The conventional wisdom about Billy Wright may be summed up as good riddance, an evil man done away with and not before time. The reality may be rather different.
In the hearts of many Protestants, Billy Wright - King Rat as they called him - was a villainhero who was turned against by his own after his usefulness expired. A man who senior RUC officers admit was an organisational genius when it came to mayhem, striking terror into the hearts of Catholics, and whose failure to adjust to the changed circumstances of the Northern Ireland peace process ensured that, from the moment the guns were laid aside, Billy was living on borrowed time.
In a sense he knew that himself. Shortly after the Combined Loyalist Military Command called its ceasefire in October 1994, Wright's restlessness led him to talk with me for many hours about his life.
The interviews continued until his trial last year when he was sentenced to eight years for intimidation. He toyed with the idea of writing a book, but confessed that to do so would only land him in jail for the rest of his natural days, and he concluded that the full story could only be told after his death.
He has taken a great many secrets, and doubtless a bagful of lies, with him to the grave. But in private, surrounded by his family, his "wee girls" and boy, he was a much more complex figure than the monster his image made him out to be.
And elsewhere, among the senior loyalists of Belfast who condemned him to death, there was an admiration for him, a kind of wistful regard for an old ally turned foe.
Even while the rest of Northern Ireland basked in its prolonged periods of restful peace, during the two years in which the interviews took place the security presence around Wright's middle-class home, in a close adjacent to Portadown soccer club's grounds, never slackened. He already seemed imprisoned and hankered to leave, wishing: "I could just be somewhere where nobody knows me."
One of the last things he told me was: "What do you do when you find yourself out-gunned, outresourced, out-financed and outnumbered by your enemy? Your only weapon is to be even more ruthless than them."
It was a circuitous justification of the high incidence of atrocities perpetrated against the most vulnerable people, the pregnant mothers and pensioners who have been murdered in his area.
This was when I pressed him on specific cases of murders accounted for by the Mid-Ulster brigade of the Ulster Volunteer Force, Wright's team.
"There's not a death that I regret," he said. "Every single one of them people, with a few exceptions, were directly or indirectly involved in murder.
"We were taking on the IRA and giving them a headache and I think that's what's made Mid-Ulster (UVF) stand out. We fought the Provies and had no quarrel or disagreement with the Catholic community.
"I genuinely believe that we were very successful, and that may sound morbid, but they know that we hammered them into the ground and we didn't lose one volunteer. Indeed, members of the security forces have said that we done what they couldn't do, we put the East Tyrone brigade of the IRA on the run.
"It was the East Tyrone brigade which was carrying the war in the whole of the North, including in Belfast. East Tyrone were decimated, the UVF wiped them out and that's not an idle boast."
Asked about the "military value" of specific operations, Wright said: "I would look back and say that Cappagh was probably our best."
In March 1991 the UVF shot dead three IRA men as they arrived at Boyle's bar in Cappagh, an isolated and hard-line republican village in Co Tyrone. A fourth man who was murdered was not connected to the Provisionals.
Wright said that Cappagh was a high-water mark for loyalists, demonstrating that they could take the war to the IRA in their heartland. But success had a downside, with republicans tightening their personal security.
Wright claimed that his strategy had a crucial effect on the Provisionals. "I met very few brave IRA men, to their own shame. Ninety per cent of their senior officers left the battlefield; they ran away, they headed south. That's the nature of them - they want to kill, but they don't want to be killed.
"The difference between them and us is that loyalists have nowhere to run. At the end of this phase of the campaign, it appeared that all the big names within terrorism were loyalists. I was here all along, I never moved from home and I'm staying here.
"My attitude is very simple towards the IRA. They worked on the principle of their enemy's honesty. They looked at the security forces and they analysed exactly how far the security forces could go. The IRA learned to kill when it wanted to and then withdraw. That was no way to fight a war.
"Now that all this political movement's under way and we can get a good look at what's in the mind of the British, we can quite clearly see the will to win was never there. That cost, in my opinion, thousands of lives." Wright began the present ceasefire period as an enthusiast, relieved that the fighting was over but proud of what he had done and able to justify the slaughter.
"I genuinely believe that whenever the two communities started to hurt the same, it wasn't long before we started to talk about peace, negotiations and settlements. And one of the remarkable things in this last number of years is that it became very clear to everyone that all the deaths in Northern Ireland were the responsibility of the IRA. That sunk into the Catholic community.
"It also brought home to the IRA that never again would there be a Teebane, never again would there be an Enniskillen without the nationalist people paying a very heavy price. It wasn't long before internal pressures in the republican movement from the nationalist community changed its direction. It was all regrettable, it should have happened earlier."
But within a few months, Wright turned hawkish. The publication of the British and Irish governments' framework document changed his thinking. He saw a constitutional road leading inexorably towards Dublin.
The Belfast leadership disagreed and tensions rose. "What's in war for me? If peace breaks down I'm a dead man," said Wright. "But what was the point in all the deaths, all our own people dying and all the boys doing jail if, at the end of the day, it's given away? We have nowhere to go, we are going to stay here and fight it out and we will fight it out, whether people in Belfast like it or not.
"They can plot and plan all they want across the water and down in Dublin and in Washington, but at the end of the day Dublin cannot handle a million Prods. I honestly want to see peace, not something that will start up in 10 years.
