around 250 of the cases. Over one weekend in the 1970s, there were a total of nine murders committed in his district. He personally conducted interviews with some of the most ruthless and dangerous killers in Northern Ireland. Two of the three cars used in the May 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings which had been carried out by the UVF's Belfast and Mid-Ulster brigades, were hijacked in Agnes Street and Torrens Road, both within Nesbitt's jurisdiction. Shankill Butchers' killings By 1975, Nesbitt was encountering death and serious injury on a daily basis as the violence in Northern Ireland showed no signs of abating; however towards the end of that year, he was faced with the first of a series of brutal killings that added a new dimension to the relentless tit-for-tat killings between Catholics and Protestants that had already made 1975 "one of the bloodiest years of the conflict". By this time he had already earned 48 commendations for his excellent detective work. On the morning of 25 November after the body of Francis Crossan, a 34-year-old Catholic, was discovered in an entry between Silvio Street and Ambleside Street in the vicinity of Tennent Street station, Nesbitt and his Murder Squad which consisted of ten CID detectives, including himself, immediately launched an investigation into the savage killing. He had been in bed when he received a telephone call from the duty officer at the station advising him about the body "dumped on his patch". He arrived at the murder scene as the victim's body was being taken away by mortuary personnel. Nesbitt addressed his nine-man murder squad on 26 November with the following statement: "We're looking for somebody more brutal than the average terrorist and we'd better get to him". Crossan had had his throat slashed so deeply by his assailant that he was almost decapitated with just a tissue of flesh connecting the head to the trunk. When his corpse was found the head was lying almost at right angles to his body. Later Nesbitt's team of ten would be augmented by men from the Belfast Regional Crime Squad and an undercover surveillance team. Less than three months later there was another killing. Following a telephone call to a Belfast newspaper made by a male caller using the pseudonym "Major Long of the Young Militants" on 7 February 1976, Nesbitt and his team found the body of Catholic man