Robin King

Robin Andrew "Billy" King, (born 7 July 1966) is a Northern Irish loyalist paramilitary leader who, despite having been born into a Catholic family, served as the commander of the Ulster Protestant Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF). A close friend of the organisation's founder Billy Wright, King took over as leader following the death of Mark "Swinger" Fulton, who had succeeded Wright when he was assassinated by the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) in December 1997.

King was born in Lurgan, County Armagh on 7 July 1966 to a Roman Catholic family, in which faith he was raised until the age of nine. He attended St. Paul's Catholic primary school in the Ballymacbredan Road in Magheralin on the outskirts of Lurgan where he excelled as a Gaelic Athletic Association player and received a medal for his skill at Irish dancing. When he was nine years old, the family transferred to Waringstown in the wake of his mother's conversion from Catholicism to the Church of Ireland (or Anglican) faith. He later became a loyalist which is typically associated with Northern Ireland's Protestant community; however he kept his early Catholic background hidden from most of his loyalist friends.

As a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) which he had joined in the late 1980s, King was close to Billy Wright with whom he shares the same birthday. Wright took over as leader of the UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade during the early 1990s upon the retirement of Brigadier Robin Jackson. Wright was one of the few people within the UVF who knew about King's Catholic origins. According to The People newspaper King was not the only former Catholic Wright admitted to his inner circle of associates despite having instilled widespread fear in the Catholic population. King served as the Mid-Ulster Brigade's Director of Operations.

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