Charlie, snow, toot, white: cocaine goes by many different names. But in Glasgow in the early 1980s, they called it Happy Dust. At no-holds-barred parties of the glamorous and wealthy, cocaine was the new aphrodisiac. A few lines of Charlie and a humdrum party could become an orgy. Hot from the forests of Colombia, Charlie flooded onto the streets of Glasgow and was passed along the line to the cocktail set, highly paid sports stars and yuppies desperate for kicks and thrills. Behind it all was a man they called the Parachutist. But all too soon, the party was over. People became too greedy and the Parachutist was double-crossed. Some of the gang did shady deals with detectives in hotel rooms; others flew to seek shelter in the sun, their reputations destroyed but not their fortunes. The good times might have been over for the Happy Dust Gang, but their legacy lives on to this day.
In Glasgow in the early 1980s, the use of cocaine was rampant and at no-holds-barred parties of the glamorous and wealthy, cocaine was the new aphrodisiac. Straight from the forests of Colombia, cocaine flooded the streets of Glasgow and was passed along the line to the cocktail set, highly paid sports stars, and yuppies desperate for kicks and thrills. Detailing the drug’s rise and the reverberations of such usage, this analysis reveals the greed, double-crosses, and legacy of such a time.
The rise - and fall - of the outlaw lords of the drug world, from the Cali Cartel, the richest, most powerful crime syndicate in history, to Britain's biggest drug baron, Curtis 'Cocky' Warren and the 'Essex Triple Murders'. From freewheeling cannabis operations to the lethal 'heaviness' of organized crime, the doings of the dealers, bouncers, bagmen and 'taxmen' - those crazy enough to extort money from drug dealers - of a ruthlessly violent underworld. Here you will find an account of the pursuit and capture of 'Mr Nice', Howard Marks (along with the complementary recollections of Mrs Marks), the story of the hunt for Pablo Escobar and an in-depth piece on cocaine production deep in the Colombian interior. This is the no-holds-barred, inside story of drug trafficking, from the Golden Triangle to the Golden Gate and from Spain's Costa del Crime to the future of conflict and prohibition with its fresh cast of Afghan warlords and central European gangsters. It examines how and why things go wrong, and the price which is paid when they do.
For almost four decades, Margaret 'Mags' McGraw was a keeper of secrets. Her husband, Tam, the notorious 'Licensee', amassed a fortune by leading a safe-cracking gang before masterminding a spectacular £50-million drugs racket. Mags was a devotee of Tarot cards and fortune telling, so when Tam and his associates wondered whether luck would be with them, it was to her that they turned. But Mags discovered that the cards warned of much more than years in prison cells: they predicted death. She learned that her own husband was also doomed to a fate that was unexpected by everyone but her: Tam died in the arms of the wife he called his 'rock' while her secret lover frantically tried to save him. In The Gangster's Wife, Mags reveals her gripping life story, from being a London clippie through often hilarious days running an ice-cream van during the infamous Glasgow Ice Cream Wars to managing a notorious bar, being agony aunt to the toughest criminals around, hiding a secret love and sharing a life with The Licensee.
Convicted murderer Billy Ferris has endured more than three decades behind bars in many of Britain's prisons. In The Hate Factory, he candidly documents his experiences in jail with some of the UK's most notorious criminals. Jailed for life in 1977 for a crime of passion, Ferris experienced betrayal and treachery on the inside. He unexpectedly formed friendships that led to his being labelled a 'bombers' crony' and found love while on the run after a dramatic escape. He vividly describes the cruelty, savagery and degradation that go hand in hand with prison life and details the nightmare that was Wormwood Scrubs, the prison he christened 'the Hate Factory'. He relays what happened when his cell was used as a courtroom for an IRA punishment trial and how he hatched a plan to assassinate the son of a legendary underworld godfather and plotted to murder an informer. Over the 30 years during which Ferris has been imprisoned, his fellow inmates have included some of the UK's 'most wanted' from London underworld enforcer 'Mad' Frankie Fraser to Archie Hall, the serial killer dubbed 'the Monster Butler'.
