Sunday Life
Greengrocer, preacher, terrorist
Billy Wright factfile

Born July 7, 1960 in Wolverhampton, England - the only son in a Northern Irish family of five.

The family returned to Portadown when he was four.

Aged seven, following the failure of his parents' marriage, he went to live with a foster family, the McMurrays, in the village of Mountnorris, close to the republican heartland of south Armagh.

As a boy in Mountnorris, he mixed freely with local nationalist children and on Sundays walked with friends to watch Gaelic football games in nearby Whitecross.

Aged 15, Wright wrote a UVF slogan on the wall of the local primary school. He refused to remove it, and the incident led him leaving Mountnorris for Portadown, where he lived with an aunt.

July 31, 1975 - Wright, just turned 15, was sworn into the UVF's junior wing (YCV).

Later in 1975 he was arrested and then jailed for six years for possessing firearms.

At 17, he was a UVF 'wing commander' inside the Maze.

December 1980 - he was arrested on the word of loyalist 'supergrass', Clifford McKeown and charged with a series of terrorist offences including murder and attempted murder.

October 1981 - released from custody after McKeown refused to testify against him.

Three months later, he was back in jail after members of the SAS opened fire on men attempting to remove weapons from a loyalist arms dump.

Wright was acquitted after spending 14 months on remand, and it emerged at his trial that six SAS soldiers had fired 400 rounds at him.

He spent three years preaching the gospel before returning to the UVF in 1986, angered by Anglo-Irish Agreement and the death of Keith White, killed by a plastic bullet during loyalist protests in Portadown.

By 1988, Wright was credited with having turned the UVF's mid-Ulster brigade into a ruthless killing machine.

In 1985, he married Thelma Corrigan. Her father, William, and his son, Leslie, were shot dead by republicans near their Annaghmore home in 1976.

Wright ran a greengrocers in Portadown, but was forced to close the business because, he claimed, increasing police raids had damaged his trade.

July 1996 - Wright's UVF was at the forefront of Drumcree demonstration. Police forced an Orange parade down the nationalist Garvaghy Road faced with the threat of violence from Wright who had a digger, a petrol tanker, explosives and armed men ready to take on the security forces at the Drumcree barricades.

August 1996 - the Combined Loyalist Military Command stood down Wright's mid-Ulster UVF brigade for 'treason' and breaching the 1994 CLMC's ceasefire. His unit was blamed for the murder of Catholic taxi-driver, Michael McGoldrick.

Wright was given 72 hours to leave Northern Ireland or face death.

He defied the threat and founded the LVF.

March 1997 - Wright was jailed for eight years after being convicted of threatening to shoot Portadown mum Gwen Reed.

December 27, 1997 - he was shot dead by INLA inmates inside the Maze jail.

An estimated 30,000 mourners attended his funeral.