the appeal was therefore dismissed. Dillon suggests that during this period of imprisonment, McGlinchey reconsidered the direction of his life, resolving to retire from military activity and become a family man. On the outside, though, McGlinchey was beginning to be seen as a potential leader for a disaffected group of Provisionals from the East Tyrone Brigade. McGlinchey, they knew, "had even less regard for the Adams leadership than the East Tyrone men". INLA feuding While McGlinchey was in Portlaoise he could not control external events. In December 1985 members of the INLA in the north were released after their convictions in the supergrass trials, including a previous chief of staff, Gerard Steenson. Many of them—already distrustful of each other after Kirkpatrick's many allegations and the "dirty laundry aired" as a result—came into conflict with each other as they attempt to retake the positions in the group. Their conflict soon descended into a violent feud, with the INLA effectively splitting into four distinct factions. The mass-imprisonments following Kirkpatrick's evidence had been extremely damaging for the INLA, and between December 1986 to March 1987 there were 12 deaths—including much of the IRSP and INLA leadership—and many more injuries in an increasingly bloody feud. Killing of Mary McGlinchey Mary McGlinchey—called "Mrs Mad Dog" by the ex-soldier and writer Ken Wharton—may have continued to organise her husband's operation while he was incarcerated, perhaps even running it. Publicly, she appears to have distanced herself from political activity (notwithstanding, noted The Sunday Tribune, that "her window displayed a Sinn Féin election poster"). She probably to have supported the faction still controlled by her husband's man—"Jap" O'Reilly—in the INLA's faction feuding but not to the extent of playing a direct role. On 1 February 1987, at around 9:20pm, at the family home in Dundalk, she was bathing their two children upstairs when two-balaclava-clad men broke into through the back door and ran upstairs. They fired at Mary McGlinchey with automatic weapons, shooting her in the face. Declan, the eldest child, escaped out of the house and raised the neighbours, who found Mary shot, with her head in the bath. Regional newspaper The Argus later reported that the killing "caused shock waves in the town". RTÉ reported the next day that McGlinchey had been asleep in the ground floor block of Portlaoise's E-Wing—which housed, in part, "members and former members of the INLA"—when prison authorities were informed of