It was on Belfast's football pitches that Alfredo 'Freddie' Scappaticci first made his name in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Scappaticci, the son of an Italian immigrant, travelled as a teenager to England in the early 1960s for trials with one of the midlands top clubs but soon returned home to the Markets area of south Belfast.
The Scappaticci family, who first lived in the Newington area of north Belfast, were well known republicans and by the time the Troubles started Alfredo was a household name in the lower Ormeau area as an IRA volunteer.
In 1971 he was interned with his brother Umberto in Long Kesh, where he is said to have become close to Gerry Adams.
But his connections with the Sinn Féin leader didn't save him from a vicious beating in 1978 following an argument with a senior Belfast IRA figure.
Hungry for revenge, it is claimed that this is when Freddie Scappaticci decided to become a British army informer.
Scappaticci's decision to become a 'walk-in' was seized upon by the Force Research Unit.
He rapidly rose through the IRA's ranks to become its northern command's head of security and one of its most senior – and feared – leaders.
Ironically, his role in the movement meant he vetted every IRA volunteer and that he was charged with hunting down and interrogating all suspected informers.
Known in republican circles as 'Scap', Scappaticci was described by murdered IRA informer Eamon Collins as "small and barrel-chested, with classic Mediterranean looks – olive-skinned with tight black curly hair" in his book Killing Rage.
Collins described how he worked under Scappaticci in the IRA's security section – the infamous 'nutting Squad' – where 'Scap' had a reputation as one of the IRA's most ruthless operators.
"I asked them whether I would personally be expected to shoot informers. Scap, his mouth full, said that when the time arrived I would have to do it," wrote Collins.
"I asked whether they always told people that they were going to be shot.
"Scap said it depended on the circumstances. He started joking about one informer who had confessed after being offered an amnesty.
"Scap told the man he would take him home, reassuring him that he had nothing to worry about."
Collins then describes how Scappaticci recounted shooting the blindfolded captive in the back of the head and "burst out laughing".
Scappaticci's ruthlessness was also detailed by another IRA informer, Sandy Lynch, who was rescued by the RUC while he was being interrogated in an IRA safe house in west Belfast in 1990.
In his book Bandit Country, journalist Toby Harden writes how 'Scap' told Lynch "he would prefer to carry out the questioning in south Armagh, which he called God's Country".
"He (Scappaticci) said that if I didn't admit to being a tout, I'd get a jab in the arse and wake up in south Armagh and he'd be able to talk to me the way he wanted, hung upside down in a cattle shed," stated Lynch in court testimony.
"He said it didn't matter about me screaming because no one would be able to hear."
Although charged in connection with the incident, Scappaticci was acquitted due to lack of evidence. Among those arrested was Sinn Féin director of publicity Danny Morrison. Less than three years later, Scappaticci scaled down his involvement in the IRA, citing a heart condition.
He is not believed to have been active in the movement for around 10 years.
