The murder of Jim Gray could provide an object lesson for young loyalists who were considering following in his footsteps. His champagne and cocaine lifestyle had great appeal for them, but his fairly predictable end should also be chastening.
He had chatted face-to-face with former northern secretary John Reid, met MPs in the House of Commons and afterwards snorted cocaine in a five-star London hotel.
He drove a top-of-the-range BMW, carried thousands of pounds on his person in hard cash, and walked with the confident swagger of a man who was feared as much as he was later loathed.
He played good golf from a very low handicap, loved to mix with business types if he could insinuate himself into their company, stayed in the best hotels and holidayed in exotic locations - all bankrolled by drug dealing, racketeering and other loyalist criminality.
The "Doris Day" nickname suited him well. He loved pastel shades: a favourite combination was Hawaiian shirt, pink jumper casually draped over his shoulders, cream coloured slacks, all co-ordinating with his permanent tan and bleached blond hair.
Gray (47) also loved bling bling. The gold chains he wore around his neck and wrists and in his left ear were worth more than half a year's earnings of most loyalists, according to Frankie Gallagher, a former loyalist councillor whom Gray allegedly tried to kill.
The fact is few people outside the immediate family circle of Jim Gray will mourn his death.
For many months he was a marked man. The brutal language of the streets was being used about him yesterday in loyalist areas: he was simply a victim of UDA "internal housekeeping".
Gunned down outside his father's home in east Belfast on Tuesday night, he had been heading for a big fall since he was ousted from his post as the so-called UDA brigadier for east Belfast. There is any number of murals to dead loyalists with the inscription: "His only crime was loyalty". But in March this year the UDA's six-member inner council, on which Gray previously served, found him guilty of "treason".
Four men and two women were being questioned about the murder last night. The main line of inquiry is that he was killed by former associates, either on the direct instructions of the UDA's inner council, or arbitrarily at the hands of individual UDA figures whom he had offended.
Mr Gallagher, of the Ulster Political Research Group, which provides political advice to the UDA, said he was sorry for Gray's family. All killings had to be condemned, he said. "But the fact is the overwhelming feeling in loyalist areas after his death is one of relief. He was a tyrant. He ruined the lives of hundreds and hundreds of families."
Earlier this year Mr Gallagher and other leading loyalists, including Milltown cemetery killer Michael Stone, spoke to UTV's Insight programme to denounce Gray. A year or so earlier, Gray would have been too powerful for such censure but by March, Gray was being isolated; he was now 'fair game'.
Stone told one story of how he, Gray and other loyalist representatives visited the House of Commons to speak to MPs about prisoner issues. One minute Gray was enjoying "muffins in the Commons tea room" and shortly after he was in the room of a plush London hotel chopping and snorting lines of cocaine.
He was separated from his wife Anne, who is still broken-hearted at the death of her son, Jonathan, who died from a drugs overdose while holidaying with his father, Gray, in Thailand three years ago.
Two years ago he was shot in the face at point blank range during the UDA-LVF feud but survived when the bullet exited from the side of his mouth. Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair tried to oust Gray as east Belfast brigadier and ended up in exile in Bolton for entering into a murderous dispute with the UDA leadership.
If Gray's murder was a leadership-sanctioned killing then it may compel Northern Secretary Peter Hain to "specify" the UDA, a largely meaningless action which acknowledges that the UDA ceasefire is no longer intact.
For years Gray lived a charmed life despite the fact that Belfast's notorious dogs on the streets knew he was a UDA leader and drug dealer. It was reported that when he was still in the UDA that he was arrested by police carrying cocaine, but for some reason never charged. Yet, when he fell foul of the UDA leadership his world started crumbling around him. He was charged with money-laundering in April. Police froze his assets. Last month Gray succeeded in a High Court action to get bail.
Police said yesterday that Gray was notified of death threats against him, but that he was not under police protection.
Chief constable Sir Hugh Orde said police had opposed his bail application and met all their obligations to Gray. "He was not under surveillance. He was not under police protection.
"He was a suspect, not a witness, and he chose to carry out his lifestyle as he saw fit," he said.
There were suspicions that in the past Gray acted as a Special Branch informer. His associates said he was also growing increasingly paranoid from cocaine use.
These factors may have prompted UDA fears that he would "tout" on his senior former UDA friends to barter for a soft sentence.
Loyalist and security sources suggest that this was the ultimate reason for Gray being shot dead outside his father's home in Knockwood Park in east Belfast.
Other similar killings have prompted bloody internecine feuds.
Police and loyalist sources say that such was Gray's fall from grace that they would be greatly surprised if anyone tries to avenge his murder.
