A NOTORIOUS former football hooligan from Burnley has died.

Norman ‘Knuckles’ Jones, who was in his early 60s, passed away on Thursday.

Mr Jones, a former jiu-jitsu instructor and football coach at Paradise FC, was a leader of Burnley’s ‘Suicide Squad’ in the 1980s.

He often found himself in front of the courts after battling a cocaine addiction, and clocked up more than 150 convictions.

In his 30s he was jailed in America after killing a man who pulled a knife on him in a New York nightclub.

After serving 15 years of his sentence, including five in San Quentin and five in Sing Sing prisons, he was deported back to the UK in 2001.

Mr Jones had a history of health problems, including angina, and had suffered a heart attack in the past.

In March 2002 he was given his first football banning order after being accused of threatening behaviour and three years later admitted breaching the order when he took his children to an East Lancashire derby between Burnley and Blackburn Rovers.

Later in 2005, the dad-of-two was sent back to jail for 360 days for a six-month charity scam, in which he had told ‘sob stories’ to members of the public to persuade them to donate cash to bogus causes.

Following further convictions for theft and fraud in 2008, Mr Jones told Burnley Magistrates Court he needed help to battle his drugs addiction.

In May 2009, Mr Jones was released from prison, and later insisted he had put his life of crime behind him. But in June 2010 he was back in front of the courts, after pretending to be a fundraiser for Accrington Stanley. A year later he was convicted on 12 counts of fraud by false representation, for similar incidents around Water-foot and Bacup.

Mr Jones also previously lived in Colne and Nelson.