The Underworld Podcast - Glasgow's Ice Cream Wars: Drugs, Police Framing, and Soft Serve

Episode Date: January 31, 2022

As badly-planned 1960s projects pushed Glasgow's poorest people to the city's fringes, ice cream vans became a lifeline, delivering food, drink and cigarettes. Before long, gangsters got in on the act, packing out vans with drugs, guns and stolen goods. A war between the city's hell-bent, crucifying 'Godfather' and pretenders to his throne ensued. But it was mostly beer-money "frighteners" and smashed windows. Until somebody committed mass murder, and sent the city into a tailspin. What Glasgow's underworld did next would define Scottish crime for decades. What the police did, might just be worse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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at Yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. 2 a.m. April 16th, 1984. In the rundown Glasgow suburb of Rukesi nine members of the Doyle family are asleep in their top floor apartment

in one of the Scottish city's roughest and toughest neighborhoods. Tensions are sky high. 18-year-old Andrew Doyle, known by the unfortunate nickname Fat Boy, has only been in his new job driving ice cream vans around town for a few months. But in 1980s, Glasgow, ice cream vans aren't just selling chaco-tacos and bomb pops, both of which rule, and Andrews been threatened, beaten, and shot at for refusing the overtures of some of the city's most violent men.

Just a few weeks before, a mass attacker had fired a shotgun through the windshield of Andrew's van, But he escaped and carried on with his route, just selling toasted almonds and strawberry shortcakes like it was normal. Tonight, though, will be tragically different. Two men pour gas all over the Doyle's front door and lighted on fire. The whole building goes up in flames, and poisonous black smoke fills the halls and other apartments. Firefighters rush to the inferno,

but for six of the Doyles, it's too late. Andrew's father James, brothers Daniel and Anthony, his sister, Christine, and her 18-month-old son, all died. Andrew stumbles out onto the street, dazed, and makes it to an ambulance. But the smoke kills him hours later. A survivor will later say that the Doyle family screams seem to go on for hours, adding it was a living hell. The bloodshed horrifies Glasgow and Britain. Despite the city's fearsome track record for organized crime, this is its worst ever mass killing. The Doyle massacre is the awful conclusion to the so-called ice cream wars that gripped Glasgow's poorest project.

for over a decade. The public wants the perpetrators and the police, who everyone either hates for not being able to stop it or for possibly being in on the take, have their backs against the wall. But what they'll do in the coming weeks

will make things far worse, keeping shame on an episode ranking as one of the worst in Scottish criminal history. This is the Underworld podcast. Welcome back to the Underworld podcast. I am your host, Danny Gold, and with me, as always, is Sean Williams.

we are two journalists that have reported all over, and now here on this podcast, we tell you stories about organized crime from all over the world. So special note, this is actually a Sean episode. Like he did all the writing and research and all that, but he let me do the intro because I just had an appearance on the Jordan Harbinger show,

which you guys should go listen to. It's a massive podcast, and we didn't want new fans coming over to be confused by, you know, a British accent and just bad jokes about Cricken and all that. But Sean, you'll be taken over from here. and I kind of thought Glasgow Iskimoire is like, okay, this will be a nice, pleasant one after the horrific stories you told last week about the rascal gangs that kind of shocked people.

But here we are, intro, there's a building burning down, a newborn baby dying, and just like, what's going on with you, man? Should we be worried? Yeah, did you not think that, like, a toddler dying in a house fire was a little bit more upbeat after the last one? It's just dark, and I want our new fans to know that Sean's going through a tough time, but we're going to help him out there with. Also, just want to say, I wasn't able to get an episode up too

because I was making a doc for the UK's Unreported World on Fentadol and St. Louis. It should be out in a few months, so look out for that. And patreon.com slash the underworld podcast, as ever for bonus episodes and everything else. Yeah, I mean, this is the new world, right? Where one of us comes on and tells the other

that we're actually doing stuff and going on assignment and being in cool places and, like, doing stories about organized crimes. So, yeah, like, keep that coming. I'm, I mean, off to Sicily in a couple of days, to a story about mafia and rugby teams of all things. So that's going to be cool as well. Like, life's coming back to normal. I mean, everyone's got Omicron. Everyone's falling over in the streets, but, you know, we've got work, so it's good. Also, I'm just going to say, I'm going to be in New York in five weeks and, like, thinking maybe we should get some folks together for a drink, do a live record and some appropriately dirty Brooklyn bar that you know. What do you reckon about that?

I think it's a terrible idea, but you know, knock yourself out. Okay, cool. I, yeah, so I actually picked this episode because I'd seen the ice cream wars come up before and one podcast that I listened to years ago did a show on this and they got almost everything wrong. And if you've listened to that show, which is pretty popular, you know what I'm still going to talk about, but I won't shit on them directly. And it kind of, this whole situation looks silly on first examination, right? But after the horror show about Papua New Guinea, right back in it, mass killing in the intro, house fire, baby killed. I mean, is there like a mean gangster or the modern version of that guy who sold the Eiffel Tower or something? I mean, I think I've got to find some levity somewhere in these shows, but it's not

all about death and misery in the Glasgow Ice Cream Wars, although, you know, There's plenty of that, and you guys know you listen to anyway. Yeah, I thought it was going to be mostly about drugs, but from your opening, it seems like there was actually ice cream involved as well. There is. There's ice cream and drugs. I mean, these vans have got it all. And to understand how this whole bat-shick crazy turn of events panned out the way it did,

you've actually got to understand Glasgow's history and how it becomes such a hotbed of crime in the 20th century. So for anybody who doesn't know Glasgow, it's the most popular city in Scotland, but 100,000 more folks in it than the capital of Edinburgh. And while Edinburgh is known for its castles and the comedy festival and fancy restaurants, Glasgow isn't. There's only 50 miles between these two cities.

