Convicted garda killer Pearse McAuley has been found dead at his home in Strabane in Co Tyrone.
He was released from prison two years ago after serving a 12-year sentence for a violent attack on his then wife, Sinn Féin TD Pauline Tully.
He was part of the IRA gang that shot dead Detective Garda Jerry McCabe during the attempted robbery of a post office van in Adare in Co Limerick in 1996, having escaped from Brixton Prison five years earlier.
More recently he developed links with the Hutch Organised Crime Group and put the gang in contact with dissident republicans in Northern Ireland.
A violent and dangerous individual, McAuley spent much of his life in prison for terrorist and criminal activity.
He was only released from prison two years ago and had returned to Strabane, where he was originally from.
He was found dead at his home there yesterday.
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McAuley was a feared IRA gunman and highly regarded in Sinn Féin. Along with Nessan Quinlivan, he shot his way out of Brixton prison in 1991 with a gun hidden in a shoe posted from Ireland.
He was awaiting trial on charges related to an IRA plot to assassinate the Brewery Chairman Charles Tidbury.
He fled to Ireland and while on the run was part of the four-man gang along with Michael O'Neill, Jeremiah Sheehy and Kevin Walsh that shot dead Detective Garda Jerry McCabe and seriously wounded Detective Garda Ben O'Sullivan in Adare, Co Limerick in 1996.
All four had been charged with murder but the charge was dropped when key witnesses refused to co-operate after IRA intimidation.
The four were convicted of manslaughter in the Special Criminal Court and McAuley was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 1999.
Sinn Féin tried but failed to secure their release as part of the Good Friday Agreement and the gang served their time, not in cells, but in houses in the grounds of Castlerea Prison.
McAuley was granted special release in 2003 to marry Sinn Féin Councillor Pauline Tully, who has since been elected to the Dáil for the party.
She first met him when she was on a Sinn Féin delegation meeting the garda killers in Castlerea, and married six months later.
When he was freed six years later, former Sinn Féin TD Martin Ferris collected him from prison and the British government abandoned its plans to seek his extradition.
The marriage did not work out and the couple separated. On Christmas Eve 2014, McAuley turned up drunk and uninvited at 11am in the morning at Ms Tully's home.
When she opened the door, McAuley punched her in the face.
It was only when he nodded off around lunchtime that Ms Tully managed to crawl away to a neighbour who did not recognise her because of her injuries.
The neighbour alerted Ms Tully's brother, but when he came on the scene McAuley was standing over the car his ex-wife had locked herself in with a boulder in his hands.
McAuley then threatened to kill the two of them and then went to a neighbour to try to get him to bring him to Cavan. He became aggressive when refused.
McAuley was eventually found in a ditch by gardaí who had arrived on the scene.
Ms Tully said in a victim impact statement that she would be living in fear of her life for the rest of her days.
McAuley’s links to organised crime and dissident republicanism emerged last year in the Special Criminal Court during the trial of Gerard Hutch, who was found not guilty of the murder of David Byrne.
Byrne was shot dead at the Regency Hotel in February 2016, the murder which escalated the ongoing Hutch-Kinahan feud which has so far cost 18 lives.
The Hutch Organised Crime Group wanted dissident republicans to intervene in the feud to try to stop the killing. The gang was prepared to give the subversives a present of the three AK47's used in the Regency attack.
Hutch gang member Jonathan Dowdall had IRA connections and contacted Pearse McAuley. He visited McAuley 14 times in Castlerea Prison and McAuley put him in contact with the dissidents.
Dowdall drove Gerard Hutch to Northern Ireland twice to meet the dissidents including Shane Rowan, who was subsequently caught with the guns and jailed for seven years.
Dowdall is currently serving four years for facilitating the murder of David Byrne and also applied to join the Witness Protection Programme after giving evidence against Gerard Hutch.
