Donaldson’s guilty verdict was particularly poignant to the family of his former wife, Elaine Gemmill, who died of suspected suicide in 2003. Elaine had been forced to seek a court injunction banning Donaldson from coming anywhere near her. A criminal prosecution against Donaldson for domestic violence was unsuccessful, but the Gemmills have long known what domestic horrors Donaldson is capable of and blame him for Elaine’s death at the age of 45. One family member, who asked not to be identified, told me: ‘That bastard tortured Elaine for years. He put her in an early grave. Before her death, graffiti was put all over the outside of her house calling her a grass. He’s nothing but a fucking rat and a dirty coward. Everyone is looking to see what sentence he gets. Look at the length of time it took to get done; it’s a disgrace.’
The day after Elaine’s body was found, Donaldson took their traumatised son, aged just 11, on a private jet to Seville to watch Celtic in the 2003 UEFA Cup Final.
Jane Clarke’s ordeal has destroyed her faith in justice. Suffering years of terror, threats and uncertainty – only to be limply concluded with a cynical plea deal – has left her utterly disillusioned. One friend said, ‘Jane feels that if she could rewind the clock, she would not have gone to the police. The cops who dealt with it were really professional and supportive, but once it reached the Crown, things started to go very badly wrong. The system is a shambles which someone like Donaldson can easily manipulate using his money and lawyers.’
Donaldson, displaying no outward trace of remorse, strutted out of court with an instruction to return for sentencing four weeks later. At least Jane hoped, if not fully believed, there could be no more game-playing, no more delays, no more hiding place for her tormentor. Donaldson was due to be sentenced on 30 March 2017 – exactly three years, three months and three days after he first appeared in the dock. That morning, the court was packed with those who wanted to see justice being done, but Donaldson had other plans and decided not to show up. His lawyer mumbled something about supposed ill health but produced no medical evidence to back up the claim. The sheriff shot down a request to delay sentencing for another six weeks and firmly told Donaldson’s lawyer that his client had better be in front of her in one week’s time, but did not issue an arrest warrant. Surely, next time, there could be no more delays? Surely Donaldson would finally be forced to take his punishment?
28
CALL CRIMESTOPPERS
I could hear a smile on the anonymous caller’s face as he broke the news – Frankie Donaldson had been stabbed. A knifeman pounced as Donaldson was getting out of a car, 36 hours before he was due in court to be sentenced for the litany of assaults against Jane Clarke and her sister Liz. The caller said, ‘He’s in a bad way, he was hacked to bits. I was told they scalped him.’
Within five minutes came a different take from another caller, telling me: ‘It’s no more than a paper cut. I wouldn’t be surprised if he arranged it himself just to avoid getting sentenced.’
As is so often the case with gangland rumours, neither of these early and conflicting analyses was entirely accurate. No, Donaldson’s injuries were not serious, but neither was the attack self-inflicted.
The police issued a press release which did not identify the 58-year-old victim but stated that he had been ‘specifically targeted’. The attack took place at 8.30 p.m. in a car park in Cumbernauld, 20 minutes north-east of Glasgow and one of numerous locations where Donaldson was known to spend nights, as he slipped nomadically between addresses. Detectives said the victim was ‘seriously assaulted by a number of people’ but were unable to say how many or provide a description of them or their vehicle, which ‘would have been driven off at speed’.
I half expected a knock at the door from the police. More than one person, presumably in jest, asked me, ‘You got an alibi?’ Thankfully, I did.
With news of Donaldson’s dramatic attack online and in the morning newspapers, no one expected that he would keep his date at Glasgow Sheriff Court. They were right. With Sheriff Joan Kerr on the bench, there was no sign of Donaldson. At least this time his lawyer had a decent excuse – and a sick note. The lawyer explained that his client had undergone unspecified surgery and was still in hospital, leaving the sheriff no option but to put justice on ice for another six weeks.
