Ulster Freedom Fighters hitman and convicted paedophile Gary ‘Smickers’ Smith has died.
A top killer in Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair’s infamous ‘Hallion Battalion’, Smith is believed to have been personally responsible for around two dozen murders during the Ulster terror war.
Smith died in Scotland on Remembrance Sunday and was buried earlier this week, according to his family. The 60-year-old is understood to have suffered a massive heart attack in his home in Kirkintilloch, East Dunbartonshire, and died in hospital.
‘Smickers’ with Johnny Adair
The 20-stone-plus loyalist killer had been living in the former mining village since his conviction last year on child sex abuse charges.
Last year, Smith narrowly avoided jail after he was convicted of communicating with a 12-year-old boy with a view to having sex. He also had a reputation as a wife-beater.
A relative told us: “Gary Smith had been ill for some time. In recent months, he had lost his peripheral vision and could only see straight in front of him.
“He survived two heart attacks, but on the day he died, a life-support machine was switched off.”
Gary ‘Smickers’ Smith was a notorious member of the loyalist terror group the UFF
And now on his death, the full horror of his career as a UFF serial killer can be revealed for the first time. Among his victims were two totally innocent council workers gunned down at their depot on Belfast’s Kennedy Way in 1993.
Smickers and his accomplice – Stevie ‘Top Gun’ McKeag – sprayed the workers with bullets from automatic rifles, leaving five other workers badly wounded.
A source said this week: “When you look back on that today, it’s the lowest of the low. What sort of guy guns down road sweepers and binmen turning up for a day’s work?
“To think that Gary Smith would have been held up by some people as a hero is just sickening. He was a sectarian psychopath who should have spent the rest of his life behind bars.”
Gary ‘Smickers’ Smith
Originally from Broom Street in the Woodvale area of Belfast, Smith once held the rank of Military Commander of the UFF in west Belfast.
A latecomer to the world of loyalist paramilitarism, Smith was 30 years of age when he quit his job as a pet shop owner to join Adair’s feared terror unit.
He was soon set to work to gun down innocent Catholics, and senior sources said he went on to play a central role in 20-plus sectarian murders.
Last night Adair said: “I cut all ties with him 12 years ago and I’ve had no contact with him since.”
However, he ominously added: “Put a gun in Smickers’ hand and he was very dangerous.”
Kennedy Way council depot in west Belfast where Smith shot dead two Catholic workers in 1993
The aftermath of the Kennedy Way massacre which Smith carried out with accomplice Stevie ‘Top Gun’ McKeag
A former RUC detective told us this week: “There was nothing gradual about Gary Smith’s involvement in the UFF. He was given a lesson in how to handle an assault rifle and days later he committed his first murder and then he never stopped.”
Smith was reputed to have taken part in scores of ‘C’ Coy murder operations. And according to one retired police officer, his name topped the list when it came to follow-up arrests.
“If there were arrests to be made, it was a certainty Smickers was one of them,” he said.
Days after the IRA’s bomb attack on a Shankill Road fish shop in October 1993, Smith and ‘Top Gun’ McKeag launched the gun attack on a cleansing depot on Kennedy Way in Catholic Andersonstown.
Stevie ‘Top Gun’ McKeag
And along with his accomplice Gary Whitty McMaster – who is now dead – Smickers also earned himself a reputation as a member of the UFF’s two-man ‘Rocket Team On Tour’.
Together the UFF men terrorised Sinn Féin members by repeatedly firing missiles at party offices in west Belfast.
On February 12 1994, Smith and McMaster fired a rocket at Sinn Féin’s Connolly House HQ, causing extensive damage.
Smith was eventually snared though when he was caught red-handed preparing to embark on yet another murder mission. He was arrested seconds before setting out to kill top INLA gun man Gino Gallagher, who was later shot dead in an feud.
Smith was scooped by a team of top anti-terror cops in a house in the small Protestant enclave of Suffolk in west Belfast.
Gary ‘Smickers’ Smith
The police booted the door in just as Smith and his hit team were about to set out on the Gallagher murder mission.
Smith was sent down for 16 years when he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder and possession of illegal weapons.
The arrests and jail sentences marked the beginning of the end for Smickers’ boss Adair. His reign of terror on the streets of Belfast would soon be a thing of the past.
RUC boss Ronnie Flanagan – who had been born and brought up on the same Oldpark area as Adair – vowed to take down Adair and the terror team which did his bidding.
Soon after Smickers’ arrest and conviction, Adair was convicted of directing terrorism and he too was jailed for 16 years.
Máire Drumm
In December 1983, Gary Smith’s brother Stanley confessed to the murder of Sinn Féin vice-president Máire Drumm who was shot while she was being treated in Belfast’s Mater Hospital in 1976.
Stanley Smith agreed to turn supergrass which led to the arrests of dozens of loyalist paramilitaries, including John McMichael, Andy Tyrie and Jimmy Craig.
Smith later withdrew his statements, but he received a double life sentence.
On his release from prison, Stanley Smith beat up a man in the Woodvale area after accusing him of being a paedophile. As a result of this, Smith was a victim of a hammer attack by other loyalist paramilitaries. Refusing medical treatment, Smith later suffered a heart attack and died.
Locals in the village of Kirkintilloch where Smickers lived told the Sunday World that at first they knew very little about the quiet Ulsterman living in their midst.
And they certainly didn’t know Smith was a loyalist serial killer and a child sex offender.
Johnny Adair and Gary ‘Smickers’ Smith at the height of their C Coy notoriety
One man who works as a taxi driver in Kirkintilloch said: “After a while we realised Gary Smith had some sort of past life in loyalism.
“But he never spoke about it or invited any questions. He was quiet. In truth, Smith spent most of his time going between the off-sales and the Chinese takeaway. That was it.”
Last year when he appeared Kilmarnock Sheriff Court on the child sex charge, the court heard that he consumed two grams of cocaine and 12 bottles of beer every night.
He was sentenced to three years supervision and placed on the Sex Offenders Register.
Smith had settled in the north Ayrshire town after a short stint in Bolton, where he fled following his release from the Maze under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.