[2][3] While living in Southend, he started frequenting the Coleherne, a gay pub in Earl's Court, London.
[4] Ireland sought men who liked the passive role and sado-masochism, so he could readily restrain them as they initially believed it was a sexual game.
[5] Ireland said he was heterosexual: he had been twice married to women and that he pretended to be gay only to befriend potential victims.
Ireland was born in 1954 in Dartford, Kent, to an unmarried teenage couple; shortly after his birth, his father left him and his 17-year-old mother.
In his mid-teens, he was sent to borstal for theft, and whilst there, deliberately set fire to another resident's belongings.
[2] In the attempt to make ends meet, Ireland had a series of manual jobs,[2] then in December 1975, he was convicted of car theft, criminal damage and two burglaries, for which he was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment.
[2] In 1982, Ireland married Virginia Zammit; the couple and their daughter lived in the Holloway area of London.
Whilst living there, he travelled to the Coleherne Arms, a gay pub in Earl's Court, London, where he first met his victims.
[8] Ireland met 35-year-old[9] businessman Perry Bradley III at the Coleherne pub.
[9] In order to get Bradley to comply, Ireland told him that he was unable to perform sexually without elements of bondage.
[9] Ireland was angered at discovering Collier was HIV positive while rummaging through his personal effects looking for bank details.
[6] A suspected reason for his killing of the cat was that after Ireland killed Walker and had left this previous victim's dogs locked in a separate room, he later called anonymously to advise parties to the fact that these dogs were being or had been locked up.
[9] Ireland's fifth victim was a Maltese chef named Emanuel Spiteri, aged 41, whom he had met at the Coleherne pub.
Investigations revealed that Spiteri had left the Coleherne pub and travelled home with his killer by train, and a security video successfully captured the two of them on the railway platform at Charing Cross station.
[6] Ireland was charged with the murders of Collier and Spiteri and confessed to the other three while awaiting trial in prison.
[10] He had robbed those he killed because he was unemployed at the time, and he needed funds to travel to and from London when hunting for victims.
The judge, Mr Justice Sachs, said he was "exceptionally frightening and dangerous", adding: "To take one human life is an outrage; to take five is carnage.
As well as the nickname "The Gay Slayer", he was headlined as "Jack The Gripper" by the News of the World.
A spokeswoman for Her Majesty's Prison Service said: "He is presumed to have died from natural causes; a post-mortem will follow.