Thomas O'Hare (33) was placed on the sex-offenders register six years ago after being convicted of molesting a boy. He was recently linked to a series of assaults on underage boys and girls, and PSNI detectives are investigating the possibility that he was killed in a revenge attack.

Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) detectives are hoping to interview four brothers, who live nearby O'Hare's native Clady, south Armagh home, following last Monday's attack.

The four were admitted to Louth County Hospital in Dundalk in the hours following the arson with severe burns. All four remain in the specialist burns unit at St James's Hospital in Dublin. The Sunday Tribune understands that last rites have been given to one of the four;

named locally as Martin, Nigel, Stephen and Christopher Smith.

O'Hare died on Friday morning at the Royal Victoria Hospital (RVH) in Belfast from wounds received in the arson attack. His girlfriend, Lisa McClatchey (21), was also in the house at the time of the attack and remains in a critical condition.

It initially appeared that the four men received their burns while carrying out the arson attack on O'Hare's home. However, the Sunday Tribune has learned that PSNI officers last week discovered a vehicle burned out at Loughran's Quarry in Keady, and that this is being forensically examined to determine if this was one of the getaway cars being driven by the arson gang.

A spokesman for the company which runs the quarry in which the burnt car was found, Loughran Rock Industries, yesterday told the Sunday Tribune that the damaged car had been removed from the scene by the PSNI. "They took it away. They didn't say if it was in relation to the [arson attack] or not for certain just that they were looking into the likelihood that it may be."

Among the theories being examined is whether ignition fuel had been splashed on the men's clothing during the arson attack and that the vehicle set alight at a higher intensity than they had planned for . . .

accidentally setting the four ablaze.

A 43-year-old Co Armagh man is being interrogated by murder inquiry detectives. A PSNI spokesman declined to comment on whether the motive for the attack was in any way related to O'Hare's previous conviction.

O'Hare, a Catholic, was living onand-off with McClatchey in the bungalow he inherited from a deceased uncle, in an isolated spot on the outskirts of Keady. McClatchey, a Protestant from the Kilicomaine estate in Portadown, is the granddaughter through marriage of the late Harold Gracey, the Orange Order leader who was at the centre of the Drumcree dispute.