A jury which had gone away with a complex set of questions and any number of possible verdicts returned in less than an hour with the most damning result possible: Thomas "Slab" Murphy was a prominent member of the IRA who had planned murder and the bombing of property.
On top of this crushing blow to his reputation, Mr Murphy is looking at a legal bill of between £1 million and £1.5 million.
Friends who had supported him through the eight-day hearing left Court Number Four without even waiting for Mrs Justice Catherine McGuinness to formally award costs to the Sunday Times and thank the jury for its service.
"It's devastating, so wrong," was all one man could muster as he and other neighbours of Mr Murphy fled the Four Courts in different directions, some running from photographers and hiding their faces.
Mr Murphy, having fought a largely successful battle to evade the cameras throughout the trial, outwitted the media again by not returning for the verdict. Or perhaps he was simply caught out by what one senior counsel called "one of the quickest verdicts ever".
He had earlier sat at the back of the court, flanked by nieces and nephews, listening intently to the judge's summing up of the case.
She told the jury the evidence that Mr Murphy was in the IRA was circumstantial, "but it's open to you to look at it in the light of his general demeanour in the witness box and his general responses".
Legal sources said the problem for Mr Murphy, who by general consent performed poorly, was that he ended up looking like the defendant and not the plaintiff that he actually was.
"The plaintiff has to control things, but there was so much evidence against him that he was at all times defending himself, even to his own counsel," said one observer.
The result was that the unusual financial arrangements which the Sunday Times had with two of its key witnesses, the former IRA men Sean O'Callaghan and Eamon Collins, seemed not to matter to the jury.
Mr O'Callaghan said he was staying in accommodation paid for by the newspaper. Mr Collins, who said Mr Murphy was the most senior IRA man he had ever met, signed an agreement with the paper for a £15,000 payment before giving evidence and a possible £10,000 after he had done so.
He told the court that, as part of the deal, if he changed his mind about coming to court he would have had to return the £15,000 or face being sued by the newspaper. The money was for security purposes.
Exultant Sunday Times executives would countenance no criticism of such arrangements when questioned after the case. Mr Anthony Whitaker, the paper's legal manager, said it was the same "as the police providing new places to live and new names" for witnesses in criminal cases.
One question which remained was how a man whom a jury has found to be a proven member of the IRA has gone nine years without being arrested and has never been convicted.
But the verdict brings gardai no closer to being able to move against the Co Louth farmer. A senior Garda source said the burden of proof in criminal cases, where a charge had to be proved beyond reasonable doubt, was entirely different to that applying in civil cases where matters were decided on the balance of probabilities.