For those who died behind bars
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Introduction
Chapter 1 Solitary Dangermen
Chapter 2 Scottish Folklore Hard Bastards
Chapter 3 Scottish Hard Female
Chapter 4 The Taxman
Chapter 5 Nut Jobs
Chapter 6 Loch Ness Monsters
Chapter 7 Bongo’s Madness
Chapter 8 Hard as Nails
Chapter 9 Years, Years, Years
Chapter 10 Great Escapers
Chapter 11 Wildcards
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Further Reading
Copyright
This book will take you deep inside the rough, mad, bad, drug-infested, cut-throat, back-stabbing world of Scottish-born, -bred, -raised or -adopted sons like no other book has done before or, for that matter, will ever do again: that is a promise. The sheer violence on these pages will chill your blood to the bone and will make the hairs on your neck stand on end.
You will find explosive violence such as coshings, scaldings, slashings (a typical Scottish favourite), stabbings, riots, hostages and, of course, ultimately, murders – some of which even took place within the fences and walls of the Scottish penal system.
I make no apologies for glorifying or lionising the characters that I have written about within these pages. They each have their reasons for the way in which the cookie crumbled either for or against them and who am I to stand in judgment against them? Unless you have been in their position, it is impossible to cast the first stone.
Although I may say that a particular character is a great guy, do not let that fool you into thinking that you, as a member of the public, could approach them: I have served my apprenticeship in the hate factories alongside some of them; I have gained their respect, friendship or simply just a knowledge of them by virtue of my own distasteful past. Therefore, do not be fooled by how I put them across in my own terms.
Because of some of the characters within the Scottish penal system, and as a result of their unbridled violence, hundreds of people have lost their lives and untold thousands have been scarred for life.
Many of the characters I have known are now dead; needless to say, the majority of them succumbed to violent deaths. That is how deep my connections go.
A handful of characters that I have never met have also been mentioned within these pages. I have deemed these particular men worthy of inclusion as a result of what I have heard about them over time. In addition, there are some men who I have had to omit from the book, as they are still too actively involved in crime to want to be exposed.
It is not my intention to reveal things about people that could lead to their imprisonment. Let me get one thing straight. Where things of an incriminating nature are mentioned, it is because such information is common knowledge, despite the fact that it would be difficult to prove in a court of law.
I have selected the crème de la crème of the toughest, maddest, hardest Scottish bastards that have ever drawn breath, from the tens of thousands of criminals I have mixed with behind bars, in the streets and who I have known of over the last three decades of my criminally active life – the eighties, nineties and noughties.
The men included in this book are not listed in order of hardest: each is different and have been chosen based on my own criteria. There is no attempt to match any one against the other or to stir up trouble by having missed certain characters who some believe should have made it through to my final choice. For any of the characters who have been left out simply because they have not come to my attention, I apologise.
These hard men cannot be compared to each other – some fight with their bare hands, some with their brains and others with weapons. Some have a sixth sense for survival and avoid death with catlike ease. I don’t include any world champions at this or that, but I do include men who could wipe the floor with any world champion of anything you threw at them. The only sport some of these men among men know is pain; they have the ability to dish out pain beyond your wildest nightmares. As for size, remember – sometimes, less is more: a smaller area to hit, a smaller size to spot and far less time to see who is coming at you from out of the shadows.
On the other hand, take Brian Cockerill or ‘The Taxman’. He’s a mammoth with brainpower: an unstoppable force and a weapon of mass destruction with a megaton load in just one fist… he is truly awesome. He has been arrested literally hundreds of times, is suspected by the police of having been involved in half a dozen murders and has been arrested on as many murder investigations, but he always seems to walk away uncharged. No man would want to be on the receiving end of the Taxman’s no-holds-barred punishment.
Cunning can be just as effective as size. Take James Crosbie. He was once classified as the most dangerous man in Scotland and became notorious for his daring bank robberies and for the way he managed to escape on a bicycle. He was the criminal mastermind behind many successful crimes carried out throughout the UK.
Everything about James Crosbie oozed gold-plated panache; even his flying-club membership number with the Glasgow Flying Club was akin to the James Bond image that he lived. He was a flamboyant, larger-than-life, fun-loving character, who loved guns, women and fast cars and who was considered a lovable rogue by those in the media.
Dubbed ‘Lucky Jim’, Crosbie stirred up a hornet’s nest in the Scottish justice system after he was accidentally granted bail after he had been charged with robbery and attempted murder. In a fatal error of judgment, Glasgow sheriff court freed Crosbie from Barlinnie Prison. However, he enjoyed only a few minutes of freedom before the Scottish police zoomed in on the prison to re-arrest him on further bankrobbery charges.
Joe Boyle is a spectacularly violent man; most of the prison system doesn’t seem to like Joe, but that is their problem. Yes, sir, Joe is one dangerous customer: he had only been out of prison for four days when he murdered a rival gangster who used to laugh at him when he was a kid.
Dingus McGee was in his early forties when he received a life sentence with a twenty-year recommendation for his part in a cash-and-carry robbery that went horribly wrong: he blew the guard’s brains out.
Each man has a story to tell and each of these stories could fill a book of their own. It just goes to show the impossible task of telling all that there is to tell. Perhaps the stories that don’t make it into these pages will find their way into another book, and good luck to the prospective authors if that happens.
I am going to bring the infamous incidents that have taken place behind bars and on the streets over the past fifty years back to life like no other book has done before. If you enjoy true crime, then this book is definitely the one for you. The danger and the extreme violence that goes on inside the Scottish system – and on the outside – really is explosive. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I have enjoyed writing it, with my good friend and number one investigative author, Stephen Richards.
I just hope that