One's considered one of the safest places in the UK and the other one, one of the least safe. And this reminds me of a great Frankie Boyle joke, which is the difference between Edinburgh and Glasgow, is that if you see a guy walking down the street in Edinburgh with a golf club, he's probably off to play golf. Yeah, I feel like the stereotype of Glasgow in the US is just like heroin and someone hitting you over the head with a bottle.

But also, that's a great joke. Yeah, it is. And, I mean, like, train spotting was in Edinburgh as well. So I think there's a lot of drug stuff that's gone down there. But these two cities are very, very wildly different. Glasgow's an industrial center. It's the heart of shipbuilding, iron, still works. And in the 1800s, you've got all your Dickensian faves, right?

You've got muddy tenement blocks, cholera, smog, sad-looking blokes in flat caps and football. with boots the size of clown shoes. There's all that stuff. This is when local gangs begin stepping up. So there's a local history I read, quote, the poverty, squalor, and terrible overcrowding of this great industrial city led to a harsh, indifferent attitude to life and self-preservation.

So yeah, like, you're getting the image, right? It's pretty tough up there. It's got those kind of late 1800s, Asbury's gang of New York vibes too, you know, just insane poverty and depravity as things industrialize. Yeah, they probably had the mutton chops and the big hats as well. I think it was a good.

The first big Glasgow gangs, this street outfit called the Penny Mob, which comes out of the city's east end. These guys quickly get a bunch of enemies, including the Santoy's, who come out of the city centre and often fight with the Tim Malloy's. I mean, I love these gang names, and they're only going to get better, by the way. There's this huge park in the middle of Glasgow on the banks of the River Clyde. Glasgow Green still exists today. And that's where the majority of fights break out.

These are your Anchorman-style battles, clubs and fists and whatnot called Square Goes. Solid reference. I mean, you're getting better. Okay, thank you. And these Square Goes, they get pretty popular. You've got the Mealy Boys, the McGlynn Push, and the Gold Dust Gang join in. But similar to our episode about the true peeky blinders in Birmingham, the First World War really turns young men into hardened fighters and criminals. The most vicious of these was inappropriately, called the Redskins, who ditched the square twos for battles with swords, hatchets, machetes, clubs, and razors. I want to make like a Glasgow football team joke, but I don't think most people will get it. I will get to the football. We'll get to the football.

I mean, they fight. Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on. No, I was going to say, because the Washington Redskins change. Anyway, whatever, man, keep going. Sorry. I mean, the football, you know, it might be a little bit more PC in Glasgow these days, But it's, I don't know, it's pretty bad. They fight gangs. We're talking, we're missing each other here, but it's fine. Yeah, okay.

Yeah. These guys, they fight gangs including the Colton Black Hand, the Bloodhound Flying Cores, the High Highs, the Kelly Boys from Govern, and the Baltic Fleet. I mean, these are just like grade A gang names. This is when Glasgow's reputation for violence really soars. And it's when gangs start using razors to inflict the so-called Glasgow smile on enemies. That is, when you cut either sides of someone's mouth so it gapes open, just like Jack Nicholson's Joker. I always thought it was a Chelsea smile, actually, but I grew up south of the border.

Here's Scottish writer Robbie Morrison describing post-First World War Glasgow, quote, Glasgow in the 1930s was, as the infamous saying goes, no mean city. Shipbuilding and heavy engineering, industries that made it the second city of the empire, had fallen into steep decline after the Great War, only to be further around. ravaged by the Great Depression, who was in mass unemployment. In those days, Great was often an adjective to be avoided. And Morrison goes on, quote, Glasgow was the most congested and overcrowded metropolis in Britain, largely to an influx of immigrants, including Irish, Italians, Russians, Jews, Lithuanians, that led to the Gourbles District being named the League of Nations.

The majority of the population was housed in four-story tenements, entire families' crammed into one or two rooms with little dignity or sanitation. Alcohol abuse, division, sectarianism and violence were rife. People survived through camaraderie, community spirit and that sense of humour that was and is to this day, particularly Glasgow-Wasian. Football, as I mentioned before, is like a massive part of all this, and it's still perhaps the biggest part of Glasgow's identity today. It's two teams, Rangers and Celtic, are by far the best side in Scottish history, and their

Derby match, the old firm, is one of the craziest in the world. It's a standing for sectarian violence with Celtic the Catholic and Rangers the Protestant clubs. Each game gets around 50 to 60,000 fans, and apparently violent attacks increase ninefold on match days. Cops have actually recently called for the game to be banned, even in the modern era as it gets so violent. As recent as last May, a guy was machete to death after a row about Celtic and Rangers.

Europeans, man. So uncivilized. Just exporting that to the world. And there's still loads of sectarian bullshit happens at the old firm today. And as you can imagine in the 20s and 30s when the IRA is founded, for example, and stuff across the Irish sea is getting pretty brutal. This was pretty

insane on the terraces back then. In fact, there's a time when Glasgow is known as the quote, murder capital of Western Europe. What are the terraces? Okay. Bleachers. Ah, okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's at this time

the gang called the Billy Boys rises to become the biggest gang in Glasgow. It's a prized an outfit named for William of Orange, the Dutch King who seized the Catholic thrones of King James II in the 17th century and who's still the patron of anti-Catholic Orangemen

they're the ultra-unnius in Ireland, complete wankers. The Billy Boys are founded by a promising young footballer also called Billy, who loses a chance to play when he's beaten badly with still tow cap and hammers in a fight with rival fans in the 20s. According to the website, the Gangs of Glasgow, quote,

in the Billy Boys era, gangs would use the old firm as a means to get their violent religious message across. Many attacks took place in and around the matches of those days, including brutal train killings and stabbings. However, during the post-war post-Silito era, the decrease in sectarian violence continued into the Ibrox and Celtic parks. Those are the two stadiums of the two clubs. So yeah, Percy Silato, massive name in Glasgow gang law.

