Fire services in Cork had responded to multiple alerts at killer Conor Downey's home in his final years before a fatal blaze on Tuesday, CorkBeo reports.
Convicted killer Downey, 57, was found dead at his burning house on West Douglas Road.
Gardai are investigating the death, and their next steps set to be determined by the postmortem results.
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The circumstances around Downey's passing aren't believed to be suspicious, with the current leading theory being that he had fallen asleep while smoking a cigarette.
It wasn't the first time emergency services rushed to the home over a fire - with sources saying it happened multiple times over the years.
Downey had kept a low profile since moving onto the street over ten years ago.
He used to enjoy having a drink alone in the home, and on some occasions, had started fires after falling asleep while cigarettes were lit.
The alarm was raised at around 3pm on Tuesday when neighbours spotted smoke coming from the windows.
Emergency services rushed to the scene and, after getting the flames under control, Downey's remains were found in the downstairs room.
They were removed to CUH where a postmortem is due to take place at a later date.
Locals in the neighbourhood where Downey had been living told CorkBeo that he had kept a very low profile in the area, where he was most often seen doing the shopping for a family member who lived nearby.
One local told CorkBeo that some people in the area knew of Downey's violent criminal past and were very wary of him, but that "he lived a very quiet life" and seemed to spend most of his time caring for his sister. His parents are deceased.
They said: “There was a bit of fear when he first moved in, but he ended up being very quiet. You’d see him out and he was friendly, but he never went to the pubs or anything like that. He just kept to himself at home.
“His sister lived nearby and he would go out to help her with stuff but otherwise he’d only have popped to the shops or had a drink in his house.”
In 2004, Downey (then 39) was jailed for 12 years after a trial in the Central Criminal Court in Dublin heard that he had broken into a woman's flat in Cork city while she was sleeping, sexually assaulted her beat her so badly that when she arrived at a nearby Garda station, officers thought she was 'wearing a Halloween mask'.
The rape happened in 1988, but it wasn't until 2001 that gardai were led to him via DNA.
Following Rachel Kiely's killing in Ballincollig, Downey provided a DNA sample to investigators and was ruled out of that crime. It was the same sample that led them to finding a connection to the 1988 case.
Downey had also been jailed in 1993 in London for the manslaughter - also in 1988 - of 26-year-old Donegal woman Suzanne Redden with whom he had been sharing a house with in England.
Suzanne's remains were only found in 1992, after Downey himself went to police in Surrey and confessed to the crime. He told police they had been having consensual sex but she had withdrawn her consent at one stage. During his confession, he told detectives that he then became angry and strangled her.
He gave information to the police which led to some of her body parts being recovered. But her torso was never found. His fingerprints were found on bags in which body parts were concealed.
He had been jailed for just three years in England for the killing of young Letterkenny woman and after he was freed, he returned to Cork to live in the late 1990s.
It was May 2001 when he was arrested in connection with the 1988 Cork rape and he was later sentenced to 12 years.
After his release he moved to Douglas West where his presence initially caused a lot of alarm - but he ended up living a very quiet secluded life up to his death on Tuesday.
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