Somerville was part of the UVF unit that ambushed the Irish cabaret band The Miami Showband at Buskhill, County Down, which resulted in the deaths of three of the bandmembers.

Somerville was a close friend of senior UVF volunteer Robin Jackson,[2] who assumed command of the Mid-Ulster Brigade upon the shooting death of Hanna.

[5] Somerville was a key player in the Glenanne gang, a loose alliance of loyalist extremists comprising the Mid-Ulster UVF and members of the security forces.

The Pat Finucane Centre, in collaboration with an international panel of inquiry headed by Professor Douglass Cassel (formerly of the Northwestern University School of Law), has linked the Glenanne gang to 87 sectarian killings directed against (usually upwardly mobile) Catholics.

[8] Raymond Murray alleged that he had accompanied Robin Jackson when the latter shot Catholic trade unionist Patrick Campbell to death on his doorstep in Banbridge on 28 October 1973.

[10] Former Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Special Patrol Group officer John Weir stated in his affidavit that Somerville was part of the UVF team that exploded a no-warning car bomb in Monaghan on 17 May 1974.

Weir claimed that Stewart Young, allegedly the leader of the Monaghan bombing team, had told him that Somerville and his brother John James had assisted in the attack.

In the early hours of 31 July 1975, UVF gunmen wearing British Army uniforms had set up a bogus military vehicle checkpoint on the main A1 road at the townland of Buskhill, seven miles north of Newry, County Down.

[13] The band was driving back to Dublin after a performance at the Castle Ballroom in Banbridge when its minibus (driven by trumpeter Brian McCoy) was flagged down by the armed men, who ordered the bandmembers to get out and line up beside a ditch facing a field.

[14] Martin Dillon suggested in his book, The Dirty War, that this was meant to explode across the border in the Republic of Ireland with the aim of portraying the band as republican sympathisers smuggling bombs for the Provisional IRA.

[15] As the bomb tilted on one side, clumsy soldering on the clock used as a timer caused the device to detonate prematurely, blowing the minibus apart and instantly killing Somerville and Boyle, who were hurled in opposite directions.

[14] What little that remained of Somerville was later found in a field one hundred yards away from the scene; the only identifiable body part was his severed arm bearing the tattoo "Portadown UVF".

Travers expressed his hope that the banner would remain permanently in order to shame those who erected it and to pose a question to Moygashel parents, if they wanted their children to grow up like Somerville.