Jane’s solicitor, Siobhán Kelly, wrote to prosecutor Harry Findlay raising concerns about the impact of the latest delay. The day after the no-show, Donaldson found the strength to clamber from his hospital bed and show face at the funeral of the ex-wife of his friend, Celtic director Michael McDonald. He was captured by a Sunday Mail photographer, his right hand enclosed in a cartoonish giant bandage, and a story was published with the headline ‘FEELING A HOLE LOT BETTER, DONUTS?’ That he is left-handed did not go unnoticed.
Perhaps the theory of Donaldson paying for a hit on himself was inspired by the recently released T2 Trainspotting movie in which another unhinged Francis – Franco Begbie – gets a prison pal to stick him with a blade in order to get out. Or maybe Donaldson was simply so petrified of jail that he would do anything to avoid it.
But why would he be so fearful of imprisonment? The answer lies in his deep unpopularity in the criminal underworld. Donaldson possesses the slippery skill to keep a foot in multiple and often rival camps, which can be seen as disloyalty and stir mistrust about whose side he is really on. More damaging still is the suspicion about how he has been able to thrive while many of his contemporaries have ended up poor, dead or in prison.
For all that Donaldson’s blood boils at the derogatory ‘Donuts’ nickname, his other one – ‘Crimestoppers’ – is more uncomfortable. The police press release about the Cumbernauld stabbing included a plea for anyone with information about it to call the Crimestoppers phone number. This prompted his enemies to snort with knowing laughter – ‘Call Crimestoppers about an attack on Crimestoppers!’ Jane believes that her knowledge of some of Donaldson’s secrets had been a factor in his decision to plead guilty rather than go to trial. She would have had no qualms about admitting making calls to Crimestoppers at Donaldson’s behest while under his domestic subjugation.
With William ‘Basil’ Burns languishing on remand for the acid attack against me and the primary school shooting, he and his cronies were growing increasingly impatient with Donaldson. An impeccable source told me that the price for Burns attacking me was £30,000 – that was if the job was done correctly. I’m not sure exactly what outcome would have merited the full fee – blindness, disfigurement, death? That it was so badly executed meant that Burns had only got £10,000, leaving him muttering threats from his cell. There is no ombudsman for hitman pay disputes.
Burns had the backing of his closest friend, Robert ‘Piggy’ Pickett, a veteran of the 1990s Paisley drugs war with connections to the Lyons crime clan. Pickett is a dangerous and violent criminal who once went to jail rather than give evidence against two Daniel mob gunmen who shot him, but he is not an idiot. Pickett was smart enough to realise that going after a journalist was almost as stupid as targeting a police officer. I learned that he had been on holiday when the acid attack plot was hatched and put into action. Had he been at home, it simply would not have happened.
One source said, ‘If Piggy had been around, he would have stopped Basil and you would not have been attacked. Basil is a rocket who would do anything for a few quid but Piggy would never have allowed it. He was raging when it happened, not just because his pal got jail, but because it was stupid and counter-productive.’ It was a startling and sobering revelation that made me reflect on and almost admit the existence of an underworld moral code.
Donaldson had more than just Burns and Pickett to worry about. His influence also seeped into the long-running Daniel versus Lyons drugs war. At its peak in the late 2000s, against a raging backdrop of tit-for-tat shootings, Donaldson had a foot in both camps. Steven Lyons considered Donaldson to be a friend and ally and spent time with him socially. Lyons was therefore furious on discovering that Donaldson was a
lso on civil terms with his most dangerous enemy – the Daniels’ enforcer Kevin ‘Gerbil’ Carroll.
When the Lyons mobster Ross Monaghan stood trial for Carroll’s Asda assassination, his lawyer theatrically read out a list of names of possible alternative suspects. The list of 99, compiled by police early on in the investigation, included Donaldson. It was a stunt designed to show the jury what kind of person Carroll was, but this who’s who of gangland also serves to illustrate Donaldson’s fluid loyalties.