He's born in London in 1888 and fights in modern-day Zambia and Tanzania in the First World War, learns fluent Swahili, heads home and becomes a fearsome police officer. In 1931, the city of Glasgow drafts in Silato to clean up its out-of-control gang scene, which is by now fully branched into housebreaking, extortion, by athalien. the lot. He recruits the biggest, toughest officers in Scotland, often these mottled, bulky guys from the highlands and the islands, and he builds Glasgow's force into the second biggest behind the Met in London. It's a real shame Piki Blinders is ending this season, because this sounds like a great subplot for another season. I mean, we can do our own Glasgow series.

Silato also constructs a load of police boxes across the city, and mountain officers who become known as Silato's Cossacks. And if you've ever seen the black and white chequered ribbons on British cop's hats, that's something he introduced to, called Silato's Tartan. So the boy had a flourisher style as well as beating the shit out of gangsters. Anyway, whether it's the fashion or his policing style, Silato and his Cossacks drive a lot of the gang violence underground, and they succeed in breaking up the monopoly of the Bly Boys,

spawning similar groups like the Norman Cunks, the Beehive Boys and others. I mean, seriously, man, these names. Silato actually leaves Glasgow in 1943 to head up work preparing for Hitler's apparent invasion of Kent. And after the Second World War, he ends up leading MI5, which is the British Domestic Intelligence Service. So he's a pretty important guy. Yeah, damn, I mean, what a life.

Yeah, pretty distinguished, sir. But back to 1931 in Glasgow, that year is important for another reason. That's when a boy called Arthur Thompson is born. Arthur's dad is a steel worker and the family lives in a district called Springburn in the northwest of the city. Real hard scrabble but a law-abiding family.

Well, not Arthur. He loves fighting as a kid and apparently by the time he's 12 he's slashing people with razors which is totally normal behaviour. The Nazis hit glass go hard in the blitz in the early 1940s and Springburn being a big industrial centre

just gets flattened in parts. Among the rubble, young Arthur gets into crime. Blackouts each night make light work for thieves and the city's ports are perfect for picking all sorts of stolen stuff off the boats. Arthur's a big fan of the Billy Boys, their local heroes and he graduates from stealing from shops to local protection rackets and as he gets older crims are hiring him as a doorman for some of Glasgow's worst pubs. Then having proved himself there, Arthur gets hired by loan sharks to make people pay. The Billy Boys are on their way out Silatose down south and there is money to be made.

So Arthur strikes it out alone. He earns a rep for literally crucifying anybody doesn't pay up to the wall or the floor, which I guess is totally in character, but he can't crucify the cops and they nail him to an 18-month charge in 1953 when he's just 22. Look at that wordplay. I mean, somebody hire this guy. Give him $2 a word. This is just, you know, it's beautiful.

It's word smithery, man. beautiful. And like anybody, Arthur doesn't really get on with prison. That's a shock. And he vows never to do time again, which I mean, apparently this is interesting, but who actually likes prison, but yeah, this is part of his thing. Anyway, when Arthur does get out, he does what anyone do if they're avoiding the law. Yeah, that's right. He joins an infamous bank robbery crew. Now, this is the gang of Bobby Campbell, a well-known armed felon who pioneers the use of roadblocks and fake construction workers to rob massive amounts of stuff in post-war Britain. Bobby is the blueprint for London gangsters who take his dress up a stage further

and start wearing copper's outfits for scores. Arthur joins Bobby's lot, gets back into the lending and head cracking, and he also helps him force a budding bruffle game, beating up a load of Chinese migrants who are trying to set up rival knocking shops across Glasgow. Arthur's getting a pretty big street rep by this point, and he heads down south to London to see if he can work something out with the cray twins, who are probably the most infamous gangsters of the era. When they come to see him, Arthur pulls out a sword-off shotgun,

pointed at him and says, quote, My name is Arthur Thompson from Glasgow. You'll nor forget me. Yeah, I'm sorry. I really wanted to do the accent that's just fucking terrible. I mean, you know, we can't tell the difference, so I think it's fine. but, you know, I saw the Cray movie before. I didn't know who the Cray's were before, but I, you know, enjoy it,

but I think there really needs to be an Arthur Thompson one at this point. Did you see the 90s version with the, like, the Kemp Brothers, which is like tiny bit camp, which I think is way better than the Tom Hardy one. Yeah. I saw the Tom Hardy one, but the other one's better? Yeah, it's got two former pop stars playing the brothers, and it's shit, but it's also really, really good. Oh, oh, also.

There's a movie on HBO Max. taking it off called The Year of the Dragon, which is basically the fictionalized version of our Chinatown Gang Wars episode that I just saw with like a young Mickey Rourke. It's actually, it's not bad. It's a little, it's a little much. You know, I think Oliver Stone co-wrote it, so you get that, but

it's not a bad watch. Was Mickey Rourke actually, like, good before he got his head kicked in, or was he just a normal one? Yeah, dude, he was great. He was a great, great actor, yeah. Anyway, my accent or no accent, nobody's forgetting Arthur Thompson in a hurry.

He gets into a vendetta with a rival gang family, the Welshes, which ends up with Arthur's mother-in-law getting blown up, and Arthur running two of the Welshes off the road in their van to their deaths. Arthur's wife, Rita, she's also a bit stabby, and she attacks the Welsh's matriarch in their home with a knife, of course. Arthur also gets deep into the Northern Irish Troubles. He supplies UDA loyalists, that is, local paramilitaries who want Ireland to belong to the Queen, and he does that with weapons.

MI5, by this time under Silato, of course, they know about this, and that were the IRA to find out about Arthur's gun running, he'd almost certainly be murdered. The agents decide to wait and see if Arthur can be of any more use alive than dead. How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount, safe driver discount, new vehicle discount, storage discount, legacy. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usa.com slash auto discounts.

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With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into... Sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash special offer. All of this is to say that Arthur is balls deep in some really crazy shit. Most folks by now know him as the godfather of Glasgow, and he's filling the gap that Billy Boys have vacated. In the 1960s, the British government knocks down a bunch of Glasgow's most notorious tenements and replaces them with these huge hulking housing projects,

which locals call the schemes and suburbs all around town. People flock to these things, and Glasgow's population tops a million people, It's down to 600,000 these days. There are so many elements of this story that remind me of, like, American Rust Belt cities. Maybe just because, you know, I have St. Louis on the brain from just working there, and there's so many similar things about, you know, poorly thought out housing programs and jobs disappearing and drugs and crime and all that.

