ALAN Patrick Reeve has had a troubled life. He also has a brilliant mind and is said to have qualified as a lawyer while in prison.
At the age of 15, after he escaped from borstal, he killed his friend Roger Jackson, by hitting him with a gun and then stabbing him.
It was 1964, and Reeve had been in trouble with the police on and off since he was 10. It was mainly petty, juvenile crime, but then he graduated to the big league.
He was sent to Broadmoor Hospital in 1964 where he was detained under the Mental Health Act. Significantly, the courts did not put a time limit on his treatment.
Broadmoor holds 450 patients. While there, Reeve confessed to the murder of another patient Billy Doyle (22), a convicted murderer. Reeve is alleged to have said that Doyle asked him to kill him.
From that time Reeve was kept under surveillance by a "special watch" of hospital officials. But he evaded detection again in August 1981, when he escaped from the hospital, apparently climbing over two walls and driving away in a car.
Reeve has since claimed that he escaped from Broadmoor after three separate recommendations from doctors and psychologists for his release had been turned down by the Home Office. The Home Office has refused to comment on the case.
Reeve then fled to Holland with Ms Pat Ford. They had become engaged when she visited him in Broadmoor. They lived among squatters and left wing groups.
A year later Reeve shot dead a Dutch policeman during an armed raid on an off licence. On remand in Amsterdam, he and Ms Ford married.
When Reeve was given a 15 year sentence for the shooting, Ms Ford remained in Holland.
In 1992, after he had served 10 years of his sentence, Reeve was given parole. The Dutch authorities refused to remand him in, prison while an extradition application by the British government was heard. By the time the decision was eventually overruled a year later, Reeve had disappeared again.
At the time Reeve's lawyer in Holland argued that he might commit suicide if he was returned to Britain.
The Dutch authorities said they would have seat Reeve back to Britain. But because a formal application was made for his extradition, his case was heard in a court which decided to release him.
A year later, Reeve came to the attention of British MPs who were outraged when he began working with a prison reform group in Holland.
He came to the attention of the police once more in 1995, when Thames Valley police received information that Reeve had been living in Cork "for some time". He had been working on a Government scheme and had become engaged to a local woman, Ms Anne Murphy.
Describing Alan Reeve yesterday, Det Inspector Jamie Williamson, of Thames Valley police, said his history "speaks for itself. We clearly consider him to be a dangerous person."
But what of his fate if he is extradited to Britain?
Broadmoor Hospital believes Reeve, now 49 years old, is "technically still one of our patients. He was never officially discharged or released." But the hospital has also said it will await the outcome of the extradition hearing before it decides what to do next.
If he was returned to Britain, Reeve would almost certainly undergo an assessment of his mental condition before the authorities decided if he should be returned to Broadmoor Hospital or sent to another institution.