At 10:14 on the morning of September 18, 2012, a man called 999 in Greater Manchester to report that someone had thrown a concrete slab through the back window of 30 Abbey Gardens, on the Hattersley estate in Mottram in Longdendale, and had run off. He said he had seen which way the offender went and could point it out to an officer. When the operator told him someone would be sent, he answered: "I'll be waiting."
The caller was Dale Cregan, then twenty-nine and the most wanted man in the region. For five weeks Greater Manchester Police had been hunting him over the murders of a father and son, Mark and David Short. Two constables from Hyde police station, Nicola Hughes and Fiona Bone, took the call. They were unarmed except for one Taser. Within about half a minute of arriving, both had been shot, and a grenade had been thrown toward them as they lay in the front garden. Cregan then drove to Hyde police station and gave himself up.
The case went to trial at Preston Crown Court in February 2013 with ten defendants. Cregan admitted all four murders before it ended, and on June 13, 2013, Mr Justice Holroyde ordered that he never be released.
Cregan was from Droylsden, in Tameside, east of Manchester, where his mother, Anita Cregan, lived on Sutton Drive. He was born around 1983; he was twenty-nine when arrested in September 2012 and thirty when sentenced. The Guardian described him in 2013 as a father of one who had served only minimal time in jail before these crimes.
His own version of his life before 2012 comes from what he told a prison psychiatrist while on remand, an account later read to the jury. He said that as a youngster he had fist fights with nephews of David Short, who came into his neighborhood and, he said, bullied people. He said he began dealing cocaine at twenty-two and was making £20,000 a week. He said his trouble with the Short family was not a turf war over drugs, because as far as he knew they did not deal. He admitted that he had once confronted David Short and fired a gun at him five times, with blank cartridges. He denied involvement in an incident in which Short was knocked off his motorbike and had his throat cut. None of this was tested in evidence beyond his own statements.
Cregan had lost his left eye. He claimed it happened in a fight with a Thai policeman armed with a knuckleduster, according to the Guardian, and he later wore a black onyx false eye, according to the Manchester Evening News. A police mugshot showing the empty socket was released during the manhunt, and the image was printed across the country.
Prosecutors told the jury that the Shorts had been in a long-standing feud with another local family, the Atkinsons, and that the two families had reached what the prosecutor, Nicholas Clarke QC, called "a state of uneasy peace." The Guardian and the Manchester Evening News described David and Mark Short as criminals themselves; the Manchester Evening News called David Short "the much-feared and heavily-convicted head of the Short family." The chief constable, Sir Peter Fahy, said in 2013 that the force was dealing with "two feuding criminal families" rather than a gang war.
According to the prosecution, the events of 2012 began on May 13, a night when many people in Droylsden were celebrating Manchester City's league title. In the Gardeners Arms and then in the Cotton Tree pub, the mother of Leon Atkinson argued with members of the Short party. She lunged at a member of the Short family with an empty bottle, and he gave her what witnesses called a backhander. She shouted that her sons would deal with him. The Crown said she contacted her son Leon in the following hours, that Leon then texted his old friend Dale Cregan, and that Cregan began recruiting others. Phone calls followed between Leon Atkinson, the Short family member and David Short. The family member declined an invitation to fight. David Short came away believing the matter was settled. The Crown said it was not.
That account was the prosecution's case. Leon Atkinson denied any part in the shootings, and the jury acquitted him.
Mark Short was twenty-three, a well-built amateur boxer, the son of David Short and Michelle Kelly. On the evening of May 25, 2012, he was in the Cotton Tree pub in Droylsden with family and friends. His mother was sitting at the end of the bar. His father had gone to the toilet.
According to the prosecution, the pub had been watched until the gang was sure the Shorts were there, while Leon Atkinson was in Wales. A blue Ford Focus pulled up beside the pub. A gunman in a balaclava stepped half into the doorway, raised his right arm and fired seven shots in quick succession, then ran back to the car. Mark Short, nearest the door, was hit in the neck. Three other men were wounded in the legs and back.