But, yeah, it's just interesting. Yeah, you see similar stuff in, like, Liverpool and Manchester and Sheffield as well. It was happening all over the north. It's almost as if the government in London doesn't give a shit about anything, other than London, but anyway. The schemes, they're not fought through. And planning begins and ends with the apartment blocks themselves. There's no public transport, no shops, nothing.

Occupants have to travel miles into town to buy the most basic of goods. It's a total mess. And to pile on the pain, there's tons of unemployment, the factories are closing, and desperate people increasingly getting hooked on drugs. They're just isolated in these districts, just genius. brain stuff by the politicians as usual. So yeah, something similar happened in St. Louis. They built these like new housing developments called,

it was called Pruitt Igo or Ego, I might be mispronouncing it. There's a really good documentary on it. And, you know, they really didn't think of anything else or have any other support stuff. So within 10 years or five years of them existing, they were just, you know, horrible places to live, drugs, gangs, violence. And they actually ended tearing them, they ended up tearing them down after like 15 or 20 years.

Jesus. Yeah, I guess this is like a good example of how corruption right at the top just filters down and causes absolute mayhem for people living in these places. I don't even know if the St. Louis thing was corruption. It was more just like, you know, the best intentions, but just like not well thought out and made the situation worse. Okay. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely sense of this. I think more incompetence than corruption. Cool.

I mean, that's, you know, that's nice. I mean, in 1968, Glasgow's gangbursed. violence has gotten so bad that Frankie Vaughn, who's a singer and a massive star at the time, just starred alongside Marilyn Monroe. He visits Easter House, which is one of the most troubled areas, to broker a peace deal between rival street outfits, which, I mean, it's pretty strange, right? But not as strange as what's going to happen next. So do you have ice cream vans in the States, first off? Yeah, I mean, of course we do. We have trucks. And not only that, but the ones in, in, like, New York are Mr. Softie,

so you can get, like, soft serve with, like, toppings in the trucks. Okay. So your soft serve is your 99. You missed the Whippy. So, yeah, okay, you do. Oh, you guys have that, too? I thought that was, like, a revolutionary U.S. thing. Oh, yeah, yeah.

I think everything in the world is, but, yeah, this was somehow in Glasgow before that. So, anyway, in the UK, Scotland and Glasgow, these things are really popular, right? And for years, they've been run by migrant families. many from Italy. There's actually over 100,000 people of Italian descent in Scotland, which is quite a lot when it's like around 5 million people. Some people are just suckers for good weather and food, so big up the Italian Scots. Most established of these Italo-Scottish ice cream heffes are the Marquetti brothers. They've been selling not just ice cream, but sweets and cigarettes before the schemes even popped up. But when the schemes do,

the ice cream vans become lifelines for the people living in them. And they start, selling food, household goods, a lot. And these guys are making bank. You could hit like several hundred pounds a week running these things, which might not sound a lot, but in the schemes, this is a pretty penny. It just, it sounds like mobile bodegas, basically. That's exactly what it is. Yeah. By the 1970s, organized crime is getting in on the vans, and they're selling heroin, knives, guns, and stolen goods. I mean, it's just like, so obviously bad. And I guess you could order an ice cream or a chocolate bar while you're at it. But yeah, it's mostly the heroin and the guns. That just, that makes more sense than just running chaco tacos, you know? Okay. I mean,

is a chocot taco like just a chocolate taco? Or is it something incredible? Yeah, but with like, it's like, it's like one of the best ice creams. It's got like like a waffle cone situation and there's like ice cream in it. So, yeah, I mean, yeah, it shouldn't be that hard to understand. I should probably explain it better. It doesn't sound as good in my accent. for sure. And throughout this time when these ice cream vans are just like getting pretty crazy, the police, they're absolutely useless. Some say they're in on the scams themselves. And the local serious crime squad, which is kind of ridiculous name for a division rather than the totally okay and nothing crime squad. It gets renamed the serious chimes squad after the jingles coming out

of the vans. You see what they did there? Is that actually better or worse than one of mine? It's kind of the same, to be honest with you. Jesus Christ. As you can imagine, these van routes become hot property, and fights often break out between drivers and rival companies. Some of the shithousery might include simple double-stopping, that is, just rocking up next to someone and selling, or leapfrogging to get better spots.

But it's often far worse. According to a mental floss piece, quote, one driver might attack another's truck with bricks or pieces of wood, hoping to demolish their mobile storefront. If you were a driver, you kept knives or axes within arm's reach, ready to defend your business. Sometimes trucks were targeted by low-level hooligans who just wanted to make a quick score.

I mean, axes, really? These attacks are called frighteners, by the way. And that's when young kids are getting paid mostly in beer and cigarettes, just to smash things up. But there are some big guys at the top orchestrating all of this. Arthur is sent to prison again in 1968 for a warehouse robbery and MI5 offer him a deal, either cooperate or face life behind bars, and the fury of the IRA, of course,

or even the loyalists who'd probably rather kill him to keep him shut up. Arthur decides to cooperate, of course, and cops give him four years for the warehouse wrap, and that allows him to continue running his illicit business, like explicitly so, which, I mean, I'm not a cop, but I'm pretty sure that is not great policing. When Arthur gets out two years later, because Britain, He gets into drugs, but he's getting into middle age, and by the 1980s, his son Arthur Jr.

