Until this year, John Dillon appeared on the surface to be a respected boxing coach seemingly living a purposeful life running his gym in Kirkby.
However the 55-year-old was leading a double existence as an organised crime boss importing millions of pounds worth of cocaine sourced from drug cartels in Europe and Colombia. As with dozens of other like-minded crooks, his trust in the EncroChat encrypted phone network proved to be his undoing when detectives, from the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit (NWROCU), linked him to the handle 'DeepOasis'.
As destructive and poisonous as large scale Class A drug trafficking is, an examination of Dillon's past revealed an arguably even darker and more shocking set of offences – rooted in Liverpool's notorious 'door wars' of the 1990s.
READ MORE: Inner workings of poisonous gun and drugs gang run by wild teenage thugs
READ MORE: Evidence on EncroChat gang 'so overwhelming' their only choice was to plead guilty
Back in 1996, feared Cream nightclub bouncer Stephen Cole was more than able to handle himself, and had links to incidents of serious violence and intimidation. At the time he was described as a "Jekyll and Hide" character, to some a loving and dedicated husband and father and to others a "bully", happy to throw his weight around in the then murky world of Liverpool club security.
No one, however, would have stood a chance when faced with the mob of heavy-set, heavily armed men who went hunting for former Liverpool FC reserve player Mr Cole with evil intentions on May 19 that year.
Mr Cole was struck with a baseball bat and then "hacked to death" with machetes and large knives in front of his horrified wife, Lorraine Cole, in the Farmers Arms pub, Fazakerley, shortly after 9pm. According to court documents, he sustained 13 wounds to his skull, torso and legs, some up to five inches deep, and was pronounced dead in hospital.
The motive for the exceptionally violent attack was rooted in a fierce row between two groups of doormen. On May 12 that year, Mr Cole had been present when his friend, Chilton 'Chilli' Jenkins, stabbed Dillon at the Brubaker's Club in Kirkby.
According to witnesses, Mr Cole "egged on" Jenkins and also kicked Dillon as he lay on the ground, although Dillon was discharged from hospital a short time later. The tension ramped up further on May 18, when there was a huge "confrontation" between bouncers from the Cream nightclub on one side, and from where Dillon worked, at the Continental club, on the other.
Reports from the time described a "protracted stand off" on Wolstenhome Square which featured Mr Cole and Jenkins shouting abuse and threats at Dillon until armed police arrived.
Things escalated yet further, in the early hours of May 19, when police officers visited Dillon and told him they had received an anonymous phone call stating Mr Cole planned to shoot him that day. A friend of Dillon, Robert McCarthy, had also allegedly been threatened by Mr Cole who had attended his home and made "gun gestures" with his fingers.
Dillon was offered a safe house and police protection which he refused, instead telling the officers "he would deal with it in his own way".
According to Court of Appeal documents from a later appeal by McCarthy, Dillon made 60 phone calls that day up until around 8pm. By 9pm, a "formidable number of large men" had gathered at Gino's Wine Bar in Kirkby. Remarkably, the group were watched by two police officers in a marked car, who followed them as they left Gino's in a convoy of four or five vehicles.
The group "swept through" the Copplehouse Pub looking for Mr Cole, and did the same at the Chasers pub. At this point, the police officers abandoned their surveillance and returned to Kirkby as they were "out of their area".
The mob, which by now had reached around 32 men in 11 cars, found what they were looking for a short time later and around eight to 10 of their number launched the attack in the Farmers, while the rest hung around outside. Mrs Cole, who gave evidence in court, described how she recognised one attacker as Mr Cole's former friend John Riley, then 47. When she screamed "why are you doing this?", Riley responded: "That's for what he done, that's for the stabbing."
Despite the large number of men involved, only two were convicted of Mr Cole's murder. Kirkby natives McCarthy, then 43 and from Northwood, and Riley, of Quarry Green Heights, were jailed for life with a recommendation of a 20-year minimum term.
The trial judge, Mr Justice Ognall, told the defendants: "You two were involved in as brutal a killing as I have ever encountered in my professional life." He said the killing was an example of "mob lawlessness" and "secondary only in seriousness to indiscriminate acts of terrorism."
Dillon, then 29, later admitted conspiracy to commit violent disorder and was jailed for four years alongside several other men. Justice Ognall described him as the "catalyst" and "prime mover" of the attack. He said: "I bear in mind that the maximum sentence for violent disorder is five years. I am one of the people who find that quite extraordinary.
"You lent yourselves in various ways to as serious an example of this kind of offence as can be imagined".
Fast forward 26 years and Dillon, now of Knowsley Village, is beginning an 18 year sentence after admitting conspiracy to import and supply Class A drugs.
Detective Inspector Dave Worthington, from NWROCU, said after his sentencing at Liverpool Crown Court on Thursday: "Dillon was trusted by members of the community in Kirkby where he held the role of director and coach at the local amateur boxing club.
"Little did they know, he was using the club, and other fake companies he'd set up, to operate his drugs empire. The judge today described Dillon as being 'at the centre of a global spider's web'.
"The evidence we were able to obtain was overwhelming and he had no choice but to plead guilty to his despicable crimes. Analysis of his messages showed the sale of more than 100kg has been organised through Encrochat, with photographs of illegal substances shared before a price was agreed. He would often cycle miles at a time during lockdown to evade police, to deliver drug money to his associates.
"He mistakenly thought that by using Encrochat he could evade police, but now he will pay the price for his crimes."