Michelle Kelly testified in February 2013. "I was sat at the end of the bar and Mark was playing pool," she told the court. "Suddenly I heard a bang, then another one. Then it was bang, bang, bang." She said she saw the gunman aim at her son just before he left, and that Mark tried to grab him. She ran out with a pool cue and saw a blue car driving away. When she came back, David Short was holding their son, and Mark died in his arms.
Mr Justice Holroyde later found that the shooting was planned in advance: a gun, ammunition, a balaclava, a stolen car and two willing helpers had all been ready, and the gunman had been "trying to kill as many persons as you could." The judge was sure that the target that night was the Short family and their associates. Cregan later told the psychiatrist that the man he wanted was David Short, who had been in the toilet.
Two weeks later Cregan flew back into Manchester Airport from a holiday in Thailand. Police arrested him there on June 12, 2012, on suspicion of murdering Mark Short. The Manchester Evening News reported that he said nothing in interview. There was not enough evidence to charge him, and he was released on police bail.
Others were charged. On August 8, Luke Livesey, twenty-seven, of Hattersley, and Damian Gorman, thirty-eight, of Glossop, were charged with Mark Short's murder and with three attempted murders. A thirty-one-year-old man was arrested at Wythenshawe Hospital the same week.
After the police killings in September, the decision to bail Cregan in June drew criticism. Sir Peter Fahy defended it in September 2012: "It is absolutely normal in the course of complex crime inquiries that when people are arrested there are occasions where there is insufficient evidence available for them to be charged." Suspects in that position must be bailed, he said, because of strict time limits on custody without charge.
After his son's death, David Short, forty-six, visited Mark's grave at Droylsden cemetery every day, often with his partner, Michelle, and their grandchildren. The prosecutor said the visits were well known in the community. Cregan told the psychiatrist that after Mark's murder David Short had threatened to rape his son and set him on fire, and threatened his sister and the rest of his family. Short's partner denied that he made such threats, according to the Manchester Evening News. The judge accepted none of it as a reason. He found that Cregan had been planning to kill David Short "ever since he had escaped death at the Cotton Tree" and was determined to do it while he was still free, having learned that some of those accused of the pub shooting had been rearrested.
Specific arrangements, the judge found, were made over about two days. Anthony Wilkinson, a co-defendant, asked about the times David Short could be expected at his son's grave, and then said goodbye to his own children. The Manchester Evening News reported that the two men watched the cemetery, and that Wilkinson was said to owe Short £20,000 in drug money. Wilkinson's lawyers later argued he had acted out of fear of what Short had threatened against his family; the judge gave that little weight.
On the morning of Friday, August 10, 2012, David Short did not go to the cemetery. He had errands to run. He was at his home on Folkestone Road East in Clayton, unloading new furniture from his car, when the attackers arrived at about 10:30 a.m. He was chased through the house with shots fired at him, tried to escape around the side of the house, and collapsed in an alleyway. Cregan and Wilkinson each shot him at close range. Ballistic tests later showed he was shot at least nine times. Cregan then exploded a hand grenade against his body. The judge called that "an exceptional aggravating feature." The prosecutor told the jury it was the first time in this country a military grenade had been used in that way.
At 10:39 a.m. police received reports of shots at a second house, on Luke Road in Droylsden, the home of Sharon Hark. Cregan fired a pistol there and threw a grenade at the front of the house. No one was hurt. A third grenade went off in the back of a hired van in an attempt to destroy evidence, and the men switched to a second vehicle. Jermaine Ward, twenty-four, was the driver. Mohammed Imran Ali, contacted after repeated calls from Cregan, provided transport and found accommodation. A later trial heard that Ali drove the three men to Bradford about thirty minutes after the killing, and that from there they were taken to a flat in the City Island development in Leeds, where DNA matching Cregan was found on a pillowcase.
That afternoon Greater Manchester Police named Cregan as wanted for both Short murders and released his mugshot. Assistant Chief Constable Garry Shewan said the force believed the Clayton and Droylsden attacks were linked and were connected to the Cotton Tree shooting, and warned the public not to approach him.