'Mummy, take me home,' sobbed little Jasmine Chapman as she was ripped from her mother's arms. But there was nothing that Morag could do . . . except continue to fight for custody of the child she loved so much. When their relationship ended, Jasmine's parents argued bitterly about her future. But they were unable to come to an amicable agreement, and a UK court ruled that the case be heard in the US, the home of Jasmine's father. Fearing that she would lose her child, Morag fled from Texas with her daughter, only to be hauled back in shackles and incarcerated in a grim American prison. When Morag was eventually freed and awarded custody of her little girl, she thought her nightmare was over. However, back in the UK, every move she made was watched and every mistake recorded. Morag sank into deep depression and became lost in a haze of alcohol and drugs. The once beautiful and desirable young woman found her life spiralling out of control. Eventually, she lost the daughter she had fought so hard to keep. Mummy, Take Me Home is the gripping and disturbing true-life story of a tug of love that no mother should ever face and no child should be forced to endure.
As a young man in Glasgow’s underworld, Ian ‘Blink’ MacDonald fought, robbed and slashed his way to the top, developing a taste for the high life along the way. His notoriety earned him an offer of work from Scotland’s most feared gangster, Arthur Thompson, but MacDonald had other plans: to finance a new life in Spain with the multimillion-pound proceeds of a high-risk armed bank robbery. But the job went badly wrong, and MacDonald was jailed for 16 years. In prison, he met scores of high-profile inmates, including torture-gang boss Eddie Richardson, high-society serial killer Archie Hall, notorious lifer Charles Bronson and Ronnie O’Sullivan senior, father of the snooker star. On his release, MacDonald became a magnet for trouble, enjoying a hedonistic, drug-fuelled lifestyle and finding himself drawn into conflict with police, gangsters and businessmen. Rearrested several times, he was the target of more than one terrifying murder attempt. In Blink, MacDonald provides an eye-opening account of his highly eventful journey through life in Glasgow’s brutal gangland.
Alexander Shannon escaped a shady past to enjoy a glittering career in the army, only to end up back in the thick of criminal activity. Shannon's time as a soldier saw him posted to the Falklands, Northern Ireland and war-torn Bosnia. The rigours of army life took their toll and he found himself drawn into a series of ruthless gang wars. He used the skills he'd learned in the forces to hide weapons, work for drugs racketeers and plot a massacre, and he was offered a fortune to work as a Mafia-style contract assassin. He was questioned over brutal killings and accused of a triple murder attempt, yet his dedication and determination to succeed in the army brought him accolades and a series of promotions. In The Underworld Captain, Shannon explains how he managed to combine a successful army career with dangerous gangland dealings for so long and how he finally broke free for good.
Drug War is a landmark modern history: the first ever full account of the United Kingdom’s fight against the illegal importation of drugs. Packed with remarkable revelations and thrilling anecdotes, it tells for the first time the story of the high-level traffickers who drugged Britain, and the secretive organisation that tried to stop them: the Investigation Division of HM Customs and Excise. The ID’s elite officers waged a fifty-year battle to stem the tide of cannabis, cocaine and heroin arriving by land, air and sea, and to track, arrest and prosecute the smuggling gangs, both organised and chaotic, who turned an amateur pastime into a multi-billion-pound trade. The result of more than 100 unique interviews, many with insiders who have never spoken publicly, it is a ground-breaking account of one of the most vital subjects of our times. It begins with the UN Single Convention of 1961, intended to enshrine a worldwide ban on narcotics. Yet within five years the UK was on the cusp of a narco-boom, driven by immigrants from its former colonies and by the eruption of the youth counterculture. The insidious effect was to corrupt key areas of British life, including airport baggage and freight handlers at Heathrow Airport, dockers at the major ports and even the Drug Squad at New Scotland Yard. Drug War chronicles: the first major ‘barons’, including the brilliant laser scientist Dr Gurdev Singh Sangha; the rise of hippie traffickers such as the legendary Howard Marks, and the violent gangland syndicates that ultimately brushed them aside; the ongoing rivalry between police and Customs and how this often blighted the law enforcement response; the emergence of London’s first heroin godfather, Gigi Bekir, and how the Turkish state was complicit in flooding the country with smack; the heavyweight ‘untouchables’ who eventually streamlined the drug business, and the extraordinary covert methods employed against them; and how secret liaison with British and American spy agencies led to the biggest cocaine seizures ever, the motherships of the Colombian cartels. Concluding with the series of mishaps and scandals that ushered in the Serious Organised Crime Agency, Drug War is a ground-breaking account packed with unique revelations, personal testimony and fresh analysis.
There was one partner the pretty young women who danced away the 1960s in Glasgow's Barrowlands were desperate to avoid: Bible John, so named because he quoted scripture to his victims. He was being hunted for three brutal unsolved sex murders, and each of his victims had been picked up after a night at the famous dance hall.
