Following the deaths of McMichael and Craig, the UDA entered a period of disarray with much of the old leadership, including Tyrie, removed. One of Tyrie's last acts was to promote Jackie McDonald, at the time an unpopular figure due to his associations with Craig, to the role of South Belfast brigadier. His tenure proved short-lived however, due to the aforementioned conviction in 1990 in relation to his links to Craig. McDonald did oversee one prominent killing that was implicated in collusion investigations. On 25 August 1989
Loughlin Maginn, a Catholic from
Rathfriland who was suspected by local loyalists of being an IRA member despite a lack of evidence, was killed by the South Belfast UDA. In a later interview McDonald would state he was sure Maginn was an IRA member, stating that his source was intelligence reports he had received from the
Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). The killing was investigated as part of the
Stevens Inquiries into allegations of collusion and it was determined that contact between UDR and UDA members had been instrumental in the murder. In March 1992 four men were sentenced to life for the murder, Geoffrey McCullough and Edward Jones of the UDA and Andrew Browned and Andrew Smith of the UDR. McDonald was succeeded as brigadier by
Alex Kerr, also a native of Taughmonagh. Kerr took over a brigade in an area where sectarian tensions were growing as the Catholic population of South Belfast had increased significantly and as a result more interface areas had sprung up. In this climate the South Belfast Brigade, and in particular its Upper
Ormeau members based in the Annadale flats, was to once again take a leading role in sectarian killings. Dominated by
Joe Bratty, Thomas "Tucker" Annett,
Raymond Elder and Stephen "Inch" McFerran, this group carried out a number of killings in the early 1990s. Emmanuel Shields, a Catholic civilian who lived close to the Annadale flats and who was known personally to members of the Upper Ormeau UDA, was killed at his home on 7 September 1990. Shields had been beaten by future members of Bratty's team when they were children and had escaped a shooting attack at his mother's home years earlier. In 1990 South Belfast members also killed Tommy Casey, a
Sinn Féin activist, at his home in
Cookstown. Although somewhat removed from South Belfast, this killing was part of a wider expansion of the South Belfast Brigade which by the early 1990s had expanded into Mid-
Ulster, where a brigade had existed on and off but had become moribund. South Belfast Brigade teams were based in South
Down,
County Tyrone,
Lurgan and on the border at
County Fermanagh, as well as Cookstown. With these teams, Upper Ormeau, Lisburn and a combined Sandy Row/Village unit all active, the brigade was rivalled only by West Belfast in terms of ruthlessness in the early 1990s. A notorious Lisburn hitman, known by the codename "Gravedigger", was also active on 25 May 1991 conducted a high-profile killing when he led a team that gunned down Sinn Féin councillor
Eddie Fullerton at his home in
County Donegal. The policy of attacking Sinn Féin politicians had been developed by Ray Smallwoods, who had been released from prison and taken on a prominent role in both the
Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) and the UDA, and it was followed soon after by the killing of Sinn Féin Councillor Bernard O'Hagan in
Magherafelt by the Lisburn unit. The Lisburn unit expanded significantly in 1991-2, launching a recruitment drive amongst teenagers in schools within its area. It carried out two more killings in early 1992. In February 1992 the brigade carried out the
Sean Graham bookmakers' shooting in which five Catholic civilians were killed in a gun attack on the Ormeau Road. Other killings that the group carried out included that of Michael Gilbride, a Catholic taxi driver who had settled in the Lower Ormeau area but who was killed outside his parents' home on Fernwood Street, not far from Bratty's Annadale Flats base. Donna Wilson, a Protestant and resident of Annadale Flats who had recently moved to the area from Tullycarnet in
Dundonald was killed after residents had complained to Bratty in his role as local UDA commander about the noise of her stereo. Bratty assembled a team of ten men armed with baseball bats who broke in, beat her to death, seriously injuring three of her companions and wrecked the flat. In the end only a sixty-year-old who had led the complaints to Bratty was charged with relation to Wilson's death. Bratty was also identified as the
getaway driver for the attack in which Teresa Clinton, the wife of a
Sinn Féin election candidate, was murdered in her lower Ormeau home. Thomas Annett, who was the main gunman in the Clinton killing, was killed in 1996 on 12 July when he got into a row with fellow UDA members outside an Ormeau Road bar and ended up being kicked to death. McFerran, who was later revealed to have been an
RUC Special Branch agent, was one of those who participated in the killing of Annett. The 1994 killings of Bratty and Elder saw an upswing in South Belfast Brigade activity as they carried out a number of "revenge" killings against Catholic targets. Nonetheless, after the IRA ceasefire the UDA followed suit with the
Combined Loyalist Military Command (CLMC) ceasefire, declared on 13 October 1994. ==Post-ceasefire==