A reward of £50,000 was offered, and posters with Cregan's face went up across the region. The Guardian reported in September 2012 that more than 100 raids had been carried out across Greater Manchester, about fifty of them by armed officers, and the Guardian said in 2013 that more than 100 addresses had been searched across the country and abroad. Wilkinson was arrested in a park in Manchester. Cregan was not found. The prosecutor told the jury there were no sightings of him from August until the day of the police killings. Reports that he was drinking openly in Tameside pubs were never confirmed.
Others were later prosecuted over the manhunt. Anita Cregan, a Greater Manchester Police call handler named Kathryn Smith, and Smith's boyfriend, Sean Booth, who had grown up with Dale Cregan, were charged with misconduct offenses. The prosecution said Smith looked up developments in the hunt on police systems and told Booth, who passed them to Anita Cregan, including which neighbor had reported a suspicious car near the Cregan home. All three were acquitted in February 2014. Greater Manchester Police dismissed Smith in May 2014, saying her actions "fell far below the standards" it expected. A different officer, PC Katie Murray of Droylsden, was jailed for two years and nine months in December 2014 for passing police information, including details of the Mark Short shooting, the Cregan manhunt and the murders of the two constables, to her sister and to a former partner who ran a cannabis operation.
In 2013 five more people were charged with conspiring to help Cregan, Wilkinson and Ward while they were on the run between August 10 and September 17, 2012, one of them extradited from Spain. They denied the charge. The outcome of that trial has not been reported.
On the evening of September 17, 2012, Cregan went to 30 Abbey Gardens, a maisonette on the Hattersley estate. The man who lived there had cut Cregan's hair in the past. According to evidence at trial, the householder knew Cregan was wanted and feared for his partner and her seven-year-old daughter. Cregan put a hand grenade on the fireplace soon after he arrived. He told the householder to bring a mutual friend to the house, and sent him out for beer, cigarettes and cigars. The next morning he had the man cut his hair and trim his beard, took a bath, and changed into fresh clothes. Then he made the 999 call. The Guardian reported in 2012 that the couple who lived there were not treated as suspects and may have been held in the house against their will.
PC Nicola Hughes and PC Fiona Bone left Hyde police station in a marked Volkswagen van, with Hughes driving. They turned into the cul-de-sac at 10:52 a.m. From inside, Cregan could see them come up the path. The judge was sure he had expected one or more unarmed officers to answer a call like his, and that he saw they were unarmed women.
As the officers came through the small front garden, Cregan opened the door and fired a Glock pistol fitted with an extended magazine of thirty-two rounds. Both officers were hit in the chest, and their body armor stopped the bullets. PC Bone moved to the right, out of the line of fire. PC Hughes turned back down the path. A shot struck her in the middle of the back, just below her vest, and she fell paralyzed. She was shot three more times as she fell or lay on the path. Cregan then turned to PC Bone, trapped in front of the lounge window, and fired twenty-four shots at her. Most hit her armor or the wall. She drew her Taser and fired it, but the darts struck the paving. The prosecutor said only thirty-one seconds passed between Hughes switching off the van's engine and Bone firing the Taser. PC Bone received eight gunshot injuries; a bullet that entered through a gap at the side of her armor caused the fatal wound to her heart. Cregan went back to PC Hughes and shot her again, including in the head. Then he threw a grenade toward the garden where the officers lay. It caused further injuries to PC Hughes but did not cause her death.
In all, thirty-two shots were fired. Cregan dropped the empty pistol near the officers, took the keys to a BMW belonging to one of the people in the house, and drove the three miles to Hyde police station, at times along the M67 at speeds up to 100 mph, according to the Manchester Evening News.
At the scene, a neighbor tried to stop PC Hughes's bleeding with a towel until other officers arrived. PC Bone was dead. PC Hughes was taken to hospital and pronounced dead there. A post-mortem examination found that both women died of gunshot wounds.