In the weeks prior to Donaldson admitting the nine domestic violence charges, his name also cropped up in another murky incident which drew the ire of the Lyons and the Daniels. A major cocaine dealer and Carroll loyalist, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was arrested by armed police in a dramatic swoop in Rutherglen, just south of Glasgow. According to him, he had been lying low in a property linked to Donaldson and had been in his company shortly before the police pounced. The dealer and his Daniel cronies blamed Donaldson for the arrest. They are not the kind of people who believe in innocence until proven guilty – neither do they set any store by the requirement of proof beyond reasonable doubt. At least not in their own gangland version of justice. Unfortunately for Donaldson, the Lyons were equally sure of Donaldson’s complicity and, on that basis, furious that the man had not been delivered to them instead of the police.
Another example of Donaldson’s perceived disloyalty emerged after the murder of his brother-in-law, George ‘Goofy’ Docherty, a Paisley drugs war contemporary of Burns. Following his 2006 murder, Donaldson did not even attend his funeral. It was suggested the snub was because Donaldson was still harbouring ambitions that he could pass himself off as legitimate and therefore could not afford to soil his reputation by being seen at a gangland send-off. Even worse, Donaldson then committed what was viewed as great treachery by getting close to the very hitman suspected of getting away with killing Docherty.
Donaldson had long been conscious of the need to stay out of the spotlight which, in the age of social media, can be easier said than done. In 2015 I got a tip that a photo of Donaldson was on Facebook. Of particular interest was that he had his arm around a fresh-faced underworld hitman called Bobby Kirkwood. It was like an old football manager showing off his new star striker – all that was missing was the team scarf held aloft.
Kirkwood had come to public notoriety a few years earlier with an imaginative use of power tools in a particularly vicious attack. He was jailed for taking a power drill to gangster James Hanlon – another friend of the Daniels and Carroll. Kirkwood was one of the two men who growled at Jane Clarke after she arrived on a flight at Glasgow airport one day.
For years, Kirkwood’s picture could not be published while Donaldson was facing trial for domestic violence. That meant he again enjoyed the protection of contempt of court laws which thwarted anyone telling the truth about his gangland connections while his case churned through court. Only now can we publish the photo but, as it was gathering digital dust, Kirkwood apparently decided he no longer wanted to play for Donaldson’s team any more. Something to do with a lack of trust in him . . .
Another example of Donaldson’s fickleness can be seen in his relationship with celebrity criminal Barry Hughes, which owes more to hard cash than matching star signs. Money is certainly persuasive enough for them all to quietly forget about an incident a decade earlier when Donaldson came close to a street clash with Hughes’s father, Donald – a gangland version of a school reunion.
A more recent and particularly stark illustration of Donaldson’s underworld ducking and diving emerged during a murder trial in March 2016. Drug-dealer Jamie ‘Jamboy’ Connelly ran up a £600 debt while working for a business which makes deliveries of alcohol to customers’ homes. Business owner David ‘Strathy’ Strathern called on Donaldson to resolve the dispute. Donaldson set up a meeting between Strathern and Connelly at which the money would supposedly be repaid. The rendezvous took place in Rutherglen and ended with Connelly being stabbed to death. Prosecutor Tim Niven-Smith asked Strathern, ‘Frank Donaldson and [his associate] David Jones were the men who sorted out the dispute between you and Jamie and he was to pay you money?’ Strathern replied, ‘It was.’
The murder victim’s father claimed the attack happened when Strathern got out of a car and lunged at his son, who lifted his shirt and said to his father, ‘He got me a fucking cracker, Dad.’ Strathern, who insisted Connelly was uninjured when he left and said he had no idea how he got the fatal stab wound, walked free courtesy of a not proven verdict.
So when Donaldson was stabbed and slashed in a Cumbernauld car park, the CID in Coatbridge would have been scratching their heads. Never mind a list of 99 suspects – it would have been more like 999. Theories were in abundance. The family of his first wife, Elaine Gemmill, were certainly not shedding any tears. Members of the Lyons and Daniel mobs were delighted but distanced themselves from the attack, with one stating, ‘We’d have done it right.’ The most compelling of the suggestions was that the stabbing was ordered by an old enemy from Glasgow’s east end.