is running the show. Now, confusingly, Junior is known as Fat Boy 2, and he's nothing like his old man. He's brash, flashy, he loves driving fast cars, and he hates keeping his head below the parapet. Cops are always picking him up, and he's a bit of a bloody embarrassment. Second generation gangsters, man. You know, at least little carmine knew to move to Miami and eventually keep him. his head down. This is not what Arthur Jr. does. So around the same time as Arthur Jr. spunking away his dad's empire, another crook called Tam McGraw is on the rise. He's a drug dealer who's come

through the ranks of the Balanark team. Did I say that right, Balanark? These names are crazy. A gang fond of armed robberies of off licenses and mail vans. In 1978, Tam's tried and acquitted the attempted murder of a police officer. So he's a pretty hardened crim. And it's weird. McGraw is pretty out there. He's not unknown to the cops. But he lives a charmed life. He goes more than 20 years without a conviction. Word goes around that McGraw's a police snitch, and he earns the nickname the licensee. According to Glasgow Live, quote, McGraw's moniker was given to him either because he owned the Caravelle Bar in Balinac,

or, because it was claimed, of the freedom he was given by Strathkeye police in exchange for informing on his underworld powers, take your pick. McGraw makes his first big windfalls, cutting into Arthur Thompson's crumbling empire that's being run by his son, and floods Glasgow with heroin and cannabis, laundering cash for his private taxi firm, Matt Cabs. Another bit from this Glasgow life piece, quote. As the saying goes,

the Doug's in the street knew he was doing it. Dugs is dogs, I think. But Strathclyde's finest, either didn't know or couldn't nail him. By 1984, there's a changing of the guard in Glasgow's underworld. Arthur Thompson, that's the city's godfather, of course, he's on the wane. He's living out his days on a Glasgow estate. He calls the Ponderosa.

His son, I mean, these names are just crazy. His son's squandering the family empire. And Tam McGraw is Glasgow's new drug kingpin. At the same time, ice cream vans are delivering all kinds of naughty stuff to the schemes, which are getting more and more bleak by the year. So is Thompson's son, is he losing out to McGraw, or is he working with him? He's losing out. Yeah, yeah.

McGraw's chipping into this sort of empire that he's squandering. And here's where Andrew Doyle, that's fat boy number one, I guess, comes in. He starts driving a van for the Marquetti brothers, the most established company doing the van routes. Well, Tam McGraws managed to hijack some of those vans for his drug empire, that he wants more, and he allegedly pressures Doyle to sell drugs out of his ice cream van.

This is disputed, by the way. There's tons of confusing information about the folks in this story online. Just stick with us, guys, like we know what we're doing. Fake news all over the place. Anyway, Doyle refuses to budge. In February 1984, somebody fires a shotgun through his windshield,

but Fat Boy survives. So wait, hold on. Fat Boy is like an 18-year-old kid who stands up to these guys. And also, is he just selling ice cream at this point, or is he also hustling other stuff? So there's two versions of this story, right? So one version is that he's selling drugs for a rival gangster. And the other version is that, yeah, he doesn't want to get involved and he tells Tamagra to fuck off.

I don't know at all. There's just so much, like, weird nonsense about this particular fact for some reason. I guess some people want to lionize him in death and some people don't. But, yeah, I guess you can make your own mind. end up. Either way, he told him to piss off. So after the shotgun attack, along comes that April, and the Doyle family home goes up in smoke, along with six of the nine folks inside, Andrew, including of course. And suddenly all eyes are on the police, the force that, since Percy Silato left, spent decades coddling, making deals with and letting off some of the most violent criminals

in Scottish history. Fifty officers are inside into the Doyle case. and interview 1,500 people with 4,000 statements taken. William Billy Love is in prison on suspicion of armed robbery. He tells police he's part of a conspiracy against Fat Boy, and he's been paid by the relative of a local tough guy by the name of Thomas T.C. Campbell, 27, who also runs an ice cream van. Love tells cops he's heard a conversation in a local pub called the Netherfield

about setting fire to Doyle's home to give him a quote, Frightner. T.C.'s there. Love is a lifer. He's been inside for tons of stuff before and he's staring down the barrel of a long sentence for the robbery.

After his testimony, he walks. He's a free man. When objections to bail are dropped. The Neverfield, by the way, cub with a flat roof, guaranteed shithole always. Wait, is that a thing? Like, is that a stereotype?

I would say that's one of my only truisms about the country of Britain is that if you walk into a pole with a flat roof, you probably should be carrying something. Wow, I'm learning so much. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'll take you to some someday. We'll have a good time.

Cops speak to another guy with a long rap sheet, and that's Joseph Granger, who says he too overheard this boosy plot about the fire, and he was actually with T.C. on the night of the fire. Granger says his job that night was at lookout, while T.C. and another guy, Joe Steele, who's 18-year-old, did the deed. It's a bit weird for a bloke to drop himself squarely into a murder charge of his own volition. And it's weird as still when the cops set him free to go after T.C. and still, four months after the investigation.

When they were arresting T.C., he allegedly says something that will bury him at trial. Quote, I only wanted the van windows shot up. The fire at Fat Boys was only meant to be a frightener that went. too far. Still is a bit of a street thug. He's been in trouble before, but nothing major. T.C. is definitely no angel. He's a feared street fighter

and the son of a safe cracker. I like a safecracker. You know, I feel like it's a cool occupation in the criminal in the world that those guys are just kind of class acts. It's a bit of a white-collar gang job, right? Yeah. And according to the Sunday Herald, quote, like everybody

else he carried a knife and used it. That's everybody in Glasgow. apparently. He was first stabbed when he was 15, he says, offering to show me, that's the journalist, where his gut spilled out. After that, he was knifed regularly, regularly. He remembers sitting in a pub when he was 17 and being attacked three times by someone wielding a hammer. Quote, everyone who had seen it thought they had witnessed my murder and couldn't barely believe that I hardly felt it, he recalls. Is that real? I don't know. In 1983, Campbell had already tried his hand in the ice cream game. And he does so well in the areas of Ruckezi and Kantin

that folks called him the emperor of Kantyne. He's allegedly been threatening Doyle at the time of the fire too, says T.C. to a BBC crew, quote, a lot of my friends were killed. I was near to death on a few occasions myself. I've been caught with axes, been caught with swords, open razors, every conceivable weapon, meat cleavers, and it was all for nothing, no gain, nothing to it, just absolute madness. And this is all over the ice cream routes? Yep, you bet. That's how lucrative they are for these guys.

