Murdered man guilty on drugs and murder charges
It has been revealed that the man shot dead in Newtownards last night in a suspected loyalist attack had been convicted of one of the most brutal sectarian murders in the North.
Stephen Manners, aged 41 and a former member of the UVF was shot dead in the toilets of a bar by two masked gunmen.
The RUC are still investigating a motive for the killing, but it is thought it may be drugs-related and involve rival loyalist factions.
Manners was convicted eight years ago for his role in the murder of Anne Marie Smyth, a 26-year-old Catholic mother of two young children.
She left her home in Armagh in February 1992 with friends in a rock band but was lured from a club in Protestant east Belfast by women who pretended they were Catholic.
When Miss Smyth was invited to a house nearby on the pretext a party was being planned, she was brutally beaten, strangled and her throat cut.
Stephen Manners was one of five men convicted of involvement in her murder.
He also had convictions for drugs offences.
