Dingus is currently serving the rest of his twenty years down in Greenock’s Christwell House. Hope you are plodding on, pal. Keep your chin up. Lots of respect mate. Yours, Jimmy Boy.
JOE BOYLE
As I’ve said, Joe Boyle is a violent man disliked by the prison system. There are people I am going to put in this book who I don’t like either, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t recognise what they have done in the prison system – and you can’t ignore hard bastards like these.
But Joe is my friend. He was, and still is, a deep person and someone who is difficult to get to know. Perhaps that is why people don’t like him. The first time I met him, he was in the remand centre up in Longrigend, a place where one young boy thinks that he is the top man until some other young boy comes along and slashes his face off or stabs him up.
Joe had made a name for himself even back then. I have witnessed two or three boys trying to cosh and slash Joe, but he wasn’t, and still isn’t, anyone’s mug. Joe picked up a pool cue and smashed it over the three boys’ heads; he didn’t stop until the screws pulled him off them. As a result of this sort of behaviour, Joe was always in the seg units.
When he was twenty-one years old, he became classed as an adult con and the crazy diamond set out on a one-man mission to take over Perth adult jail. And by fuck, he gave it a very good shot. Most of the so-called gangster hard men didn’t want to know when Joe offered them a roll-about with his bare hands or with knives. Once, when Joe was sleeping in his bed, two men ran into his cell with knives in their hands and tried to murder him. However, Joe being Joe, and not giving two fucks about his own safety, ran at them head on in his cell. In fear, one dropped his knife and bolted; the other tried to stand his ground, but to no avail. Joe stabbed him.
I recall another incident when Joe was younger. A hard man by the name of Burnside used to hit him and his little brothers and sister. However, when Joe grew up, he waited until Burnside came to prison and evened the scores: he dragged the man kicking and screaming into his cell and proceeded to stab him in the eye. And that wasn’t all. He then stuck a teaspoon into Burnside’s damaged eye and scooped it out of the socket. Yes sir, Joe is one violent man.
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. It was the first time that Joe had seen his rival in over ten years. He received a life sentence for his troubles and was put straight into the seg unit in Barlinnie, before being transferred to the Shotts maneater, along with some forty or more other hardened prisoners who were doing their rules (segregation punishment) for their part in a riot or a hostage-taking or a stabbing or some other incident. The forty-odd prisoners teased and taunted Joe at the windows, day in, day out. They never did so to his face.
Joe made it his personal goal in life to go to war with every single one of them and that is exactly what he did. He would make sure that he got let out to use the phone; it was an excuse to catch whichever hard man was going to a visit that night – to get there, they had to walk past Joe when he was on the phone.
I can tell you because I was there: some of the so-called hardest men in the system cancelled their visits because they didn’t want to have to face Joe. The screws and shrinks couldn’t place Joe into mainstream prison, so they marked him down as insane and shipped him up to the state hospital for his own safety, and even more for the safety of the screws and the other cons.
I still write to Joe. He has now been up in the state hospital for twelve years, is doing really well and could soon be up for release. If Joe had been forced to do his time in a mainstream prison, among the cons, there would definitely have been a string of murders; that is how dangerous Joe was and still can be, but let’s all hope that he can keep his cool. Joe, brother, you know that you have got so many good people around you now and that you don’t need to go back down that slippery slope of pure and utter violence. I hope to see you very soon when you get out. Give Linda, Scott, Maria and the kids my love. Your friend till the end. Love and respect bro.
TOMMY GORDON
Tommy Gordon started off by doing three years in the young offenders’. He is still in prison, though, as he had a ‘run-in’ with another young offender during his stint there. I don’t see eye to eye with this boy - but you cannot take it away from him, he is a dangerous bastard. It is common knowledge in prison that Tommy is a homosexual, but that doesn’t bother me.
But what did bother me was that Tommy lied and in turn made me out to be some sort of liar, someone who went out of his way to embarrass him in front of his peers, such as Kenny Kelly (who had a name for himself in prison back in the good old Peterhead days, but I will go into that in more detail later).
Tommy took it upon himself to issue me with a personal threat. He thought that because he had murdered a prisoner – by sticking an 18in knife through the boy’s back and leaving it in – I was going to back down. Maybe some weaker people would have backed down, but I wasn’t going to let this boy rule my life. I dealt with it by stabbing him, but this isn’t my story, this is Tommy’s.
As a result of murdering the young prisoner, Tommy and a boy called Raymie Holland both received life sentences and were sent to Dumfries young offenders. Tommy had ideas of making a break for freedom and that is what he did, along with a boy called Jacko.
They managed to escape from Dumfries top security young offenders and were away for over a week. Once they were caught, Tommy and Jacko lay rotting in the seg unit for some thirteen months before they got back up the stairs to mainstream prison.
Tommy was then sent to Glenochil adult prison. I soon followed in his footsteps and that is where I had my own run-in with him, sending him to hospital in the process. After his recovery, he moved on to Perth Prison, where he was the ringleader in some trouble that resulted in a screw being taken hostage.
He was placed back in seg units and received a further six years on top of his life sentence for the hostage incident, before being transferred to the newly opened Peterhead special unit. There he had a run-in with my friend and former co-accused, Billy Lewis.
Tommy stabbed Billy through the face with a lock-back knife, but was injured himself during the scuffle and was taken to the hospital in Peterhead. During the hospital transfer, he made good his escape from his prison guard escort.
Tommy was back on the run: he managed to stay out of prison for some six weeks, before he was eventually trapped in one of the main train stations down in London. After photos of him had been plastered all over the television and in the newspapers, a family from Scotland recognised him. How unlucky is that?
You see, even though I hate this boy, I still take my hat off to him for what he has done. He has never taken his sentence lying down, no sir. Tommy is, and always will be, a fighter to the very end. He has now been in prison for sixteen years and people tell me that if he keeps screwing the nut he could be up for release within four years. That must be a bonus for him and I wish him all the best for getting out of prison, even though I don’t like him. He is still one of the most badass cons I have done my time with and I will close his story here.
‘PORKIE’ O’ROURKE
James ‘Porkie’ O’Rourke is serving his life sentence down in Kilmarnock’s privately run prison. He had been involved with me in various activities on a few different occasions and has also taken three hostages in his own right while serving out his life sentence.
Sadly, Porkie is still being held in prison. He would have been released back into the community if it wasn’t for the fact that he is one of the most dangerous men in the Scottish prison system. Porkie received a further seventeen years on top of his life sentence for his part in the three incidents of hostage-taking.
When