THE last year-and-a-half had been spent travelling up and down the road to Lurgan for training as he steadily edged closer to a breakthrough at Mourneview Park.
Since the age of 12 Stephen McAlorum had been on the books of English league side Peterborough, flying back and forth at school holidays after tigerish performances at the heart of a strong De La Salle side first served notice of his potential.
It was Brendan Grimes, a former Leicester City scout, who talked the then 16-year-old into joining Glenavon. In truth, he didn’t need much convincing. Peterborough had taken him to tournaments across Europe and offered a world of opportunity, but his heart was never really in it.
He looked at some of the other kids his age and saw how the dream of becoming a professional footballer was all that mattered; how they trained and prepared as though their entire lives depended on making it.
His entire life was back in Belfast. One of seven siblings reared in each other’s pockets, the family home at 6 Glencolin Way was the centre of their world.
Only a half hour spin down the M1, Lurgan made sense. It was a move that suited all parties.
On Easter Monday 2004, Stephen McAlorum was due to play for the reserves. He woke up that morning ready to go, looking forward to the game as he always did.
Glenavon were on the brink of relegation from the Irish League. Major changes were expected once they inevitably dropped down and the likes of McAlorum, a couple of months short of his 18th birthday, would be given their chance among the big boys.
He didn’t pull on the Glenavon jersey that day, and never would again.
Heading downstairs, he could hear the commotion, and the same question being asked again and again.
“Where’s Megan?”
“It wasn’t until the next morning that we realised she wasn’t there,” he recalls.
“It was very unusual that Megan would’ve stayed out. We phoned round all her friends and they were saying ‘Megan went home, Megan went home’. Even then, never in a million years did you think anything like this.
“But then I remember sitting in the chair looking out the window, towards where the wee car park is, and two police Land Rovers pulled up. At that stage I knew something was up.
“It took them half an hour from talking out in the car park to walk the hundred yards to our front door. You just got that feeling in your stomach that something wasn’t right...”
On Easter Sunday, April 11, 16-year-old Megan McAlorum had met up with friends at the Hunting Lodge after finishing a shift at the Glenowen Inn, where she worked with older sister Lynne. They later got into a taxi but Megan decided to visit a friend at a local fast food outlet.
At around 2am, while walking home, she got into a car driven by Thomas Purcell, also 16. He lived at a nearby Traveller site, and was known to Megan and her friends.
Twelve hours later Megan McAlorum’s body was discovered on a desolate stretch of land in a forest half a mile from the Glenside Road in Dunmurry.
The horrific nature of the murder left a family destroyed, and a community in complete shock.
“I was supposed to have a match that day - I remember all my team-mates ringing and me having to tell them what was going on… they just couldn’t believe it.
“One of the times I phoned her mobile that morning, it actually answered. I could hear rustling... footsteps. I thought it was her.
“I was calling her all sorts down the phone, saying ‘see when my da gets you... everybody’s going mad here, you may get home right away’.
“It wasn’t until maybe a month later when they were putting things together they realised that was probably when he was taking her down into the ditch, and the phone had answered in her pocket. That sticks in your head an awful lot.
“Even the fact we never really got to say goodbye to Megan because it was a closed coffin – we just had to be told ‘right, that’s her in that box’. The way he left her... it was inhumane. Just to be told there was a box lying there and your sister was in it. Even now... it’s still hard.
“The night before, Purcell had offered Megan and her friends a lift. Megan refused and her friends got in, so when he offered again the next night, she must have felt it was safe to take a lift home.
“One silly mistake she made and it’s cost her her life.”
After two years of denying having committed Megan’s murder, during which time he was on remand, Thomas Purcell pleaded guilty in April 2006 – just as his trial was due to begin.
On May 26 he was sentenced to a minimum of 15 years at Belfast Crown Court.
That term comes to an end this month, with Purcell’s parole hearing due to take place next week, only days after the 15th anniversary of Megan’s death.
*******************************************
PERHAPS unsurprisingly, Stephen McAlorum wasn’t sure about doing this interview when it was initially put to him. The pain, the past, why drag it all up again? What good would it do me? What good would it do my family?
Then a conversation with dad Frankie changed his opinion.
“I was more inclined not to do it,” he says.
“But then I spoke to my daddy and he said ‘no, you have to do it - your mummy would have wanted you to do it’.”
Before she passed away in November 2017, Margaret McAlorum campaigned tirelessly on Megan’s behalf. She didn’t want her daughter’s death to be in vain.
Indeed, when Thomas Purcell was transferred to an English jail to serve out his sentence without the McAlorums being informed, the family complained. It led to a change in policy and victims' families are now informed of the release date or any transfer by convicted killers.
Margaret McAlorum is buried alongside her daughter in Belfast's city cemetery.
“My mummy never really got over it; she talked about Megan every day – constantly. Constantly.
“Our Megan’s room hasn’t changed one bit – not one bit of wallpaper, not any clothes… there’s a TV sitting in there that must be 30 year old. Nothing will be touched in it.
“All of us, the whole family’s been in it at different times. When people are feeling a wee bit down, they would go in.”
And he has no doubt that, were she still here, his mother would be shouting from the rooftops at the prospect of Purcell being allowed to walk the streets as a free man once more.
“My mummy always said that if he was let out, he would do it again - then there would be questions to be answered. Fifteen years for what he done… it wasn’t just a murder, it was horrific. He brutalised her. She had 54 fractures in her skull, that’s how bad her injuries were.