Cregan was on the phone to his girlfriend when he walked in, as he had been, the prosecutor said, after each of his murders. He told the counter clerk: "I'm wanted by the police and I've just done two coppers." He held out his arms to be handcuffed. Asked whether he was armed, he said: "I dropped the gun at the scene and I've murdered two police officers. You were hounding my family so I took it out on yous." The Guardian later reported he also said he was giving himself up "cos yous couldn't fuckin' find me, could yous?" According to the Manchester Evening News, he also said: "Sorry about those two that have been killed. I wish it was men." Police had been making regular visits to his mother's home during the manhunt.
On September 20, 2012, Cregan was charged with four murders, those of PC Hughes, PC Bone, Mark Short and David Short, and with four attempted murders connected to the Cotton Tree shooting. Nazir Afzal, chief crown prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service in the North West, confirmed the charges. He was due before magistrates the next day. Meanwhile, on September 19, police had arrested a man who lived on the estate on suspicion of conspiracy to murder, and on September 20 a man in Merseyside was arrested over a Facebook page praising Cregan.
Fiona Bone was thirty-two. She was born in Norwich, moved with her family to Moray in Scotland, attended Hopeman Primary School and Lossiemouth High School, and had close ties to the Isle of Man, where friends said she called the island home, went back every Christmas and celebrated her New Year's Eve birthday. She worked at a desk job with Direct Line insurance before joining the police, first as a special constable. By 2012 she had five years with Greater Manchester Police.
She lived in Sale with her partner and her partner's five-year-old daughter, whom she planned to adopt. They had organized a civil partnership ceremony for the following spring. A colleague told her father she had been drafting the wedding invitations on the morning she was killed. Sir Peter Fahy called her "a calm, gentle woman" whom fellow officers liked to be partnered with because she could defuse situations. Her father, Paul Bone, a retired RAF aircraft engineer, said she found police work more interesting than her old office job, though she complained that policing party conferences and football matches was dull.
Nicola Hughes was twenty-three. She grew up in Saddleworth, went to Saddleworth School in Uppermill, and lived in Diggle, Oldham, with her mother, Susan. Her father, Bryn Hughes, was a prison officer, and she had a younger brother. She joined Greater Manchester Police in 2009 and spent all three years in the Tameside division. She was a karate champion. One of her sergeants at Hyde said she had "the body of a lion cub and the heart of a lion." Her family told of her climbing through a dog flap and being boosted over a fence to chase suspects, and of a handbag thief she pinned in a doorway until he was arrested. "She wasn't reckless or daft," her father said. Colleagues called her a chatterbox who was always smiling, even after night shifts. Her mother said she "died doing the job she loved."
The trial opened at Preston Crown Court on February 4, 2013, before Mr Justice Holroyde, under heavy security. Cregan, listed as of no fixed address, sat at the front of the dock with nine co-defendants and about fifteen security guards; about 150 police officers, some armed, were on duty around the court on the day the prosecution opened. Nicholas Clarke QC led for the Crown. Simon Csoka QC represented Cregan.
The charges were divided by event. Cregan, Leon Atkinson, Luke Livesey, Damian Gorman, Ryan Hadfield and Matthew James were accused of murdering Mark Short and attempting to murder the three men wounded in the pub. Cregan, Francis Dixon, Anthony Wilkinson and Jermaine Ward were accused of murdering David Short, attempting to murder Sharon Hark and causing an explosion. Wilkinson faced an additional charge of possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life, for a loaded pistol later found at his flat. Mohammed Imran Ali was accused of assisting an offender. Cregan alone was charged with the murders of the two officers. Everyone pleaded not guilty.
On February 12, the fourth day, Cregan changed his pleas on the two police murders. Asked how he pleaded to murdering PC Bone, he said: "Guilty." He gave the same answer for PC Hughes. The judge directed the jury to return the verdicts formally.
The trial on the Short killings went on for months. A woman testifying by video link said Gorman had slapped her and warned her not to talk to police, saying she did not want "the one-eyed Scotchman" coming to her door. In March, Dr James Collins, a consultant forensic psychiatrist, testified that Cregan had admitted all four killings to him in three interviews at HMP Manchester in January 2013. Cregan told him he had "fantasies" about killing David Short, had visions of the Shorts killing his son, and had felt better after the murder: "The night I shot David Short I had the best sleep of my life." In April, Anita Cregan was called as a prosecution witness and told the court her son had told her he did the murders, though she said she had not believed him.
