Face of evil: Final photo of UVF serial killer, supergrass and state agent

This is the last photograph of loyalist serial killer, supergrass and state agent Clifford McKeown taken shortly before he died.

Freed from prison on compassionate grounds after spending 24 years behind bars – officially Northern Ireland’s longest-serving prisoner – McKeown was snapped within days of his release last August.

Balding and slightly stooped with a silver goatee beard, McKeown was a shadow of his former self when this picture was taken.

And despite sporting a designer navy jacket matched with a branded pale blue and white striped shirt, McKeown’s sunken eye sockets couldn’t hide the haunted look of a psychopath with blood on his hands.

From Aghalee in Co. Antrim, 65-year-old McKeown served a life sentence for the sectarian killing of Catholic taxi driver and father-of-one Michael McGoldrick.

The brutal killing happened at the height of the Drumcree Crisis in 1996 when Orange marchers in Portadown were banned from returning home along the mainly Catholic Garvaghy Road.

McKeown was convicted of Mr McGoldrick’s murder in 2003 on the evidence of journalist Nick Martin-Clark, who had visited him in prison in 1999.

The journalist conducted a series of interviews with McKeown where he obtained a confession for the shocking killing of Mr McGoldrick.

At the time, the then UVF prisoner was serving out a 12-year sentence for possession of arms. And we have learned he later told other loyalist prisoners that when he was arrested, he was on a mission to murder Sunday World reporter Martin O’Hagan.

Martin was later shot dead by a loyalist murder gang on September 28, 2001.

A Crown court judge – presiding over a non-jury Diplock court – heard how McKeown shot 31-year-old Mr McGoldrick four times in the head before delivering a ‘coup de gras’ fifth shot “to finish him off”, as the killer later claimed to Mr Martin Clarke.

Details of the interview and murder admission were later published in the Sunday Times.

McKeown also claimed he carried out the killing as a birthday present for his UVF boss Billy Wright.

Mr McGoldrick – who only two days before had graduated as a mature student from the Queen’s University Belfast – was found dead in his taxi at Montiaghs Road in the early hours of July 8 1996.

And at his funeral a few days later, his father pleaded with the killers to bury their hatred with his son.

Loyalist sources claim that although McKeown played a role in the McGoldrick murder, he wasn’t the gunman who fired the fatal shots.

But at the conclusion of his trial, the judge was in no doubt McKeown killed Mr McGoldrick.

He said: “I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant made the confession to Mr Martin Clark and the confession is reliable and that it represents a true account of the defendant’s involvement in the murder.”

The judge added: “I find the defendant, Clifford George McKeown, guilty of the murder of Michael McGoldrick.”

A wave of revulsion swept over the country following the murder and Wright and his cohorts – based in Mid-Ulster – were expelled from the UVF.

But almost immediately Wright and the others set up a new paramilitary group which became known as the Loyalist Volunteer Force. It was opposed to any form of peace deal with republicans, which Wright viewed as appeasement.

Wright was shot dead by members of the Irish National Liberation Army while a prisoner inside HMP Maze on December 27 1997. He was serving a sentence for threatening a woman.

McKeown died in hospital earlier this week after losing his battle with cancer.

And following a service in Malcolmson’s Funeral Home in Lurgan on Monday morning, his remains were laid to rest three miles away at Magheralin Parish Church.

Clifford George McKeown was born into a respectable Protestant family in the tiny Co. Antrim village of Aghalee in 1959.

A decade later, when he was only 10 years of age, the Troubles erupted on the streets of Derry and Belfast and civil unrest quickly spread to other parts of Northern Ireland.

But by the time he was 15, it had become clear that Clifford, along with his brothers Malcolm and Trevor, were all destined for a life of violence and paramilitary crime.

And two years later at the age of just 17, McKeown joined the Ulster Volunteer Force, which enjoyed popular support in loyalist communities in mid-Ulster.

Clifford was the eldest of three McKeown brothers who joined the Mid-Ulster Brigade of the UVF.

The youngest brother Trevor was 38 when he was jailed for life for shooting dead 19-year-old Catholic Bernadette Martin as she slept in the family home of her boyfriend in Aghalee in July 1997. McKeown crept into the house at 4am to kill the teenager.

Trevor is now out of prison and he is believed to be living quietly in an affluent part of south Belfast.

Malcolm – a career criminal who was well known in the Mid-Ulster drugs scene – was shot dead by rival criminals as he sat in a car outside a filling station in Waringstown in 2019. He was 54.

The Sunday World learned this week that Clifford McKeown also confessed to friends that he had personally shot dead 20-year-old Gaelic footballer Peadar Fagan in Lurgan on November 17, 1981.

He claimed the killing was in retaliation for the IRA murder of the Reverend Robert Bradford in Belfast a few days before. He was never charged with Mr Fagan’s murder.

But it is believed Clifford McKeown also operated as an agent of the state on three separate occasions.

Later, McKeown was involved in a fist fight with a leading UVF man in a hotel car park in Portadown. And as he stood over his defeated opponent, McKeown told him: “You know what I’ve done for the UVF.”

And remarkably, a short time later McKeown was readmitted into the ranks of the Mid-Ulster UVF.

McKeown is also suspected of being behind the savage slaughter of innocent teenagers Andrew Robb and David McIlwaine during a UVF-LVF feud 2000. The youngsters were brutally stabbed to death and their bodies dumped on a freezing country road.

The following morning, Malcolm McKeown was spotted power-washing the interior of his car. But once again, the McKeown brothers evaded justice.

A former loyalist prisoner we spoke to this week had witnessed a behind-bars exchange between Clifford McKeown and Johnny “Mad Dog” Adair.

McKeown asked to speak to Adair and as soon as they met, McKeown begged Johnny to believe him when he said he had nothing to to with the brutal murders of the young teenagers Robb and McIlwaine.

“Adair told him that if he thought for one minute he had murdered the youngsters, then he would have personally executed him. McKeown again insisted he had nothing to do with it.

“He looked really terrified of Adair. I noticed McKeown’s knee and it was shaking like a leaf.”

When asked his opinion of Clifford McKeown on Monday, Adair said: “There wasn’t a loyalist bone in his body. His God was money.”

He added: “Just look at his jail friends during the final years of his time behind bars. His mates were all Catholic drug dealers from nationalist parts of Belfast. That tells you all you need to know about Clifford McKeown.”

Sunday World was also told McKeown feared nothing during his days as a paramilitary figure in Mid-Ulster.

But despite this, he was apparently spooked by Lurgan republican Colin Duffy.

The loyalist source said: “For some reason, he was very wary of Duffy. When he was eventually released from prison, one of the first things he wanted to know was if Colin Duffy was still active.”