Turning to Stone — Life as a loyalist hitman

DRAWN into militant loyalism from an early age, Michael Stone, 50, joined the infamous loyalist Tartan Gang at the age of 13 and by the age of 16 he had already been held in Belfast’s Crumlin Road jail for possession of firearms and membership of the Ulster Defence Association.

His lone gun and grenade attack on the funeral of an IRA man in 1988, in which he killed three mourners earned him a reputation as one of the most notorious loyalist killers. It also provided television images of one of the most savage attacks during 30 years of bloodshed in Northern Ireland.

His aim was to assassinate leading republican figures Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, who had gathered at Milltown Cemetery in west Belfast for the burial of three IRA activists shot dead in Gibraltar a week previously by Britain’s SAS.