Extraordinary efforts were made to discredit both Stalker and Taylor by linking them unsuccessfully to members of the Quality Street Gang, a bunch of local dodgy characters. Anderton later described his decision to suspend his deputy as вЂњthe blackest day of my lifeвЂќ.ДЄt the centre of this investigation was StalkerвЂ™s friendship with a Mancunian businessman, Kevin Taylor, whom he had got to know as their daughters were schoolmates. The key fatal shooting, for Stalker, was that of 17-year-old Michael Tighe, who had no paramilitary connections and had been shot in a hayshed in Lurgan in which an MI5 bug had been hidden Stalker was desperate to retrieve this evidence but was constantly stalled.Д«efore he could complete his report, he was suspended in 1986 by his chief constable, James Anderton вЂ“ himself no stranger to controversy вЂ“ and subjected to a disciplinary investigation himself. Sir John Hermon, the RUCвЂ™s chief constable, presciently warned Stalker that he had entered вЂњa jungleвЂќ.

His appointment caused resentment among some Royal Ulster Constabulary officers in Belfast who felt that the English police understood little of the pressures and threats they were under. StalkerвЂ™s job was to find out exactly how six unarmed men had been shot during a brief period in 1982 and whether there was a deliberate policy of killing men believed to be IRA members rather than arresting and charging them. Stalker came from a family with Irish roots and his mother was a Roman Catholic he could not, it was felt, be accused of taking the establishmentвЂ™s side. In 1984 he was appointed as the officer in charge of the investigation into what was described as a вЂњshoot-to-killвЂќ policy allegedly carried out by some members of the security services in Northern Ireland. Then came the role that was to define his career. The following year he was promoted to deputy chief constable, tipped for high police office as a chief constable and even seen as a future Metropolitan police commissioner in the style of Sir Robert Mark. In 1980 he was appointed assistant chief constable of Greater Manchester police force, and in 1983 was chosen to be part of a course at the Royal College of Defence Studies in connection with policing in the event of a nuclear war.

While most of his career was based in Manchester, he was, for two years from 1978, head of the CID in Warwickshire, at the time the youngest chief superintendent in the country. He was an empathetic man whose sharp intelligence led to his appointment to the local Special Branch at a time, in the 70s, when the IRA was at its most active. He was one of the officers involved in the Moors Murders investigations in the mid-1960s and the experience, notably listening to the grim tape-recordings made by the murderers, led him to say later that, while he was strongly opposed to capital punishment, he might have made an exception for Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. Early in his career, he worked as a detective in Moss Side and promotion came swiftly. First, as the person at the centre of the вЂњStalker affairвЂќ during the Northern Ireland Troubles and then as a broadcaster and writer, he was a key figure in the shaping of public attitudes to criminal justice and the police.Д«orn in Miles Platting, a suburb of Manchester, one of the four sons of Jack Stalker, an aircraft engineer, and his wife, Theresa, a machinist, John was educated at Chadderton grammar school and originally wanted to be a journalist.ДЄfter a job as a reporter with the Oldham Chronicle was not forthcoming, he decided to become a police cadet.

No police officer below the rank of commissioner or chief constable achieved a higher profile over the last half century than John Stalker, former deputy chief constable of Greater Manchester, who has died aged 79.

Road to the north stalker