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IN the early hours of March 8, 1973, a huge fireball roared up the stairwell of a building on the corner of Amelia Street and St Pauls Terrace in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley.

Ignited by two nine-litre cans of petrol in a downstairs foyer, the fireball and its deadly gases killed 15 patrons — 10 men and 5 women — of the popular Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub. At the time, it was Australia's worst mass murder.

James Richard Finch, 29, and John Andrew Stuart, 33, were quickly arrested.

Finch, who had served seven years of a 14-year sentence for shooting a Sydney hitman, had come to Brisbane at Stuart's invitation.

From their first court appearance on the nightclub charges, both loudly protested their innocence, against evidence including a statement from Stuart's brother Daniel and another witness that the two men had tried to enlist them in a campaign to become the "Mr Bigs" of the Brisbane nightclub protection racket.

Finch and Stuart were convicted and sentenced in October 1973 to life, and then began a long legal battle for release. Both alleged police corruption and took to self-mutilation to proclaim their innocence.

They swallowed wire and Finch allowed Stuart to hack off one of his fingers.

Stuart was found dead in his cell after a six-day hunger strike in 1979.

Finch redoubled his campaign and enlisted the support and sympathy of many people, including journalists and civil libertarians.

In 1986, in a prison ceremony, Finch married the terminally ill and wheelchair-bound Cheryl Cole. They had met via a mutual friend three years earlier and Ms Cole was his staunchest defender and advocate.

Demands for a further inquiry increased when evidence of police corruption and "verballing" — the forcing of false confessions — emerged at the Fitzgerald inquiry.

In 1988, after serving 14 years and nine months, Finch was paroled on condition that he be deported immediately to his home country, England.

From the safety of England, he stunned his many supporters by announcing his guilt.

He boasted in an interview that he and Stuart were dressed "like Black September terrorists" on the night of the bombing and that "there was a sudden whoosh; it just started to burn".

His wife, who had joined him in England briefly, returned to Australia. She had been duped and used and they were divorced in 1991. Her creeping paralysis finally took her life in May 2001.

Finch lives on in England.