Loyalist paramilitary leader John Gregg feared he was going to be assassinated, a Belfast inquest heard yesterday.
Just days before he was shot on his way home from a Glasgow Rangers soccer match on February 1st, 2003, the 45-year-old told friends he felt his life was under threat.
Derek Ramsey, the treasurer of the Rangers Club to which Mr Gregg belonged, told the inquest that the UDA leader was concerned about a TV appearance by John White, a former ally of Ulster Freedom Fighters' leader Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair.
"Gregg was especially wary after the comments made about him by John White," days earlier he said, adding that "he feared his life".
The families of Mr Gregg, who served a prison sentence for shooting Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, and 33-year-old Robert Carson, who also died in the attack, yesterday criticised the investigation carried out by the Police Service of Northern Ireland into their deaths.
"We would wish to point out that the PSNI investigation leaves a lot to be desired. No one has ever been charged with the murders yet most people know who the killers were."
The two dead men, along with Mr Gregg's teenage son Stewart and another man were in a taxi which was intercepted in the Belfast Docks area as they were travelling home from the match.
Fifteen people have been arrested in connection with the murders but no one has been charged, said Det Chief Insp Stephen Maxwell, who is heading the investigation.
He said the intelligence services had identified the killers but there was no physical evidence tying them to the crime.
Belfast coroner John Leckey, presenting his findings, said he hoped the murderers would be brought to justice. "It was nothing short of a miracle that others weren't killed."