2007.
Arthur McElhill, his partner Lorraine (30), and their five children Caroline (13), Sean (7), Bellina (4), Clodagh (19 months) and nine-month-old baby James all died when he started a blaze with petrol and paint thinners at their end terrace home in Lammy Crescent.
HORRIFYING
A source revealed: “A girl has provided a horrifying account confirming McElhill had been reoffending.
“She was tied up and abused by McElhill in the shed. No-one could see in or get in because of the way he had fitted it out. He also had a music system and TV to drown out any noise.
“He apparently spent a lot of time in it on his own. Friends said it was his personal den where he would sit and watch TV or listen to music. Clearly he also used it for very sinister purposes.
“Whilst this girl was not related to him, there are chilling similarities with the case in Austria of Josef Fritzl who tortured and raped in the den he created beneath his house.”
The garden shed was quietly moved from the back of the Omagh house to allow police to carry out tests on it.
The case of Josef Fritzl in Austria shocked the world last month when it emerged he had kept a secret family in a cellar below his home in Amstetten. He locked up daughter Elisabeth for 24 years and fathered seven children with her.
The police inquiry in Omagh has concluded that Arthur McElhill was a predatory paedophile who had not changed his ways and was highly unstable in the months before he murdered his family.
The farm labourer had left his job, was suffering depression and had been drinking heavily as well as engaging in the child abuse.
He met his wife Caroline when she was 15 or 16 and he was 22 by contacting her over CB radio.
By the time of last November’s fire, police and friends believe she was intending to leave with the children.
A vital witness has come forward to police providing information that indicates his wife was packing her bags to go minutes before the fire started around 5am on a Tuesday morning.
In the burnt out ruins of the family home, police found a holdall in a bedroom and a packed baby bag.
Officers believe that she had packed baby James’ bag and was collecting her own things when he went berserk and started a fire at the bottom of the stairs.
PETROL
The witness told police how they heard, minutes before the fire started, McElhill shout: “You’ll not run now.”
At the time he was returning from his car where police believe he had a container full of petrol. Forensic tests on the house also confirmed the presence of other chemicals, which could be used as paint thinners, scattered around the base of the stairs where the fire was first lit.
A postmortem examination concluded that all the members of the McElhill family died from smoke inhalation.
In January Sunday Life told how McElhill was suspected of using the Bebo social networking website to contact females.
McElhill had been using a Bebo page in the name of his son, Sean.
His user name was ‘funguy’ and police were puzzled to find that a seven-year-old boy had 18 females aged from 16 to 47 on his friends list. McElhill had two previous sexual abuse convictions.
The paedophile carried out a vile sex attack on a girl of 17 in Tyrone in 1993 and escaped with a two year suspended sentence.
He got five years’ jail in 1996 for indecently assaulting another 17-year-old in Fermanagh.
The girl was an international show jumper who was at a three-day competition at an equestrian centre in Irvinestown when he attacked her after entering her caravan while she was sleeping.
His first victim, now a 31-year-old woman, had spoken of how she had lived in fear of him ever since the attack.
HORRENDOUS
“When I heard the news I felt sickened. It is horrendous. He was capable of it. After the attack on myself I knew it wasn’t over.
“I’m so sad for the lady and the children,” she said.
There were heartbreaking scenes at the McElhill funerals on December 1 as the children’s tiny white coffins were brought from the Sacred Heart chapel in Omagh.
Lorraine and the children were buried together in her home village of Corlough in Co Cavan while McElhill was laid to rest 45 miles away in Ederney, Co Fermanagh where he grew up.
Police later revealed that the body of Caroline McElhill was found with a mobile phone in one hand and rosary beads in the other.
She had made a desperate call to the fire service for help as the flames took hold, but the intensity of the blaze meant that she only had seconds to live.
Police have recommended her for a posthumous bravery award and there have been calls for the Catholic Church to honour her.
After hearing this a senior Vatican official described the 13-year-old as an “inspiration” after her heroic attempts to try and save her family from their burning home.
Pope Benedict’s representative in Ireland, his Excellency Archbishop Giuseppe Lazzarotto, said: “It is an example that the local community will always want to remember and cherish, and this, I believe, is a deep and meaningful form of recognition, since it comes directly from the hearts of those who knew the girl and admire her final gesture of courage in the face of danger.”
An independent review panel was set up after the fire to determine whether anything could have been done to prevent the Omagh fire tragedy.
The review has been examining the involvement social services and other agencies had with the family prior to the fire. It will also establish what knowledge these agencies had about McElhill’s previous convictions.
The panel, headed by local barrister Henry Toner QC, has been investigating whether any concerns or risks had been flagged up regarding the family’s circumstances and what steps were taken to manage them.
Representatives from the PSNI, social services and other medical and nursing experts are part of the review team which is to report back to Health Minister Michael McGimpsey.
It is so sad for the kids and the wife to lose their presious lives to the hands of such an evil subhuman life form. If only the courts would have put him away sooner and to the max sentence, they would be enjoying life and sunshine instead!