Michael Stone will always be a threat to society, a leading Troubles author said following the release of the notorious loyalist from Maghaberry Prison this week.
Troubles journalist and writer Martin Dillon told The Irish News: “He is a narcissistic personality consumed with a sense of grievance. As such, he will in my opinion always be a threat to society.”
Stone murdered three people in a shocking attack at Milltown cemetery in west Belfast in 1988.
Around 60 people were also injured as he ran through graveyard firing shots and throwing hand grenades during the funerals of three IRA members killed by the SAS in Gibraltar.
He was released in June 2000 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, but returned to prison in 2006 after entering Stormont armed with explosives and an axe in an attempt to murder Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. He later described his actions as performance art.
The siblings of Thomas McErlean (20), killed in the Milltown attack, unsuccessfully challenged his release and he walked free this week.
“I have always felt that Stone had personality defects which made him a threat. He was never honest about his role in murders and did not come clean about his links to UDA figures like the late Brian Nelson," Dillon says.
Dillion believes that Stone was controlled by Nelson and other senior UDA figures.
“There is a great deal Stone knows about other loyalist terrorists, but he has been unwilling to come clean about the nature of his links to them.”
Describing how Stone had established himself as a “poster boy for mass murder” he said Stone never ceased to “revel in his killer status”.
Writing in The Irish News in 2016 Dillon said: “In his twisted logic his failure to kill McGuinness and Adams had been a classic failure he could not accept.”
“Celebrity was not enough unless he fulfilled what he considered his true destiny to be the ultimate loyalist hero. Unseen by others, he had spent his time in prison privately wallowing in self-loathing for his failed Rambo attempt to wipe out the IRA leadership. The boy who grew up believing he would one day impose himself on the world and prove himself to a mother he had never known was not finished with terror.”
