Two Belfast thugs with loyalist paramilitary connections have been warned to expect lengthy jail sentences after being convicted of plotting a terrifying armed robbery in England during which a blind man was attacked.

Loyalist killer Alexander Calderwood (47) and career criminal Billy Grogan (48) were each found guilty of conspiracy to rob over a gun and hammer raid at a snooker club in Bournemouth.

The co-defendants used phone and text messages to direct two members of staff from a notorious pub called Deacons to the Academy Snooker Club. They also made sure a security door was open.

The two raiders, Martin Trent and Martin Willis, went on to attack a blind man with a silver claw hammer, fire a pistol shot into the roof, and escape with just over £4,000.

Former soldier Trent (41) and Willis (46) pleaded guilty to robbery while Calderwood and Grogan went on trial at Bournemouth Crown Court where they were convicted this week.

Belfast-born Grogan has previously received jail sentences totalling more than 65 years for robbery and drug dealing while Calderwood is a former UDA member with a conviction for murder.

Grogan was co-owner of Deacons at the time of the raid and Trent, Willis and Calderwood all lived and worked at the pub.

The officer in the case, Det Sgt Ashton Rietiker, said afterwards: “Billy Grogan is a dangerous offender and it was important to obtain a conviction against him.

“I think he is the man who orchestrated and directed the robbery. Calderwood is Grogan’s best friend and I think he was quite happy to go along with whatever Billy Grogan said.

“I believe it was a robbery that was not well planned — I think they thought it was so easy they could get away with it. The fact they were able to acquire a firearm, which still remains unaccounted for, is a very real concern.”

The police relied on detailed analysis of the men’s phones and CCTV images from Deacons and the Academy to put Grogan and Calderwood in the frame over the raid at 3.20am on October 22 last year.

Grogan, of Belle Vue Road in Southbourne, directed operations from the pub and let the robbers in and out, while Calderwood posed as a normal customer at the snooker club and checked the security door was open.

Trent and Willis, clad in balaclavas, escaped back to Deacons in Christchurch Road, which was just 10 minutes walk away.

The jury, which was reduced by illness to 10 members, reached a majority 9-1 verdict after 11 hours and 47 minutes of deliberations spread over three days.

Judge Harvey Clarke QC said the defendants would get “very significant sentences” when they appear in court again in August.

Sinister background of thugs who terrorised Dorset

Belfast days: Calderwood served 11 years in jail for the murder of a Catholic while Grogan (right) took part in a loyalist hunger strike

Billy Grogan has been one of Dorset’s most notorious criminals since moving to the English county around 15 years ago.

He grew up in a Belfast in the street next to life long friend Alexander Calderwood and the 48-year-old was alleged during a police inquiry to have links to loyalist paramilitaries.

He was understood to be one of 10 loyalists who went on hunger strike in the 1980s demanding to be separated from Republican prisoners.

Calderwood is an ex-UDA man who served 11 years in jail for the murder of 20-year-old Catholic Alexander Reid who was battered to death with a breeze block in 1980.

He was one of three men convicted of the gruesome murder which took place in an alleyway off Belfast’s Shankill Road where the victim had been delivered by taxi after being targeted for being a Catholic. He was punched and kicked until he was unconscious before being repeatedly struck on the head with a brick and concrete block.

Calderwood later claimed to have become a born-again Christian while in jail. On his release, he became a cross-community church worker and participated in a TV programme with Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

During the trial at Bournemouth Crown Court, Grogan gave evidence calmly and succinctly. He said he was a successful pub manager with no need to rob people.

However, his record shows exactly why police suspected him from the start.

Convictions include selling class A drugs, nine robberies, having a firearm, GBH, money laundering, assault and disqualified driving.

In 1988 he was convicted in Manchester of an armed robbery at a post office.

He was jailed in February 2001 for six years for supplying drugs in Winton. By then he had received jail terms totalling 65 and a half years.

And a pre-trial hearing heard he has allegedly made threats to police officers and their families.

During the conspiracy trial, the jury watched footage from Deacons CCTV that showed Martin Trent, a violent man with numerous convictions, dancing on a table.

He stopped straight away when reprimanded by the short, stocky Billy Grogan.

“Did you see how Mr Trent behaved?” prosecutor Christopher Patrick asked the jury. “He obeyed instantly. He wouldn’t mess with Billy Grogan.”

Criminal empire run from a pub

The full story of what police believe was really going on at the notorious Deacons pub in Bournemouth could only be told publicly after the guilty verdicts on Billy Grogan and Alexander Calderwood.

Police believe Grogan took over the pub last summer, installed criminal associates in the pub’s flats and that the pub was then used as a base for drug dealing.

Grogan then plotted the robbery from the pub and used his criminal tenants to carry out the raid at The Academy Snooker Club, police believe.

The allegations of drug dealing emerged during a “crack house” hearing to close Deacons in December at Bournemouth Magistrates Court.

But details could not be reported until now to avoid prejudicing the conspiracy to rob trial of Grogan and Calderwood.

Prosecutor Justin Shale told the closure hearing at Bournemouth Magistrates: “The reality is that this pub is run in such a bad way that it is a meeting place for drug dealers and villains.”

The defence denied the drugs charges and no-one from the pub, including Grogan, was ever charged with any criminal drug offences but the pub was still closed by magistrates using their civil powers.

Police told the “crack house” hearing that during the time Grogan was involved with the pub, shoplifters would take stolen items there to exchange them for drugs.

The magistrates were told of alleged assaults by staff, fights in the street outside and that a gun found at another location had been linked to Deacons.

A witness said how he saw a doorman decline to get involved as a man repeatedly punched a screaming woman outside the pub.

The men who moved into the pub included Grogan’s childhood friend from Belfast, Alexander Calderwood, who was convicted in 1982 of killing a Catholic man in Belfast when he was aged 17.

There was also Devonshire and Dorset soldier Martin Trent, who has convictions for kidnap, carrying a firearm, affray, actual bodily harm, burglary, threats to kill, threatening behaviour and possessing controlled drugs.

Trent and the pub painter and decorator Martin Willis were the men who would go to carry out the raid at the nearby Academy Snooker Club.

Police pieced together a complex web of phone calls to reveal the hidden part played by Calderwood and Grogan.