[3] The gang as a group had joined C8, one of around eighteen teams of 30 to 60 men that made up C Company of the 2nd Battalion of the Ulster Freedom Fighters, over a period of several months in 1984.
[4] Courtney and Adair became closer as the 1980s went on and on 23 November 1985 they attended the "Ulster Says No" rally against the Anglo-Irish Agreement at Belfast City Hall together.
[5] According to Courtney the signing of the Agreement saw a surge of recruits to the UDA in general and C Company in particular, leading to an upswing in violent activity.
[6] Courtney had a reputation as something of a petty thief and even suffered a punishment beating from more senior members of the UDA for a spate of burglaries on the Shankill.
Initially recruiting just Courtney, before also adding Adair and others from Oldpark, Dodds trained the youngsters in weapons use to prepare them for active service.
He argued that too little was being done by the movement in terms of killing republicans as the leaders were too happy to sit back and become rich from extortion and racketeering.
[9] On 19 August 2000 when the feud broke out fully during the "loyalist day of culture" held on the Shankill Road, Courtney was identified as one of three UDA gunmen who shot at UVF members who had barricaded themselves in the "Rex Bar".
[12] Adair was returned to prison as the feud escalated and there he became close to the Shoukri brothers, leading figures in the North Belfast UDA.
Although Adair's mother-in-law was unable to give him the information he sought, Courtney was able to take weapons and money from a nearby C Company arms dump.
He subsequently took these to the "Heather Social Club", the headquarters of those on the Shankill loyal to the mainstream UDA, where he affirmed his split from Adair and his new loyalty to McDonald.
[19] As a result, it was he that Alan McCullough, who had fled to England with Adair, phoned in mid-2003 seeking permission to return to the Shankill having grown tired of life in exile in Bolton.
[23] His version of events, which was accepted by the court, was that Courtney believed he was to be involved only in a knee-capping of McCullough but that another person present had actually done the killing.
[27] Courtney has continued to be linked to the Finucane murder and in 2007, whilst serving his sentence for his involvement in McCullough's death, he was named as one of the two gunmen to kill Finucane in an affidavit filed in a Belfast court by Metropolitan Police officer Detective Chief Inspector Graham Taylor, who was at the time heading the investigation into the killing.
According to court reports Coulter had gone to the offices to speak to Courtney's associates about the death of her cousin, a drug-user, a week earlier.