Paul Ferris, one of Scotland's most notorious gangland figures, has died in hospital after a short illness. The former gangland boss, who was cleared of murder and gunrunning charges, passed away on Tuesday.
Early life and rise in Glasgow's underworld
Ferris was the son of an armed robber and grew up in the Blackhill area of Glasgow, just 300 yards from the home of notorious Glasgow Godfather Arthur Thompson, known as the Ponderosa. After leaving school at 16, he started out as a van boy for a brewery firm before being offered £500 to be the getaway driver for a jewellery robbery.
He was soon locked up in a young offenders institution and, by the age of 19, he had moved into Thompson's inner circle and was employed as an enforcer. Ferris became one of Scotland's most feared men during his time under Thompson's wing, and he was cleared over the shooting of John Hogg in 1984.
Feud with Arthur Thompson and murder trial
Ferris was accused of being the triggerman for the botched hit, which took place in Glasgow earlier that year and saw Willie Gibson as the intended target. Gibson and Hogg were cousins, and Hogg was struck as the pair walked home from a night out together. Arthur Thompson had paid for the hit on Gibson. But when the gunman mistakenly struck Hogg, he shattered his thigh, leaving him with medical complications.
Ferris then branched out on his own and ended up warring with his former mentor. The pair fell out in the 1980s, with Ferris claiming the Thompsons set him up over a drugs bust in Rothesay, on the Isle of Bute. He said only two people knew where he was going - Thompson Senior and Thompson Junior - leaving him unable to say for sure who was behind it.
The fallout between Ferris and Thompson Senior has been linked to the fatal shooting of Arthur Thompson Junior and murder of two Ferris associates. Known as "Fat Boy", 31-year-old Thompson Junior was gunned down outside his father's home in Glasgow's Provanmill area in 1991. Ferris associates Bobby Glover, 31, and Joe "Bananas" Hanlon, 23, were shot dead shortly after. Their bodies were found dumped inside a car on the day of Fat Boy's funeral.
Ferris was charged over Fat Boy's murder and was found not guilty of the killing following a trial at the High Court in Glasgow in 1992. Glover and Hanlon were blamed for helping carry out the hit but nobody else has ever been charged in connection with the gangland assassination.
Gunrunning conviction and later life
Scottish police officers labelled Ferris 'Houdini' after he walked free from Fat Boy's murder rap, the shooting of Hogg, and drugs and firearms charges in court cases they believed were airtight. But he was caught ferrying guns to Glasgow as part of a groundbreaking undercover probe in the late '90s. Operation Abonar involved MI5, Strathclyde Police, Scotland Yard, and the South-East Regional Crime Squad (SERCS). Officers snared him smuggling three MAC-10 submachine guns, Uzi magazines, silencers and dozens of blue-tipped and copper-jacketed 9mm ammunition to Glasgow - in an Opal Fruits box in 1997.
Law enforcement believe he planned to use the deadly weapons to wreak havoc on the streets of Glasgow and, in 1998, he was jailed for 10 years over the gunrunning plot. But he appealed and the sentence was reduced to seven years, seeing out his sentence within London's notorious Belmarsh Prison.
He vowed to go straight while serving his sentence, due to the involvement of MI5 in the probe which snared him, but was caught up in a spat with rival Tam McGraw after he was released from jail. The feud broke out after Ferris told anyone who would listen that McGraw was a police informant. McGraw earned the moniker "The Licensee" because rival criminals believed the police gave him a literal "license" to build a drug empire without fear of arrest, in exchange for intelligence on other gangsters.
In May 2002, a violent altercation occurred involving Ferris and McGraw, where McGraw was slashed and Ferris suffered knife wounds. Following the altercation, Tam McGraw invited the Record into his home in Mount Vernon and stripped off his shirt to prove he hadn't been stabbed. Following the knife attack, a meeting involving Ferris caught on police surveillance led to Ferris having his parole revoked and being sent back to prison.
Books, film and family
Ferris penned a number of books since going straight. He published his first book whilst behind bars and two more were published on his life of crime. A film telling his life story, The Wee Man, starring Martin Compston was released in 2013 and it was announced earlier this year a sequel was due to start filming.
His brother, Billy Ferris, died in HMP Low Moss last year at the age of 75. The double-murderer was first caged for killing a man in Corby, Northamptonshire in 1977 but was freed in 1999 but was jailed for life in 2003 for the brutal murder of 15-year-old Jason Hutchison in Irvine.
