Freddie Scappaticci

Freddie Scappaticci (1974)

Some time ago I was in the Newspaper Library in Belfast and came across a new item in the Irish News (25 February 1964).  It reported that four youths had been involved in a street fight in Belfast in which a policeman's leg was broken.

One of the youths was named as Frederick Scappaticci, aged 18, an apprentice bricklayer of Castleton Gardens in Belfast.

There cannot have been too many people in Belfast named Freddie Scappaticci so was this the same Freddie Scappaticci who was a double-agent in the Provisional IRA, the person named in the media by the code-name 'Stakeknife'?

Well the details confirm that this is the same Freddie Scappatici named in the newspaper report.  He was a bricklayer of the same age and the same job.

The Irish News report stated that Scappatici was fined £10 and bound over for a year on a charge of disorderly behaviour.

The newspaper report also stated that he had had a month-long trial with Nottingham Forest and that West Ham United and West Bromwich Albion were also said to be interested in him.

You never know what you will come across in the old newspapers and that's what make them so interesting.