He turned himself in to the police in 1973 after throwing a hand grenade into a bus transporting Catholic workmen in East Belfast, Northern Ireland, which killed one man.
He gave evidence against his former UDA associates, including Ned McCreery, in the murder trial of the "romper room" torture and killing of James McCartan on 3 October 1972.
He confirmed that loyalist paramilitaries had perpetrated the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings and stated that "half the assassinations in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s would not have been committed without RUC backing".
Albert Wallace Baker, known as "Ginger" after the drummer in the British rock group Cream, was born into a Protestant family in East Belfast, Northern Ireland.
[7] According to journalist Martin Dillon, Baker "strutted around the streets of his native east Belfast with a swagger and assuredness lacking in other paramilitary men who did not have an army training".
Along with three other UDA accomplices, he held up the Vulcan Bar on the Newtownards Road, brandishing a .45 pistol and stealing the sum of £821 which Baker regarded as "pocket money".
[5] Fay, who was a native of County Cavan and who had a limited understanding of the sectarian divide in Belfast, answered the door to Baker and confirmed his religion when asked if he was a Catholic.
According to a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) report, members of a foot patrol had stopped a drunk McCartan as he walked along the Newtownards Road shortly before his abduction but had let him pass after he refused a lift home.
[13] In early October, James McCartan, a 21-year-old forklift driver from The Markets (no relation to Paul), was abducted from the lobby of the Park Avenue Hotel on the Holywood Road after a party.
McCartan was then stripped naked, hung up by the ankles and subjected to lengthy torture sessions at each club which included being beaten with a pickaxe handle, stabbed 200 times, and his head dropped down onto the concrete floor.
The romperings were allegedly presided over by McCreery, and when they had concluded, McCartan was hooded, bundled in a car and taken to waste ground beside the Connswater River off Mersey Street where Baker shot him three times, killing him.
[17] On 1 February 1973, Baker and McCreery mounted an attack on a bus which was transporting Catholic workmen in Kingsway Park, Dundonald, East Belfast.
After Baker got the bus to slow down when he affected a limp crossing the street, he lobbed a hand grenade inside the vehicle, mortally wounding Patrick Eugene Heenan (47), a married man from Andersonstown with five children.
[19] He told Sergeant Anthony Godley that he had been involved in four murders and 11 robberies and wished to make a statement to that effect, although he cautioned initially that he would not reveal the names of any of his accomplices and was only interested in his own role in the attacks.
[5] In the James McCartan murder trial held in February 1974, Baker agreed to testify against McCreery and six other UDA members, making him Northern Ireland's first loyalist supergrass.
[24] Whilst in prison, Baker began a letter writing campaign to the press making a series of allegations about collusion between the security forces and loyalist paramilitaries.
[24] Ken Livingstone, at the time a Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP), conducted some of the most in-depth published interviews with Baker in July 1988.
[26] He also alleged that the group had planned to attack the Red Lion bar near the Albert Clock, where their target was to be a leading republican but that a police Land Rover had chanced by.
[30] His brother told journalist Frank Doherty of the Sunday World that Baker had delivered the explosives used in the 1 December 1972 Eden Quay and Sackville Place bombings from Eglington, County Londonderry to a unit of the Belfast UDA, which had then driven the cars down to Dublin.
The UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade was commanded at the time by Billy Hanna, a sergeant in the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) who also allegedly organised the four attacks and had links to British intelligence.