“Things can happen, accidents can happen, but for what way he left her, it was pure evil. He took my sister up there with one objective – to murder her.
“The reason Megan was found was because he was seen driving up and down the lane maybe three or four times… people started saying ‘what’s he doing up there?’
“He actually came down and took two of his nieces up and drove past where Megan was lying. It’s bad enough what he had done to her, but what he did to his nieces, to show them what he had done to try and get off… he thought he was smart bringing them up, as if to say ‘oh look, there’s a body there’.
“He also went to the hospital at six o’clock that morning complaining about stomach pain to try and get himself an alibi.
“Even after the news went round about Megan, some of the Travellers came down to the house to say they knew nothing about it - he was with them. That shows you the kind of person you’re talking about here.
“He took away a young girl at 16, he took away her life but yet he’s able to live his life in his prime. He has everything to look forward to. He’ll probably go and get a new identity, he’ll probably go and get housed somewhere.
“He’ll get all the benefits, and for what? For murdering a young girl? I don’t think that’s fair.”
In the years that followed Megan’s murder, Stephen McAlorum found himself moving closer and closer to the edge.
The hatred he had inside, not just for Purcell but for “every single Traveller”, ate away to the point that he didn’t know how to control it. At times, instead, it felt as though that anger was controlling him.
Salvation, however, came in a familiar form.
“For 10 years, that’s how it was. It got that bad. Every single one of them, it was their fault; that was how I saw it.
“Any time I’d have had a drink, I’d have walked up to where Megan was found; in the early hours of the morning, just walked up by myself... more or less feeling sorry for myself.
“You didn’t know whether you were going to come down off that mountain, but then you thought of the other people in your life and what they were going through too. What about your mummy? What about your daddy?
“Over the last couple of years, especially talking to my mummy, she more or less changed my mindset… that just because of one person, you can’t blame everyone. Even becoming a father, you realise it’s him, it’s not the whole wider community.
“Now, he’s nothing. He’s nothing to me. He doesn’t come into my head any more - I wouldn’t let him live in my head. The biggest thing for us is that our Megan’s not here no more, that’s what matters to us.
“Forgive my language, but fuck him.”
*******************************************
A HALF smile plays across Stephen McAlorum’s lips as he thinks back to life, to 6 Glencolin Way, when his younger sister was still there.
“There was a year and a half between us. Like any family, there was always a bit of fighting and squabbling, but if there was anything needed we’d always have stood behind each other and supported each other.
“Inside the house though, you’d have fought like cat and dog. Our Megan was very outgoing, very funny, very quirky... very cheeky. She was another one who would never let anyone say a word to her – she was a strong wee girl, but that’s all she was then; a wee girl. Only a child really at 16.
“She had a wee job in the Glenowen with my sister Lynne and she loved it. She was into dancing, music, hair... all the typical teenage stuff. Kirsty’s the youngest and her and our Megan were very close.
“It’s funny the things that stick in your head though. Before Megan went out to work that day, she filled a big massive bowl of Weetos up, and I said ‘can you not get enough into that?’
“It’s silly, but 15 years later that still plays on my mind because it’s one of the last things I said to her.”
Nothing can ever take away the pain, but family and even football have helped.
Now 33, McAlorum knows his career is closer to the end than the beginning. Last year he decided to drop out of the Irish Premiership, trading Ballymena United for ambitious intermediate club Sport & Leisure Swifts, just a short walk away from his Glen Road home.
With two sweet shops on the Springfield Road, wife Orlagh, stepdaughter Niamh (16) and two young kids - Connlaoi (6) and three-year-old Fiadh, who has cystic fibrosis – his priorities have shifted through the years.
Indeed, there was a time after Megan’s death when football was the furthest thing from his mind. But then he looked at the bigger picture, just as his mother had always taught him.
“To be honest with you, the only reason I went back to football was because my daddy was a massive follower of me playing.
“He went everywhere with me; went to training with me down in Lurgan, it was always me and him going to football together. The reason why I went back to football was to keep my daddy’s mind off Megan.
“If it was up to me, I wouldn’t have played football again. I wanted to finish, but I knew if I had retired it would’ve affected my daddy too. He wouldn’t have been getting out.
“I ended up going to DC [Donegal Celtic] when everything was going on. My daddy still went to every match every Saturday, that was his focus away from what was going on in the house.
“I knew I needed to help him, and in the long term I was helping myself. Even if it was only for an hour and a half, I knew by me playing that football match that I could take his mind away from it.”
He went one better than that too.
During a conversation over a few drinks one Saturday night, Frankie McAlorum made a rare request.
He asked his son to bring home a medal, and not just any medal; an Irish Cup medal.
“I knew then I had to leave DC – to try and win the Irish Cup,” he says.
“I went from there to Glentoran. Maybe it was meant to be because, even though my daddy was a Distillery man, he had bought me a Glentoran top when I was about eight. I remember walking around Glencolin wearing this Glentoran top and people looking at me a bit funny... I only twigged later on!
“Eddie Patterson signed me, and in my first year at Glentoran [2013] I won that Irish Cup medal for him. We beat Cliftonville 3-1 in the final.
“My dad’s birthday’s on the ninth of June, the Irish Cup final was in early May, so for his birthday I got my shirt signed by the whole team and got the whole thing framed for him with the medal.
“Do you know where that framed shirt sits now?” he asks, the answer already on the tip of his tongue.
“It’s in our Megan’s room. Just sits there... and that’s where it’ll stay.”