On May 22, the fifty-third day, Cregan stood and pleaded guilty to murdering Mark Short and David Short, to the three attempted murders at the Cotton Tree, and to causing an explosion at Luke Road. He still denied attempting to murder Sharon Hark. Wilkinson had already pleaded guilty to murdering David Short and to the firearm charge. Cregan did not give evidence. In his closing speech Csoka told the jury that Cregan would "die in prison" whatever they decided, but asked them to judge the Hark count on the evidence. Hark had testified that she did not know Cregan or the Shorts. Csoka argued that the attack on her house, through drawn blinds, had the marks of a warning and not of an attempt to kill: "When he set out to kill Mark Short, he killed him. When he set out to kill David Short, he killed him. When he set out to kill the police officers, he did."
The jury retired on June 4. On June 13, the seventy-seventh day of the trial and the sixth day of deliberations, it returned unanimous verdicts. Cregan was found not guilty of attempting to murder Sharon Hark. Livesey and Gorman were convicted of murdering Mark Short and of the three attempted murders. Ward was convicted of murdering David Short. Ali was convicted of assisting an offender. Leon Atkinson, Ryan Hadfield and Matthew James were acquitted of all charges over the Cotton Tree, and Francis Dixon was acquitted of all charges over David Short and Luke Road. Wilkinson and Ward were acquitted of the Hark and explosion counts. The Guardian reported that when the Hark verdict was read, someone at the back of the dock shouted "Yeah!" and Cregan turned and smiled, and that David Short's partner, Michelle Kelly, shook her head and wiped away tears as other verdicts were read.
Mr Justice Holroyde sentenced all six convicted defendants that afternoon. He said he had seen "no hint of any real remorse or of any compassion for your victims." Of the police killings, he told Cregan: "You lured two female officers to their deaths by making a false report that you had been the victim of a crime," and that he had pursued them "with a cold-blooded and ruthless determination to end their lives." He said: "You acted with premeditated savagery."
The judge noted that the court had been told the criminal courts of England had not encountered the use of hand grenades in crimes like these before, and said "the murderous use of hand grenades is a crime which must be met with very severe punishment." He found that at least three of the murders fell into the statutory category of two or more murders each involving substantial premeditation or planning, which normally marks a case as exceptionally serious. Cregan's guilty pleas counted for little, he said, because they were "cynically timed to suit your own purposes." On each of the four murders he imposed life imprisonment with a whole life order. "That means, in plain terms, that you will never be released from prison." He also passed life sentences with minimum terms of eleven years for each attempted murder and six years for causing an explosion.
The other sentences, as set out in the judge's remarks:
Anthony Wilkinson: life, minimum term 35 years, for murdering David Short, plus 6 years for possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life.
Luke Livesey and Damian Gorman: life, minimum term 33 years each, for murdering Mark Short, plus 24 years for each attempted murder.
Jermaine Ward: life, minimum term 33 years, for murdering David Short. The judge was sure he knew what was planned and did not act under duress.
Mohammed Imran Ali: 7 years for assisting an offender.
Outside court, Bryn Hughes said: "To have a child taken from you in such a cruel and meaningless way is without doubt the worst thing any parent can wish to imagine." The family said Cregan "has lost nothing. He had already committed two murders and was destined for a lifetime behind bars." Paul Bone said every Tuesday lunchtime was hard, "as that is when our lives changed forever," and that the family had no regrets that Fiona was a police officer. Michelle Kelly said: "We are happy with the sentences given out to the ones convicted. We are not happy with the total outcome of the verdicts." Nazir Afzal of the Crown Prosecution Service called all four murders "nothing short of executions - planned, premeditated and cold-blooded." In his victim statement, Sir Peter Fahy called the police killings "the worst event in the history of Greater Manchester police and arguably the worst in the history of British policing since the murder of three officers in 1966."
