St Anne's Cathedral and were picked up by another. They were driven back to the Shankill and met the man who had ordered the attack in an Orange Hall, telling him that "the job has been done". Among those killed were Philomena and Maria McGurk, wife and 14-year-old daughter of the pub owner Patrick McGurk. Patrick and his three sons were seriously injured. In a television statement shortly afterward, McGurk asked that there be no retaliation: "It doesn't matter who planted the bomb. What's done can't be undone. I've been trying to keep bitterness out of it." Investigation Responsibility After the bombing, the media reported various theories about who was responsible. The main theories were: that it had been planted by loyalists; that it had exploded prematurely while being prepared by IRA members inside the pub; that it had exploded prematurely while "in transit", an IRA member having left it in the pub to be collected by another IRA member; and that it had been planted as part of a feud between the Provisional IRA and Official IRA. The security forces promoted the idea that it was an IRA bomb which exploded prematurely (an "own goal"). Survivors and relatives denied this. They said the pub was not associated with the IRA and there had been no suspicious people or activity in the pub that night. An Intelligence Corps document from December 1971 also said that the pub was not known to have IRA associations. On 6 December, both wings of the IRA condemned the attack, denied responsibility and blamed the UVF and security forces. Claims of responsibility That same day, several newspapers received telephone calls from someone claiming to be a spokesman for the "Empire Loyalists". Their statement to the Belfast Telegraph was:We [the Empire Loyalists] accept responsibility for the destruction of McGurk's pub. We placed 30lb of new explosives outside the pub because we had proved beyond doubt that meetings of IRA Provisionals and Officials were held there. The "Empire Loyalists" had made only one other claim of responsibility; for bombing a community centre on 12 November. The RUC, however, had no intelligence about such a group; suggesting that it may have been a covername. On Tuesday 7 December, a youth claimed to have seen a man acting oddly at a phone kiosk the night before. He said the man was wearing a jacket with a UVF badge on