Garda killer Pearse McAuley has been found dead aged 59 at his home in Strabane, Co Tyrone.
The IRA member was sentenced in 1999 to 14 years in jail for the manslaughter of Det Garda Jerry McCabe.
McAuley and his IRA gang shot Det Garda McCabe and his partner Det Garda Ben O’Sullivan during a raid on the post office in Adare, Co Limerick, on June 7th, 1996.
The gang, armed with AK47 machine guns, opened fire on the two detectives as they sat in their patrol car while escorting a post office van that was delivering cash and mail in the village. Det Garda O’Sullivan was seriously injured but survived the attack.
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The killing occurred four months after the breakdown of the first IRA ceasefire.
McAuley was convicted along with Limerick men Jeremiah Sheehy, Michael O’Neill and Kevin Walsh.
Sinn Féin made repeated efforts to secure the men’s early release under the Belfast Agreement. Then Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams wrote to then taoiseach Bertie Ahern in 2000 stating: “As you know these prisoners come under the Good Friday Agreement and while I am mindful of the sensitivity involved in this case it too is an issue which must be resolved.”
In 2003, McAuley and the three other convicted men were pictured in the jail with four Sinn Féin TDs visiting them: Aengus Ó Snodaigh, Seán Crowe, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin and Martin Ferris.
The publication of the photograph in republican weekly newspaper An Phoblacht drew criticism from across the political system.
Earlier in 2003, McAuley was granted temporary release to marry Pauline Tully, a schoolteacher from Cavan and Sinn Féin member of Cavan County Council. They began their relationship while McAuley was in jail. Ms Tully was part of a Sinn Féin delegation that visited the men and married McAuley within months of first meeting him on the visits.
In that year she read out letters sent from prison by the killers at the party’s ardfheis. The Sinn Féin delegates responded with a standing ovation. Ms Tully would later describe her husband as a ‘political prisoner’.
The four men were eventually released in 2009 and generated fresh outrage when they were picked up outside Castlerea Prison and driven away by Sinn Féin TD Martin Ferris.
On Christmas Eve 2014, McAuley stabbed his wife 13 times with a knife and broke four of her fingers at their home in Kilnaleck, Co Cavan. He also threatened to kill her brother Tommy Tully.
A year later, he was given a 12-year sentence for the attack with the final four years suspended. He was released from jail in 2021.
McAuley pulled off a prison escape in England in 1991 while awaiting trial on terrorism charges.
On July 7th, 1991, he had escaped from Brixton Prison along with cellmate Nessan Quinlivan. He was being held on charges of conspiring to cause explosions and in connection with a plan to murder a British brewery company chairman.
The two men had been arrested in October 1990, at Stonehenge in connection with the murder plot. When 70lbs of Semtex explosives was found in northwest London the following month, they were linked to it and also charged in connection with it.
While being held in Brixton, McAuley and Quinlivan managed to escape after McAuley produced a firearm from his shoe as he and Quinlivan were being taken back to their secure unit having attended Mass.
A number of shots were fired during the escape and one man was injured.
McAuley fled to the Republic, where he was later arrested on foot of an extradition attempt by the British authorities. However, he fought the extradition and was granted bail, which he skipped just four months before the attack in Adare.
A PSNI spokeswoman said on Tuesday: “Police are examining the circumstances surrounding the death of a man at a property in Abercorn Square in Strabane on Monday, 18 March.
“At present, the death is not believed to be suspicious.”
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