In 1989, Michael Stone was convicted of a total of 35 charges, including six murders and five attempted murders, and sentenced to almost 700 years to run concurrently. The judge time told the court Stone should remain in prison "for a long time". The maverick attack at Milltown Cemetery in 1988 turned Michael Stone into a legendary figure in loyalist folklore. Armed with a Browning 9mm pistol provided by members of the UVF, the hitherto unknown Stone took a bus into Belfast and walked up the nationalist Falls Road to the gates of Milltown Cemetery where thousands of mourners had gathered for the funeral of Mairead Farrell, Sean Savage and Danny McCann.
The three IRA members had been shot dead by a British SAS unit while walking down a street in Gibraltar. British intelligence later claimed they had been on a bombing mission but all three were found to be unarmed when shot, leading to allegations of a "shoot-to-kill" policy operated by the British security forces.
Thousands had turned up to see the funeral cortege make its way up from Dublin Airport. West Belfast was at a standstill as many thousands more followed the coffins into Milltown Cemetery, the traditional republican burial plot in west Belfast, where almost the entire Sinn Fein leadership had gathered.
As the final coffin was lowered into the ground, Stone took out two grenades and hurled them into the crowd. People were screaming as they sought shelter from the shrapnel behind headstones. Stone later claimed his targets were the Sinn Fein leaders, Mr Gerry Adams, Mr Martin McGuinness and Mr Danny Morrison. In the event, at least 60 people were injured by bullets, shrapnel and fragments of marble and stone from the gravestones.
Stone then ran towards the M1 motorway, where his getaway vehicle was, pursued by some of the mourners. He periodically turned round and fired at them, killing three men, Mr Thomas McErlean (20), Mr John Murray (26) and Mr Caoimhin MacBradaigh (30). The crowd then caught up with him, knocking him unconscious when the RUC arrived on the scene, almost certainly saving his life.
After the incident, the Sinn Fein president claimed Stone could have not acted alone and alleged security-force collusion. The incident had been filmed by television cameras, turning Stone into an instant celebrity. He denied he was a member of the UDA, saying he had acted "completely alone". In the Maze, however, he was housed in the UDA wing and became one of the group's leaders in the jail.
The incident led to another tragedy when two British soldiers in an unmarked car drove into the funeral cortege of the three men - one of them, Caoimhin MacBradaigh, an IRA member - killed by Stone. Cpl Derek Wood and Cpl David Howes, both in plain clothes, were dragged from their car and beaten before being driven to waste ground and shot dead by IRA gunmen. Witnesses at the time said they had been pleading for their lives.
It has never been fully established how the two soldiers came to be entangled in the funeral after being briefed by army headquarters to stay away from the area.