I mean, don't you just hate when you're carrying a cleaver or a sword and you don't even get to cut someone in half? I really feel for the guy. When cops arrest TC and the subsequent raid on his home, that turns up an incredible piece of evidence, almost too incredible, you might say, which is a piece of paper signed by TC and his wife with a photocopied map of Ruckezi on the other side,

side. On this map, Mark with an X, the Doyle home. I mean, what a lucky find, especially given T.C. says, months to get rid of any evidence. I'm confused about pretty much everything, but I'm just going to let you keep going. Yeah, I mean, it is confusing because it's so bumbling. And then cops grabbed Joe Steele, who, like T.C, according to these underworld informants, Love and Granger that I mentioned before, has supposedly let slip of the plot to start the Doyle fire. in this pub, the Neverfield. And on route to the police station, Steele apparently offers a fat slight of incriminating evidence

when he says, quote, I'm no the one who lit the match. Even more amazingly, it's not the other officers that take down this half confession, but the guy driving the car, which is an uncanny bit of multitasking, you might say. Even more uncanny, perhaps, is that when it comes to taking other officers' accounts

of Steele's comments, each one writes the exact same eight-word phrase, complete with Stills dialectical flare, what a watertight case these cops are building. As a lawyer tells a later Channel 4 doco, quote, there was a bit of a smell around. T.C. and Stills trial starts a few months later, but it doesn't go to plan.

Granger, the self-confessed arsonist lookout, recants everything on the sand. He said he made it all up under duress. Quote, I swear on my mother's life, I had fuck all to do with that fire. Whoops. Foucault. I mean, we can have a Scott off. That might be losing it.

I just imagine everyone sounds like Connor McGregor, even though he's Irish, you know? Yeah. Also, like, while we're on that subject, what the hell is Scott's Irish? Is that just an American thing? They're two separate countries. I got nothing. Silence from the American. So the prosecution now rests on Billy Love.

That's that crook who'd spilled the beans about this alleged pub plot to set the Doyle home ablaze. He's got to name like a guy who plays smooth 90s R&B and late night radio. Oh, yeah, he does actually. And I mean, he probably talks just as much shit. The judge tells the jury explicitly that Love is a liar, a convicted criminal. And if he's telling porkies about all this, then he's punked the entire judiciary system. So even he's letting the police off at this point, the judge. The jury deliberates for a couple of days, then returns.

Guilty. Both of them. The court sentences both men to life in prison. Quote, I came out and I remember speaking to my junior advisor, one lawyer says. And I think the reaction at that time was how the hell did that happen? I get the feeling that if the divine had been sitting in the dock along the side of the defence, it wouldn't have made any difference in that trial. It comes out soon after that the weekend Love claims to have heard men plotting the door of fire.

That's exactly the same weekend as the armed robbery he's accused of. Love's given cops a ton of alibis for that weekend before to make sure he's not the scene of that crime. Not one of those mentions the Neverfield pub, none mentioned T.C. or E.C. or E. any of the other conspiracies. So I'm like a little lost here. What, like what's happening? Basically,

these guys are being framed and the trial is just like a mess? Is that essentially? Yeah, I mean, you've got these two witnesses that everything's hanging on, right? They've both given really dodgy statements. Granger's actually gone so far as to like perjure himself and say that it was all made up. Love is kind of carried through, but it doesn't even make sense.

And then they've got these bits of evidence that include literally X marks the spot treasure map, which is completely bonkers, and also these statements that cops took, which word for word, like letter for letter, are exactly the same across every single officer's statement. So, yeah, like that lawyer says, it stinks. And remember the attack on Fat Boy with the shotgun just weeks before his death? How are you? Ready to go for a run? Running connects us to a rush of energy that flows through our world. The cheers of friends that unlock a new gear within us. the intersection of interests that inspires a run crew,

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Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. Several years later, a Chadden Ford Doco crew speaks to Agnes Carlton, that's Billy Love's sister, who says he brought the gun into the house that evening and told her he was going to use it in a frightener on the door. ice cream van. Also, very slightly suspicious. Love's being found guilty of perverting the course of justice, i.e. telling fibs, no fewer than three times before. Oh, and he says he lied to the police about the pub, the conspiracy, everything. Love's cellmate also says, Billy, was offered a deal to get bail for the armed robbery charge if he snitched on TC and Steele. For the convicted men, T.C. and still, it's only a saga that's just beginning. What's more, several key leads to find

the killers are never followed up on. For one, on the night of the fire itself, a woman working at a gas station says that men approached her and asked to buy gas in a can. She refused to sell it. As the fire raged, another witness saw a car speeding away from the scene, then crash before its occupants get out and flee on foot. There's an empty gas can on the seat. Nobody looks like TC or still in either of these scenarios. But for now, let's head back to the movers and shakers on the outside. So it's the mid-80s. Arthur Thompson Jr. is running his father's drug operation badly, bold accounts,

and the beleaguered police decide on another genius brain move. They'll employ a Tam McGraw, the licensee, to keep tabs on Arthur Jr. And return? He'll be given all the heroin confiscated in the aftermath. I mean, what? And then Tam incredibly does the dirty on the police, wow, goes to Arthur Jr. And offers him a shitload of heroin for free. Arthur Jr., being the switched on business legend he is, doesn't think there's anything fishy about that,

takes the deal and gets his stuff straight out there. Wait, why would he, I mean, is he doing it to set him up? Like, why would he just give him that heroin for free? Yeah, I mean, is it not ringing alarm bells in Arthur Jr.'s head that some guy? I'll give you heroin for nothing. That's it. Only, this heroin, right, is way pure than anything else that's been on the market. And loads of people die from overdoses across Glasgow.

