An infamous IRA killer who gunned down a policeman and stabbed his ex-wife 13 times has been found dead at the age of 59.
Pearse McAuley – who is believed to have shot Detective Garda Jerry McCabe in 1996 – died of a suspected heart attack at his home in Northern Ireland.
Sources said the killer had been dead for several days before he was found, the Belfast Telegraph reported.
McAuley had been living in Strabane, County Tyrone, since he was released from prison in 2022 for the brutal assault on his ex-wife and Sinn Fein MP Pauline Tully.
His two young sons were in the house at the time of the attack in Cavan on Christmas Eve in 2014.
Pearse McAuley (pictured) – who is believed to have shot Detective Garda Jerry McCabe in 1996 – died of a suspected heart attack at his home in Northern Ireland
McCabe (pictured) died instantly after he was shot by an AK47 machine gun in the spine while he was sat in his patrol car
Ms Tully told the court that one of her children had seen their father stab her through a glass panel in the door.
Describing the horrific attack to the Irish Sun, she said: ‘When he came in the door and assaulted me straightaway, I remember really panicking in the kitchen and thinking “I’m going to die because he is overstepping a mark he’s never stepped before, he knows I am going to contact the guards if I get out of this. So I have to talk him down”.
‘I remember standing at the kitchen bench when he was barking orders at the boys upstairs to do this and that — I remember thinking, 2I have to calm down, I have to not panic here”.
He was sentenced to 14 years for the assault but was later released after serving just seven years.
The pair married in 2003 after Ms Tully met McAuley while visiting him in prison.
McAuley was also jailed for ten years for the 1996 killing of Det Gda McCabe during an armed robbery in Limerick.
He was sentenced to 14 years for the assault on Pauline Tully (pictured) but was later released after serving just seven years
McAuley had been living in Strabane, County Tyrone, since he was released from prison in 2022 for the brutal assault on his ex-wife and Sinn Fein MP Pauline Tully
The police officer was providing an armed escort to a mail delivery when he was brutally attacked.
McCabe died instantly after he was shot by an AK47 machine gun in the spine while he was sat in his patrol car.
McAuley, Kevin Walsh, Jeremiah Sheehy, Michael O’Neill and John Quinn were all jailed for the horrific killing in 1999.
But McAuley had already the the headlines in 1991 after he escpaed from Brixton prison where he was being held on suspicion of conspiring to cause explosions while he was a member of the IRA.
After the escape, he fled to Ireland and the Crown Prosecution said they would not be seeking to extradict him.