Former Ulster Volunteer Force leader Gusty Spence has died aged 78.
Mr Spence was a feared killer in the 1960s but later renounced violence and announced the 1994 Combined Loyalist Military Command ceasefire.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder after his gang shot dead Catholic Peter Ward (18) and wounded two others as they left a pub on Malvern Street, Belfast, in 1966 as the Troubles were about to ignite. He served 18 years.
He became heavily involved in politics and was a key figure in the Progressive Unionist Party alongside figures like the late David Ervine.
On May 3 2007, he read out the statement by the UVF announcing that it would keep its weapons but put them beyond the reach of ordinary members.
He died in hospital.
Mr Spence was a former military policeman from the Shankill Road in Belfast whose father was a member of the original Ulster Volunteer Force, originally formed to defend Ulster against the danger of Home Rule, but which then lost thousands of men on the battlefield of the Somme.
The UVF was stood down at the end of the First World War, but Mr Spence helped re-invent it in 1966 when the UVF declared war on the IRA.
It was ordinary Catholics who were soon being targeted.
On June 11 1966, John Scullion, a 28-year old Catholic became the first victim of the Troubles when he was shot by the UVF in the Catholic Falls Road area, and died two weeks later.
Mr Spence was one of three men charged with the murder but the charges were dropped.
Later that month, Peter Ward was shot dead.
Mr Spence was sentenced to life in prison but escaped in July 1972 after being given six hours parole to attend his daughter's wedding.
Days later he gave a television interview as the organisation's commanding officer.
He was on-the-run for four months, during which time he re-organised the UVF, before he was arrested and sent back to prison, where he remained until December 1984.
It was during his time in the UVF compounds in the high-security Maze prison that Mr Spence began to seriously consider politics and he urged several figures who were to become integral to the UVF's peace strategy to do the same.
The late David Ervine, who played a central role in persuading the UVF to declare its ceasefire in October 1994 and became the public voice of the armed group as leader of the Progressive Unionist Party, was one of those swayed by prison politics. He was to become a passionate supporter of the peace process.
Another was Billy Hutchinson, who served 15 years of a life sentence for murdering two Catholics, Edward Morgan and Michael Loughran, on the Falls Road in 1974.
A decade later, while serving his sentence, he helped establish secret contacts between the UVF and republicans inside and outside the jail. Hutchinson later joined Ervine in the PUP.
After his release from prison in December 1984 because of poor health, Mr Spence was a key figure in developing political thinking within the UVF.
In October 1994 he announced that the main loyalist paramilitary groups, the UVF and the Ulster Defence Association, were declaring ceasefires.
Mr Spence offered his "abject and true remorse" to the loved ones of all the innocent victims of the Troubles.
He has kept a low profile and been ill in recent years, but made the UVF statement in 2007 that weapons had been put beyond use.
His appearance at every crucial juncture in the UVF story - and the progression from sectarian killer to peacemaker - will be much debated as Northern Ireland considers how to deal with its troubled past.
Commenting on the death of Mr Spence, Sinn Féin MLA Gerry Kelly said many nationalists would remember him as central to the sectarianism that gave birth to the modern loyalist paramilitary.
"However he did dedicate himself to peace and reconciliation for much of his later life so he willl also be remembered as a major influence in drawing loyalism away from sectarian strife.
"Gusty Spence played a key role within loyalism in bringing the UVF and Red Hand Commando into the peace process and announcing their ceasefires in 1994. This valuable contribution allowed the peace process to develop further.
"On behalf of Sinn Féin I would wish to extend my condolences to his family at this time," he said.
PA