So that's just another great notch in Strathclyde police's bedpost. You've got heroin dealers getting heroin to snitch on other heroin dealers, keeping high-grade heroin on the streets to such an extent that it's not just getting people hooked on heroin, it's killing them. Strathkeye's police motto, by the way, keeping people safe. The cops arrest Arthur Jr., and they sentence him to 10 years behind bars for these deals. Arthur Sr. realizes that Tam's got something to do with this, but his power's not what it was, and he asked Tam to help him get his son out of prison.

But Tam pulls yet another switcheroo on the Thompson's. He tells Arthur Senior that Paul Ferris, one of the Thompson's most trusted enforcers, has ratted his son out to the authorities. I mean, Tam's just running rings around him at this point. Now, I'm actually speaking to Paul Ferris about coming on this show for a bonus, and it will be great to hear his side of all this, but he's no Autoboy either. Or actually, perhaps, given all the Glasgow religious violence,

maybe he's the perfect altar boy. But anyway, he, Ferris, that is, has got into the Thompson crew initially by sharing their hatred of the Welshes. Ferris had actually scout one Welsh and slashed the throat of another. other. Dude, make friends with this guy and let's send him to some certain people who aren't keeping up their payments to us. This is a great idea.

I'm actually going to do it the second. We do this record. In 1984, Ferris gets a break in the organization when Arthur Jr., again, genius, brain, fat boy, drug kingpin. He gets ripped off in a deal to the tune of £200,000 when he's given what he thinks his drugs, but later finds out, this is the most. Glasgow drug deal of all time is a brick wrapped in newspaper and an iron brew,

which is also the national dish of Scotland. But anyway, the Thompsons are mad and they dispatch Ferris to do his thing and he stabs a guy. And then the Thompson sends Ferris off to the Isle of But this holiday place full of medieval castles and the like. But then

cops raid Ferris's home while he's there and they find a bunch of drugs and it turns out the Arthur's senior and junior have actually giving their boy Ferris up and he gets an 18 month term. So are you following? Not really, but you know, sounds good. Everyone's fucking everyone over basically.

Arthur Sr. is dropping down the pecking order. His son is a total moron. He's currently in jail for dealing heroin given to him by Tam. Paul Ferris is behind bars because he's being turned over by the Thompson's. And Tam, that's Tam McGraw, he's just sitting pretty above all of it. with a license to do whatever the, like he wants, by the actual police who've just sent down TC and Joe Steele for six Doyle murders. They almost certainly did not commit.

I mean, the Brits really do this kind of stuff well. Wait, so do we know who actually killed the Doyles, or is that like your big ending that you're going to do? There's some stuff. There's some stuff. Yeah, I'll get to it. The Ice Cream Van Wars, they continue after the Doyle fire. In 1986, two young men, they rub an ice cream vendor at gunpoint.

In 1989, an 18-year-old is shot in the shoulder, audition out soft serve, and he's permanently disabled. The 23-year-old who shoots him is so racked with guilt that he dies by suicide. Towards the end of the 1980s, Glasgow's schemes of finally getting the transport connections and shops they so badly need. So the ice cream van switched back to selling actual ice cream. I mean, maybe the odd block or baggy, but mostly ice cream. and the turf wars that came with them, they die down.

But the drug market in the city is massive. There's a full-blown heroin disaster underway, and the war for control of that is heating up. In the late 80s, Arthur Thompson Sr. survives two assassination attempts. One time he's shot in the groin, but he refuses to say anything to cops and claims it was a stray drill bit.

The second time, he's run down outside the Ponderosa, but again, no statement. Arthur Thompson is old school. In prison, meanwhile, his son, Fat Boy, Arthur Jr., is making a kill list, and Paul Ferris, the former Thompson attack dog who's now got his own crew, is in on it. But in 1991, while on weekend leave, Fat Boy is gunned down outside the Ponderosa himself. He shot three times, once in the cheek, once in the rib cage, and once up the ass. Straffclough police nab Ferris for the murder.

While that's happening, Tam McGraw does Arthur. Thompson's senior solid. Between them, the pair round up two of Ferris's close associates, Joseph Hanlon and Bobby Gover, shoot them dead, then shoot them both in the ass, then dump them in Handler's car in front of the cottage bar, past which Fat Boy's funeral cortege would pass. It's Arthur Thompson's last real display of power in the Glasgow underworld. What is with the shooting in the ass thing?

I really don't know. I'm going to shoot in the ass. I really, I have no idea why it's the thing. Like, I get the symbolism of like, you know, the mouth or the eyes or whatever, but I mean, that's just, it's a little strange. Yeah, it's also like not that, not that Scottish sense of humor. It's pretty dark. In 1992, Paul Ferris goes on trial for Fat Boys murder. At a time, it's Scotland's longest and costliest criminal trial.

It costs a whopping four million pounds, which I reckon back then is like, $8 million, $16 million US dollars today. There are 300 witnesses, and among them, Arthur Thompson Sr., who does something that shocks the underworld. He takes the stand to testify against his former henchman. After two months, Ferris, though, is found not guilty. TC and still, remember those guys?

Guilty. Ferris almost certainly did kill him. Not guilty. Yep. Lots of cool justice system stuff. Arthur Thompson Senior then slinks into the background after this moment and he's completely gilded and he dies of a heart attack in March 1993 just shy of his 62nd birthday.

Now Tam McGraw is the undisputed gangland king of Glasgow. By this point T.C. instill a deep into the appeal process for their own murder convictions which of course are bullshit. T.C. refuses to cut his hair, but it's not quite Bobby Sands. But he does go on hunger strike and he's He's beaten so badly by cops, he's actually pronounced dead, and he wins an abuser case against them. In 1989, the pair's first appeal fails.

Then in 1992, Billy Love pops up, remember that guy, the gangster who told a bit of a fib on the stand, he pops back to tell everybody he was lying under oath after all, something pretty much everyone except the jury already knew. In 1993, Joe still is on supervised release to visit his mother in Glasgow when he gives his escort the slip, he heads to London and handcuffs himself to the railings outside Buckingham Palace, one of the Queen's many homes, but not one of Prince Andrews, Loll, and he supergloos his fingers to the railings as well.

