Convicted murderer Hugh Collins was offered £10,000 to kill Paul Ferris but turned down the hit, the Record can reveal. Collins, who was being prepared for release from prison at the time, later told Ferris about the offer. Ferris reportedly believed the bounty had been offered by associates of Arthur “Fat Boy” Thompson jnr, son of the late Glasgow godfather Arthur Thompson.
Bounty offered before release
In early 1991, Collins was being considered for release from a life sentence for the murder of rival gangster Willie Mooney. He told close friends it was common for killers nearing freedom after a long jail stint to be offered gangland hits to set themselves up financially, but he refused the contract.
Collins was in love with artist Caroline McNairn, whom he had met through art projects while preparing for freedom, and was determined to go straight and marry her. He was eventually released in July 1994 and married Caroline a month later.
Revelation during TV programme
The revelation was made to journalist Marcello Mega while the three men were involved in making a television programme together. Mega said Collins told him that when word got out about his parole, men from Arthur Thompson’s crew approached him in jail and offered £10,000 to kill Ferris on release.
Collins and Ferris met for the first time while recording the programme. Collins made clear he had never considered the offer. Ferris laughed and said “How’s that for poetic justice?” – hinting he knew the offer came from Thompson associates. Just months after the offer in 1991, Thompson jnr was shot dead. Ferris was later tried and cleared of his murder.
Collins’ later life and death
Collins, once dubbed “Scotland’s most dangerous prisoner”, was convicted of murder in 1977. He underwent a famous rehabilitation through art and writing in the Barlinnie Special Unit, becoming a respected sculptor and author before his death in 2021.
Speaking before his death, in comments not published at the time, he said: “I did a terrible thing and deserved to be punished. But the brutality in prison, the beatings I took, turned me into an absolute animal and I was always trying to hurt the screws, then they would gather and beat me to a pulp.
“It was a terrible cycle of violence, but the move to the Special Unit, being treated like a human being again, saved me. That’s what led me to art and to Caroline.
“If I’d never met her and had that reason to stay away from crime, I might have had my head turned by £10,000, but I know it could only have ended in one of two ways, like my fight with Willie. Either I’d have been back in prison forever, or I’d have been on the mortuary slab after a revenge attack. Anyway, after I met Paul, I liked him fine.”
Collins and Caroline shared their lives happily until her death from cancer in 2010 at 55. Collins said he then lived only to look after their dog, Blackie. He died peacefully at his Borders home in 2021, aged 70.
Tributes and warnings after Ferris’ death
After news of Ferris’s death spread, there were widespread tributes from friends in Scotland’s criminal underworld. But Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay warned against eulogising Ferris, who died at 62.
Findlay, a former crime reporter, said: “Having reported extensively on the devastation caused by this career criminal, the people we should be thinking about are his many victims.”
In 2012, Findlay interviewed Georgina Hamilton, widow of Paul Hamilton, who was gunned down in 1993 while on his way to meet Ferris to collect money he was owed. She said: “No one can justify the killing of someone else. Ferris doesn’t know the meaning of truth. It’s all other people who are left behind to pay the price. I don’t hate him, I loathe him.”
Ferris and an associate were interviewed by police over Hamilton’s murder, which remains unsolved. At his 1992 trial, Ferris was acquitted of all charges, including conspiracy to assault John “Jonah” McKenzie and attempted murder of Thompson snr. Graeme Pearson, ex-head of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, said witnesses were intimidated and forensic science had not developed to its current extent.
Ferris was later jailed for seven years after being caught with guns in London in 1997. After his release in 2002, he claimed he had turned his back on crime and became an author, with his first book – The Ferris Conspiracy – made into a film.