In March 2014 the Court of Appeal refused Wilkinson and Ward leave to appeal against their sentences. Sir Brian Leveson said those who use guns and explosives in personal vendettas "must expect that sentences will necessarily be of the very greatest severity." No appeal by Cregan against his convictions or his whole life order has been reported. His convictions rest on his own guilty pleas.
In August 2013 Cregan refused food, reportedly to press for a move to a prison nearer his family. The Guardian reported he was being held in segregation, and that there were reports of a £20,000 underworld bounty on his remaining eye. On September 5, 2013, after about four weeks without eating, he was moved to Ashworth Hospital, the high-security psychiatric hospital at Maghull on Merseyside. Asked about the move, Sir Peter Fahy said: "I've got no interest in him at all - he's going to be locked up for the rest of his life."
The Manchester Evening News reported in 2020 that Cregan had spent about four years at Ashworth from 2015, had been held at HMP Full Sutton near York, and in 2020 was returned to Ashworth. The paper said there was no known diagnosis of mental illness, and that a transfer to hospital requires the support of two psychiatrists; the Ministry of Justice did not comment. In February 2023 the paper reported he was back at Ashworth after spells in mainstream prisons, when a photograph of him there appeared on social media. Bryn Hughes responded: "I wish I could pose for pictures with my Nicola."
In December 2025 Cregan was still serving his whole life order; the Manchester Evening News reported that month that he had been taken under heavy police guard from custody to Aintree University Hospital for a pre-arranged appointment on December 1, 2025. It did not say whether he was then held in a prison or at Ashworth.
Who ordered the Cotton Tree shooting. The Crown said Leon Atkinson recruited Cregan to avenge the insult to his mother. Atkinson denied it and was acquitted, as were Hadfield and James. In 2022 Atkinson was jailed for fifteen years in an unrelated cocaine conspiracy, and police found letters from Cregan in his bedroom; that does not alter the 2013 acquittal.
David Short's threats. Cregan told a psychiatrist that David Short threatened to rape and burn members of his family. That is Cregan's account. Short's partner denied it, and the judge did not treat it as mitigation.
The Sharon Hark attack. Cregan admitted causing the explosion at her home but was acquitted of trying to kill her. His barrister called it a warning; the Crown called it attempted murder. The jury could not be sure of intent to kill.
The visits to Anita Cregan. Cregan said police had been "hounding" his family. In 2022 a former senior detective, Pete Jackson, alleged at an employment tribunal that he and others had warned senior officers that repeated visits to Cregan's mother were provocative. Greater Manchester Police contested his allegations. The outcome of the tribunal has not been reported. Bryn Hughes called the claims "hindsight" and said a targeted ambush could not easily have been prevented.
The bail decision. Critics asked why Cregan was released in June 2012. The force said there was not enough evidence to charge him then. No independent ruling on the decision has been reported.
Help during the manhunt. Several people were charged with helping Cregan stay hidden or with leaking police information. Anita Cregan, Kathryn Smith and Sean Booth were acquitted. The outcome of the 2014 trial of the five people accused of helping him hide has not been reported.
The eye. Cregan's account of losing his eye in a fight in Thailand is his own and was never tested.
Grenades were thrown in three of the four killings and at the Hark house. The BBC reported that these were the first times hand grenades had been used as murder weapons in Great Britain. Investigators established that they were former Yugoslav military issue. A witness at the trial said Cregan had at one time had a bag of about twenty. On June 3, 2013, during the trial, police found ten grenades at an address in Oldham, believed to be the rest of the batch; the find was kept quiet until the verdicts. Police said they did not know how the grenades reached Britain.
The Glock that Cregan used on David Short was the one he later used on the two officers, recovered at Abbey Gardens. The second Glock, fired by Wilkinson, stayed in criminal hands. Greater Manchester Police recovered it in May 2024 in a raid on a drugs gang's safe house in Moss Side. Tests linked it to three later non-fatal shootings, one in 2023.
