Murder of Stephen Tibble - Aftermath

Aftermath

Quinn escaped to Dublin where he was later arrested for assaulting a police officer. One of the plain-clothed officers who encountered him in the London incident identified him, but extradition from the Republic of Ireland to the United Kingdom was refused by the Irish courts. After serving a prison sentence in Ireland for IRA membership, Quinn, a U.S. citizen of Irish and Mexican descent, returned to San Francisco shortly after his release.

Quinn was arrested in California by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1981 after the U.S. government approved an extradition request from British authorities. He then instigated a thirteen-year battle against extradition to the UK. Quinn was extradited to England in 1988 and was tried and found guilty of murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in February 1988 with a recommended minimum sentence of thirty years. Quinn served eleven years in Portaloise prison before he was released in April 1999, along with the rest of the Balcombe Street gang, under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

Sympathetic members of the public donated money to Tibble's widow. He was posthumously awarded the Queen's Police Medal for gallantry and a memorial was erected at the spot where he was killed on Charleville Road in Barons Court.