It gets a load of media attention, as does a rooftop process he carries out as his mum's place on another leave visit, still also pulls off a third protest, escaping through a wire fence with four other inmates. Quote, if I had murdered the Doyles, I would have admitted it and done my time quietly and without any fuss to get an early release,

he tells a journalist, shortly before his Buckingham Palace escapade. But to get parole, you must admit your guilt and show remorse. I cannot admit guilt or show remorse for something I didn't do. In 1997, TC and Steele get a massive windfill. when the Scottish Secretary of State grants them release pending an appeal

because the prosecution had shielded the court from some of the evidence in the case, which I found out in Scotland, unlike the rest of the country, it's incredibly actually not illegal. A year later, though, to massive media shock, the court upholds both men's convictions and they're sent back to prison. Quote, the brutality of life in Scotland's hardest prisons, even years of solitary as punishment for repeatedly breaking out. out in protest at the wrongful conviction wasn't enough to break me, still says later,

adding, quote, being sent back to prison in 1998, following the failure of my second appeal after more than a year living as a normal family man, that's what finally put me over the edge. And these two guys, they're not friends, far from it, says still quote, I believe TC knew more than I did about exactly who lit that fire, destroyed so many lives in the process. But we both come from a world where we live by a code of silence, no matter what. And he has gone to his grave with that. That's some solid, you know, when keeping it real goes wrong sort of shit. Yeah, I mean, it's just crazy, right?

I mean, this guy has spent half his life in prison. Anyway, after all this towing and throwing, in 1999, review commission is convened about the Doyle killings. And evidence finally, finally emerges that police colluded to fabricate evidence against T.C. and Steele. The following year, the men are released again pending appeal, and in 2004, that's 20 years after the fire. T.C. and Steele's convictions are quashed in Edinburgh. T.C., at this time 47, tells the assembled crowds, quote, It's definitely about time. Everybody knows we're innocent. My daughter will have her daddy home for the first time in nearly five years. Freedom at this time of the year means even more so.

Still, who spent most of his adult life in prison, puts it simpler. This, he says, is the best day of my life. Joe Still isn't quite finished there, though. Despite the underworlder Merta, he singles out Tam McGraw. He says it's Garzgo's drug lord who actually ordered the fire at the door home in 1984. So, wait, he waits to get out of prison to do the thing that could have gotten him out of prison, but was against his code. Yes. And I had the same thought when I saw this. And I'm going to assume that he would have been killed if he'd said it because Tam McGroy is the biggest gangster in Glasgow. But also he's still the biggest gangster in Glasgow when he gets out. So I don't know.

He didn't even do it for like a YouTube show where he could get subscribers like most mafia guys do now. Fuck, we've got to go to prison. That's where this is going. There's a bunch of spurious claims about the killers that's gone over the years. Responding to one of them against a violent criminal called Gary Moore still says, quote, Gary's no angel, but he never admitted to anything he'd done the Doyle family. He never admitted to fuck all in his life. McGraw ordered it and asked the people.

I know who it is, but I'll go to my grave with it. The people who'd done it have got a look in the mirrors. So he's kind of like, his finger in McGraw for this. He says he's ordered it and other guys, presumably people that still knew who are like foot soldiers in this gang war, they did it. Anyway, I'm not going to get into some of the other claims because, like, really, who truly knows who was there that night in Rickazy. But Tam McGraw's criminal license eventually comes to an end. He's finally arrested and charged with drug trafficking offenses in 1998. He's been sending underprivileged kids from the schemes on minibus holidays to Morocco and Spain.

but the buses have hollowed out floors, in which cops find 220 pounds of cannabis on one of the trips. Okay, that's pretty hilarious. That is pretty funny. Incredibly, though, Tam slips the charges, and his brother-in-law, John Healy, gets hit with the full wrap. Tam's days at the top are numbered, though. And throughout the early 2000s, his closest allies are picked off.

In 2003, his right-hand man is stabbed to death in the Glasgow suburb, and Tam flees to up. Ireland, then to Spain, where he's built a pretty tasty portfolio, part of an empire worth an estimated £30 million. Paul Ferris is also arrested in 1998, but he goes down for 10 years. He wrote a popular book about his crimes while behind bars, and has since Pennmore, and has founded a security company. Like I said, I'm hoping to get Paul on to talk about these Glasgow gang wars for a bonus show, so look out for that. Tam McGraw-Mawd dies in two. 2007 from a heart attack.

He's just 55 years old. His widow Margaret, aka the jeweler for her love of bling, is arrested a year later, dealing cocaine door to door in a fancy car. TC dies of natural causes at his home in June 2019, age 66. That year, Joe Steele,

now in middle age, speaks to the Sunday post. He got into drugs in the 90s when his appeal was quashed, but he beat them, and now he's just trying to, get on with his life. Quote, it's over now. All the players

are dead and gone. The Doyle family will never see proper justice, and I don't expect I will over the police who fitted me up. Fancy an ice cream? Actually, yeah, you know, a little bit. Yeah, me too. But that was crazy.

That was a really good episode. And for new people, too. You know, we have I think 60 episodes you can go back and listen to, they're evergreen. Give them a listen. But yeah, I want to Thank the patrons at some of the higher tiers, patreon.com slash the Underworld podcast. For bonuses and scripts and sources and all that. Noah Brandon, John Simon, Patrick Rowland, Tanner McLeve, Sam Ramsey, Juan Ponce, Pete Thomas, Michael Rich, William Wintercross, Traneance, Matthew Cutler, Ross Clark, Jeremy Rich, Doug Prendival.

Without you guys, we honestly wouldn't be able to keep making this. Yeah, thanks, so thank you so much for doing it. Thanks to everyone who contributes because it really means a lot to us. And yeah, until next week. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Because behind every headline is a bottom line. Whether it's the funds-fueling AI or crypto's trillion-dollar swings,

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