PCs Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes didn't stand a chance as they responded to what they thought was a routine report of a burglary. The pair stepped out of their police van and walked up to the front door of a three-bed maisonette, into a slaughter that was so gratuitous the shock still reverberates today.
Inside was one-eyed fugitive Dale Cregan - wanted for murdering two gangland rivals. Before the officers had even knocked on, the merciless killer burst through the door, shouted 'police' and unleashed a hail of bullets on the two unarmed officers, probationers who had only just joined GMP. He tossed a hand grenade on their dying bodies and then calmly handed himself in at the nearest police station.
Ten years on, M.E.N. crime reporter John Scheerhout, who wrote a book about the awful murders perpetrated by Cregan, revisits one of the most shocking crimes Greater Manchester has ever seen, a crime that has left deep scars - not only among families and friends of the two fallen officers, but in policing.