The Guardian reported in 2012 that it was the first time two female police officers had been killed in the line of duty. Their funerals brought central Manchester to a standstill; of Fiona's service at Manchester Cathedral, Paul Bone said it "was like a state occasion." A memorial garden was opened at Hyde police station in December 2012, paid for by public donations, and a minute's silence is held there each anniversary at the time of the attack. On July 14, 2016, his first day after leaving office, former Prime Minister David Cameron unveiled a Police Memorial Trust stone less than a mile from Abbey Gardens.
Bryn Hughes left his job at HMP Wakefield and in 2014 set up the PC Nicola Hughes Memorial Fund, which helps young people bereaved by violent crime. He ran marathons for it, including at the North Pole, and was made an MBE in 2023. He and Paul Bone campaigned for official recognition of emergency workers killed on duty. In November 2024 the government introduced the Elizabeth Emblem, and the two fathers were among the first families to receive it.
The killings left lasting harm inside the force. Andrew Summerscales, a Tameside officer believed to have been among the first at the scene, was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder afterward. He left the police in 2015 and took his own life in August 2016; the coroner said the events of September 2012 "affected him greatly." David Short's partner, Michelle Kelly, lost her son and, ten weeks later, his father. The judge noted that some victims' families had to leave their homes and live apart for their own safety.
In 2018 the Information Commissioner upheld Greater Manchester Police's refusal to release a forensic psychiatrist's reports to the force on the search for, and arrest of, Cregan, citing the law enforcement exemption.
About 1983: Dale Cregan born; grows up in Droylsden, Greater Manchester.
May 13, 2012: Confrontation in the Gardeners Arms and Cotton Tree between Leon Atkinson's mother and a member of the Short family, which the Crown said set off the shooting.
May 25, 2012: Mark Short, 23, shot dead in the Cotton Tree pub, Droylsden; three other men wounded.
June 12, 2012: Cregan arrested at Manchester Airport after a trip to Thailand; questioned and released on bail.
August 8, 2012: Luke Livesey and Damian Gorman charged with Mark Short's murder.
August 10, 2012: David Short, 46, shot and a grenade exploded against him at his Clayton home; grenade attack on Sharon Hark's house in Droylsden. Cregan named as wanted that day.
August to September 2012: Manhunt with a £50,000 reward.
September 17, 2012: Cregan goes to 30 Abbey Gardens, Mottram.
September 18, 2012: False 999 call at 10:14 a.m.; PCs Fiona Bone, 32, and Nicola Hughes, 23, shot and killed at about 10:52 a.m. Cregan gives himself up at Hyde police station.
September 20, 2012: Charged with four murders and four attempted murders.
December 12, 2012: Memorial garden opened at Hyde police station.
February 4, 2013: Trial of ten defendants opens at Preston Crown Court.
February 12, 2013: Cregan pleads guilty to murdering PCs Bone and Hughes.
March 21, 2013: Psychiatrist tells the jury Cregan admitted all four killings to him.
May 22, 2013: Cregan pleads guilty to murdering Mark and David Short, three attempted murders and causing an explosion.
June 3, 2013: Ten grenades from the same batch found in Oldham.
June 13, 2013: Verdicts; Cregan acquitted of the Hark attempted murder. Whole life order imposed; co-defendants sentenced.
September 5, 2013: Moved to Ashworth Hospital after a hunger strike.
February 20, 2014: Anita Cregan, Kathryn Smith and Sean Booth acquitted.
March 26, 2014: Court of Appeal refuses Wilkinson and Ward leave to appeal.
2014: PC Nicola Hughes Memorial Fund founded; PC Katie Murray jailed in December.
July 14, 2016: David Cameron unveils memorial stone near the scene.
August 2016: Former PC Andrew Summerscales found dead.
2015 to 2020: Reported spells at Ashworth and at HMP Full Sutton; returned to Ashworth in 2020.
May 2024: Wilkinson's Glock recovered in Moss Side.
November 2024: Elizabeth Emblem introduced; the fathers of both officers among the first recipients.
December 1, 2025: Cregan taken under guard to Aintree University Hospital. Still serving his whole life order.