On his release from prison in September 1994, Patrick Holland got involved almost immediately in the drugs business with the gang at the centre of the Veronica Guerin murder investigation.
Like the other gang leaders, he wanted to launder his illicit earnings through a "front" business. He set up a magazine publishing company, Holpat, made up of the first three letters of his names, and attempted to publish an alternative to the RTE Guide, and a prices guide for the second-hand car trade.
Both ventures failed, with considerable losses, it is thought. He then became more heavily involved in drugs and other crime.
Holland is a career criminal and recidivist, who first came to the Garda's attention in the mid-1960s.
At the time he worked for Donnelly's Sausages, in Cork Street, Dublin, where he showed promise as a junior manager.
He was, according to one garda who knew him, a "bad egg", a young man with a good background and apparently good prospects who was attracted to crime and criminal acts.
He was already on a career to serious crime.
His first sentence was six months' imprisonment in June 1965 for possessing stolen goods. This was reduced on appeal.
Having lost his job he returned to crime, became a burglar and then an armed robber. Gardai caught him after a bank robbery in 1981.
He admitted another and was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment.
After his release, he managed almost four years of freedom before being arrested again for having seven sticks of gelignite in a flat in north inner Dublin. One of the arresting officers was Tony Hickey, now the Assistant Commissioner leading the investigation into Veronica Guerin's murder.
The court heard yesterday that the explosives were not for any "subversive" use. The gelignite, detonators and fuse wire had been stolen from Arigna Mines in Leitrim and were probably for use in safe-breaking.
Holland had associates among republican paramilitaries in Dublin, and it is possible that this was an instance of freelance criminal activity by members of the Provisional IRA or Irish National Liberation Army members in the city.
Holland spent much of his time in prison doing weight training and fitness exercises, and emerged in good physical shape. He immediately returned to crime.
He was one of several people gardai questioned in connection with about the murder of the Dublin criminal-turned-builder, Patrick Shanahan.
Shanahan's murder was carried out at the behest of one of his associates, a north inner-city criminal, with whom he had an argument.
Holland was not a suspect in the murder of the leading Dublin criminal, Martin Cahill. But Cahill's murder was similar to several other "gangland" murders in the city during the mid-1990s.
A .357 Magnum revolver was used to kill Cahill, and five shots were discharged. Six shots from an identical weapon were fired into Ms Guerin. It is believed Cahill was shot dead by the same gang which killed Ms Guerin but that they recruited an INLA member in the Cahill murder.
After the Martin Cahill killing, something of a turf war broke out among Dublin criminals.
Among the murders which gardai have examined in relation to the same gang which killed Ms Guerin are those of Michael Brady, who was shot dead in his car on Ellis Quay in September 1996, and Jimmy Redden, shot dead in a public house off Parnell Street in April 1996.
Holland was known to be very active in Dublin's criminal world during this time, but it would appear his partnership in the drugs distribution business was not known.
The extent to which gardai were aware of the gang's activities remains unclear, but there are strong suspicions that at least one senior member was also an important Garda informant, passing on information about other criminals and republican paramilitary members.
The gang seems to have been surpassingly lucky in evading the attentions of gardai during the two years when they managed to smuggle 2,000kg of cannabis into the country.
The drugs had an estimated value of £20 million, but it is likely that the wholesale prices at which the gang was selling the drugs netted only about £4.5 million. But there were other equally lucrative sidelines, most importantly cigarettes and tobacco smuggled from Holland and sold on the streets of Dublin.
Holland was not in the ostentatiously high-living mould of other members of the drugs gang, probably because he was significantly older and not comfortable with their drugs culture.
He also seems to have been something of a solitary figure, said to have been devoted to his wife, Angela, before their separation. He does not appear to have taken part in the gang's holidays to the Caribbean.
He was, however, treated with some considerable respect by the younger members partly because of his seniority and for his reputation as a dangerous and well-organised criminal.
He bought a small holiday home at Lissadell, near Brittas in Co Wicklow, for about £30,000. The property, seized recently by the Garda's Criminal Assets Bureau, was renovated and its value is now estimated at more than £100,000.
Aside from the house, the small fortune Holland amassed during his two years as a drugs dealer appears to have been frittered away.