The full story of a notorious criminal's reign across parts of Nottingham has been revealed by the Evening Post in a special 32-page supplement.

Colin Gunn was last year jailed for life for conspiracy to murder, and has now been found guilty of plotting to corrupt Notts police officers, but until last month the paper had not been able to name him for legal reasons.

He had been known to the Evening Post for five years, having been the subject of 81 police operations to entice him, and such was the story's enormity that the paper decided a mere backgrounder piece would not be enough.

Instead it attempted to piece together his 'rise to infamy', linking cases which he has allegedly been involved in, naming his fellow gang members and taking an in-depth look at the police investigations.

The Post's legal affairs correspondent Rebecca Sherdley, crime reporter Guy Woodford and trainee reporter Kate Skelton worked off-diary in Gunn's old stamping ground, Bestwood Estate, speaking to as many people as possible.

Yet much of the content was opinion and allegation - as well as the facts from court and the police investigation.

Cathryn Smith, media lawyer at Foot Anstey, who advised the Post on its coverage, told holdthefrontpage that Gunn's conviction for conspiracy to murder John and Joan Stirland in Lincolnshire and the "horrendous" circumstances around it meant he had no reputation to defend.

She said: "We took the view that Colin Gunn had no reputation left, given his involvement in the Stirland case and that he had a string of other offences behind him.

"The other question was that Colin Gunn had been linked to other murders, including Marian Bates, but this had not come up in court so we had to look at whether we could make the link without any sort of privilege.

"We decided he was fair game and and there was no difficulty in talking about 'evil gunmaster Colin Gunn'."

News editor Steven Fletcher said: "There were long shifts for a lot of people - and our lawyers.

"We have played it straight and told the story that we hadn't been able to tell before.

"He has been involved in that many cases and crimes, but unless you were in his gang or the police you wouldn't have known that they all linked together."

The stand-alone supplement was co-ordinated by Steven and deputy news editor Jacqui Walls.

It was published on Saturday and it is estimated that more than 10,000 of the 14,000-print run has already been sold.

Steven told holdthefrontpage: "It has been flying off the shelves, particularly in the area which it centres on.

"Because of the trials that have been going on we hadn't been able to name him, which has been really frustrating.

"We would usually do a big backgrounder but we thought we had to do something different to mark this case out."

After Colin Gunn was found guilty of corruption on Thursday, the Post quickly broke the result on its website before publishing a special early morning editon on Friday with seven pages of background. This achieved 5,000 more sales than the previous Friday (+8.7 per cent).

Saturday's paper was up by 5.4 per cent on the previous week (3,000 sales) as the Post revealed how six more people with links to criminal gangs had tried to join Notts police in the past six months.

And the 32-page supplement - also published on Saturday - kept the editorial team working late into Friday night.