Back at court, Sheriff Kerr set a new date for sentencing – 19 May – which gave Donaldson six weeks to recover. When the day arrived, there were blue skies and sunshine so I decided to wait outside the court in order to have a word with Donaldson when he arrived. There were a few questions I intended to put to him. But it was yet another no-show.
When his lawyer flourished a psychiatric report which stated that he was too ill to stand trial, Sheriff Kerr pointed out that the report was invalid as this was a sentencing hearing, not a trial, and added, ‘We have moved beyond that point.’ She then told the lawyer in very clear terms that his wayward client had better turn up next time, on 6 June.
Meanwhile, Jane and her sister seethed impotently but they were used to it, having become numbed by years of incessant delays. They were certain that Donaldson would continue to find ways of dodging justice. His deep fear of jail might even make him jump on a plane to somewhere sunny for a very long holiday.
On 6 June I got a surprising message telling me that Donaldson was on his way to court. I still considered it to be unlikely and joked that he might end up steering his car into the River Clyde or deliberately fall down the court stairs. But at long last there he was, standing in the dock, nervous and sullen. Gone was the gallus self-styled businessman who had given a mocking performance during the civil case. Gone was the gangland fixer whose cash and connections made rivals quake.
It had been 16 years since I first wrote the story about the hitman plotting to ‘put a hole in Donuts’. It had been four years since Jane flew home from Majorca with bleeding on the brain. It was three years and six months since his arrest in Glasgow following the threats that Jane and her family would be shot.
This, at long last, was the endgame. Donaldson had nothing to say for himself. His latest lawyer pleaded with the sheriff to spare him a prison sentence on the grounds that he was supposedly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and a cocaine habit. Apparently, the lawyer claimed, Donaldson was ‘thoroughly ashamed of his behaviour’, which were hollow and insulting words to his victims.
The sheriff listened to all the excuses, then said, ‘I have reached the conclusion that the offences are so grave that no suitable alternative to a custodial sentence is possible.’ She told Donaldson that he was being sentenced to 26 months’ imprisonment. Of course, he will serve nothing like that amount and the true duration of his sentence, as usual, will be kept from the public. In addition, the sheriff imposed a four-year order banning him from making contact with his battered, tormented and tortured ex, who had done what no man has ever done, which was to stand up to Donaldson and come out on top.
The agony for Jane was not over yet, though A month after being jailed, Donaldson again reached for the law and lodged an appeal against his sentence. The uncertainly hung over Jane for two more months until the appeal was rejected.
I spoke to Marsha Scott, chief executive of Scottish Wom
en’s Aid, who works with the police and Crown Office to improve the way the criminal justice system deals with domestic abuse. She and others in the charity have helped to achieve great progress over the years, but her assessment of this case – for which the maxim ‘justice delayed is justice denied’ could have been coined – was damning. She said:
When a woman and her child have been so horrifically revictimised by the system that is supposed to protect them, then it is important that those within the system are asked, and indeed ask themselves, serious questions about how this came to be.
It’s hard to see this particular situation as anything but a catalogue of failures; failures that have let a woman and her child down. Despite improvements within the justice system, her [Jane Clarke’s] story has shown that there is still a long way to go until women have equal access to justice in Scotland. It is on all of those within the system to reflect on how they can step up and better protect victims of domestic abuse, and it is on all of us to demand that they do.
I also talked to Donaldson’s friend Colin McGowan, chief executive of Hamilton Accies FC, who had given evidence on Donaldson’s behalf during the failed civil case against Jane. He expressed surprise at the violence and compared the couple’s relationship to that of ‘Posh and Becks’. In response to cocaine use being cited as an explanation of Donaldson’s conduct, McGowan said, ‘Frank’s wrestled with many demons over the years. Any form of violence against anyone is wrong.’
The timing of Donaldson’s imprisonment was pleasingly significant, as it came the day after I returned to the High Court for a re-run of the acid attack and school shooting trial of his former friend William ‘Basil’ Burns.
Acid Attack Page 20