The North's Police Ombudsman's report into UVF murders in the 1990s has found a litany of police failure to investigate the murders properly and collusion with UVF gang members who were also police informants.
Nuala O'Loan's report finds that informants who were suspects in murders were interviewed by their Special Branch handlers, and other officers in attendance described the interviews as "merely going through the motions" and nothing but a "sham".
One individual, identified in the report as Informant 1, is alleged to have admitted to his role in the murder of Sharon McKenna, who was shot dead by two UVF men while visiting a Protestant friend, a pensioner recently released from hospital, in his Shore Road home in north Belfast on January 17th, 1993.
A Detective Sergeant M made allegations that Informant 1 admitted that he was a gunman in the murder, and that police covered up his role at the request of Special Branch.
At another meeting with his Special Branch handlers Informant 1 tried to confess to his involvement in the McKenna murder but was repeatedly interrupted and given hundreds of pounds of spending money for a foreign holiday.
The Special Branch increased a monthly payment to Informant 1 from £100 a week to £160 a week in the weeks after the murder, despite the fact Informant 1 was a main suspect for this unsolved crime.
In relation to allegations made by Raymond McCord about the murder of his son, Raymond McCord jnr, Ms O'Loan's report found that a senior UVF figure ordered the murder and that this individual was a police informant.
Mrs O'Loan has identified failures in the investigation of Raymond McCord jnr's murder that may have significantly reduced the possibility of anyone being prosecuted for the murder.
It was his father's allegations that sparked off the investigation into the murders.
Informant 1 was also arrested in relation to the murders of two Catholic workmen, Gary Convie and Eamon Fox from Co Armagh. They were shot dead at a building site in the loyalist Tiger Bay area of Belfast on May 17th, 1994.
A witness had said one of the gunman had a goatee beard. Informant 1 shaved off his goatee beard while in police custody, the report says.
The report found there was police collusion in the murders of Gary Convie and Eamonn Fox.
The report also states that a number of senior officers -including two retired assistant chief constables, seven detective chief superintendents and two detective superintendents - refused to provide an explanation of Special Branch and CID internal practices during the period in question.
The report found that others, including some serving officers in the PSNI, gave "evasive, contradictory, and on occasion farcical answers to questions".