"There's a new generation, the bitterness in them is unlike the early volunteers when basically it was revenge. Loyalists today can rhyme off injustices as long as your arm."
Wright was born in Wolverhampton, central England, in 1960, his father just one of the many Irishmen who moved to England in search of work. The difference, he claims, was that it was because his grandfather had stood against the monolithic Ulster Unionist Party that he claims his family were finally forced out of Portadown.
"My grandfather was the first independent councillor in Northern Ireland. He told me out of his own mouth about the injustices that took place against the Roman Catholic people of the North of Ireland, and granda fought the local elections on that stance.
"After winning, he took the brunt of Ulster unionist bigotry. He was bitterly disappointed that those who professed Christianity and Protestantism did not practise it. "You have to remember that it was a one-party state and once you attacked the Unionist Party you were in for a hard time of it, irrespective of being Catholic or Protestant."
In 1964 his parents separated, Wright returned to Northern Ireland and was brought up by a foster parent in Mountnorris, a Protestant village in republican countryside. He remembers being taught at school "all about English wrongs in Ireland . . . It was unique at the time for Protestant schoolchildren to be brought up politically aware of the Irish problem from both perspectives.
"I had a happy upbringing. Life at Mountnorris consisted of nationalism and unionism intertwined, and in the back of my mind I envisage Northern Ireland like that.
"I was brought up Presbyterian, but a fair amount of my friends were Roman Catholic by faith and nationalist in perspective. Our life was made up of two cultures. The British culture - of soccer and all that goes with that. And then we had Hugh and the boys and their nationalist Irish culture. On Sundays, I went to Whitecross, where I enjoyed playing Gaelic football.
"Then I started working the local farms. I can remember very clearly working for a part-time member of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). And I can recall that when we brought in the hay the other neighbours had to take turns standing guard at the field perimeter."
After a juvenile prank, painting "UVF" on a wall, he moved to Portadown and immediately joined its youth wing.
"I was sworn in on July 31st, 1975. As long as I can ever remember, I have been attracted to the UVF. Although it has caused me a lot of heartache and a lot of things that have been done that I would struggle with morally. I still believe that the traditional army of Northern Ireland is the UVF."
The same year he was arrested and questioned at Castlereagh, where he said he was beaten and forced to sign statements. "They were honest but they were obtained illegally. I received six years in jail for possession of firearms, hijacking. When I entered the Maze jail I went on the blanket."
Political status for prisoners had just been removed and Wright took part in the dirty protest until the Belfast leadership ordered its men off, claiming that it was "embarrassing" to be seen to be supporting the Provisionals.
When he was released after three years, "I remember standing at the gates of the H-block and there beside me was a blanket protester. He had not washed for a year, he was physically wrecked and repulsive to look at. But there was an atmosphere of pure history.
"I knew the significance of what I was witnessing. Here was a movement that would inflict on itself so much violence for its own ideology that what would it not do to other human beings?" He briefly moved to Scotland, but was arrested under the antiterrorist legislation and served with an exclusion order. "I came back to Portadown and immediately continued on active service."
During two further spells in prison, neither of which saw him convicted of any crime, he became interested in Christianity.
"I realised that one could not travel the path of Christianity and at the same time be involved in warfare. My mind was bombarded with problems and I opened the Bible and I read the first verse that my eyes alighted upon. It was: `I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.' I took that as a promise that no matter what happened it would be correct."
He toured the countryside, preaching in town and village squares, taking his gospel message as far afield as Cork.
He called Ian Paisley "a spiritual giant who has led thousands in the direction of Christ. I disagree with his indulgence in politics, I believe that he would have done himself a great favour not to involve himself in the things of the world."
Wright claimed it was the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement and the subsequent RUC-loyalist clashes which made him break with his faith. "I let Christ down, I accept that. I made a conscious decision. I fell on my knees and apologised to God. But I felt contempt for the British government, hatred for the IRA and longing for justice for Northern Ireland Protestants.
"The only way forward was armed resistance. I drove to the Shankill Road and shook hands with a very senior loyalist and his first words were, `It's great to see you back, Billy'. I set about reorganising in Portadown and it was accepted that I had the credentials to do that. And then basically began a campaign. In that campaign, a lot of things were laid at my door.
"I accept that if I die in ignominy and shame, as long as a nucleus of Ulstermen know the truth then I don't mind."
A local journalist writing for the Sunday World newspaper gave Wright the nickname King Rat, writing regularly about his alleged evil activities. Wright said he hated the name at first but grew to accept its worth.
"King Rat is a name identified by many as putting two fingers up to the Provies. To others, it's seen as gangsterism, drugs, prostitution - everything that's filthy in the world can be labelled as King Rat.
"But King Rat became a focus for resistance. There are people who don't necessarily accept what King Rat has meant to have done but who are quite prepared to tolerate him because he, more than any down through the Troubles, defied the IRA and did what his forefathers have done and that is never give an inch."
Shortly before he was gunned down inside the Maze Prison, Wright, now a renegade leader shunned by his UVF comrades, was as combative as ever.
"Every one of our generations has thrown forward men prepared to fight for our country and, believe me, we will fight, no matter what the government says," he said.
"I've done things in life that I regret. My life's full of contradictions, in that I'm a back-street fellow and I find myself in the limelight. Do I regret it? Of course I do. As for what it has cost me, only eternity will tell, only eternity will tell."
David Sharrock was until recently Ireland Correspondent for the Guardian newspaper