Real Hard Cases

by Robert Jeffrey

  You do get a laugh or two in the police force and I could barely suppress one when the owner of the house nodded me aside and, once he’d got me on my own, he whispered to me, ‘Is there anything I can do to square this?’ Plead insanity was my advice.

  Right after this, another thief landed in our lap when a knock on the door was answered and in walked a youth carrying a typewriter. It was replaced with handcuffs.

  But there was yet another surprise in store for us back at Tobago Street. The men we had arrested on the way to Dennistoun turned out to part of Bernard’s gang. They were all charged with being known thieves and associates of known thieves and detained to appear at the magistrate’s court the following morning. We believed that they would be remanded there for a couple of days giving us enough time to have some of the recovered property identified. Some of it was easy – the rings had been stolen from a shop in Irvine and the portable TV from a shop in Dunfermline. Some of the other stuff was also traced to the original owners.

  But sometimes things don’t go quite to plan and, despite the fact that we now had evidence to charge them with theft of the recovered goods, the fiscal at the court did not ask for a remand and the accused were allowed to walk free. They were cock-a-hoop when they heard they were to be released and that they would be dealt with at a Sheriff Court later. However, I wasn’t happy at all. I decided to line them up at the uniform bar of the Central Police Office and told the whole bunch of them that they were being charged with conspiring together to commit the crime of theft by shoplifting. There was a stunned silence – they just could not believe what they were hearing. Even the duty officer looked impressed and told me he had never heard of such a charge. But it worked. They were detained and appeared at the Sheriff Court the same day on petition and bail was refused. Suddenly this crew were in deep trouble, a simple shoplifting case had escalated into something more serious and complex.

  Colleagues told me that they had never heard of such a charge and I stirred it up a bit by saying, ‘Neither have I!’ But the case went to a Sheriff Court with a jury and I gave evidence for almost all of the first day of a two-day trial. Despite the defence lawyer getting it into his head that the police were lying and that the stake-out had never taken place, all of the accused were found guilty. They were referred to the High Court for sentence. The resetter got five years, which was reduced on appeal to four, and the others received varying sentences, the maximum of which was three years, so it was quite a result for us.

  Of course, it is much more usual to find shoplifting being done by the individual – one desperate person trying to smooth the path of a difficult life. And they mostly get caught, their very desperation making them take chances and not think through the risk of detection. It is sad for often a lot of the stuff they get caught nicking is of little value.

  One lone regular was a woman called Sadie. She was hardly the type to disappear into the background of the wealthy fur-coated ladies of Bearsden and the leafy south-side suburbs who were the core clients of the famous old Sauchiehall Street store, Daly’s. And she was spotted there, looking out of place, one day around the time a ring or two disappeared. I knew Sadie of old and was asked to have a word with her and I did. She confessed and returned the rings. With her serial record for shoplifting, she could have been jailed but I put in a good word for her and she was fined. Was she grateful? I ran into her in town a few weeks later and she took a look at me carefully and asked what size of suit I took, remarking at the same time I looked ‘a forty-four’. I declined the offer.

  9

  DEATH AT THE FRUIT MARKET

  If there is one lesson to be learned by anyone who is ever involved in a search for justice or, indeed, embroiled in a truly hard criminal case of any kind it is that you need strength of purpose, patience, energy, total belief in your cause and the ability to fight on and on despite setbacks. Justice in Scotland, it seems, is not handed out on a plate and, as this book shows many times, there are occasions when what happens in the courts flies in the face of common sense. It is heartening, however, to note that justice can often be achieved after a long fight and many dark days when a positive outcome seemed impossible. No case demonstrates all this more fiercely than the story of the death of fifty-eight-year-old grandmother Ann Whittle. I became involved when her family, who are fulsome in their praise of the police if not what happened in the courts, asked me to assist in an approach to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, which I did.

  There are two remarkable things about Ann’s death – where it took place and the public nature of it. Glasgow’s fruit market is in Blochairn and it does exactly what it says on the tin – it provides excellent facilities for fruit growers, farmers, importers etc. to sell every imaginable type of fruit and vegetable. Around dawn from Monday to Saturday, it is a hugely bustling place with buyers and sellers using their wits to make a living. Amid the sweet scent of fresh fruit, there is a hint of the more robust smell of traders chasing a profit. I liked the atmosphere of the place when I used to visit during my days with the Federation Against Copyright Theft though it was mostly on a Sunday when I called. With the big time fruit merchants enjoying a day off, the area was then turned into a cross between the famous Barras and a car boot sale. Pirate DVDs and CDs were not much to be seen in this market, which was mostly legitimate but I had one amusing morning there when the police took away a stallholder for a chat. I was left in charge of his stuff and took his place selling the goods. I did a fair bit of business, as I thought, but, when I gave stallholder the takings on his return, he turned up his nose at the fifty quid I handed over. In his view, the stuff I sold was worth nearer five hundred! Maybe I should have paid more attention to the commercial world in my earlier days.

  The police were always about such a busy market and their presence meant that there was normally very little trouble, few thefts or assaults but, one day in August 2004, there was to be a dramatic and tragic exception to the rule. The fruit market was ideal for its Monday to Saturday role but, on Sundays, there was a major drawback – not enough parking for the hundreds who like to throng the place searching for bargains. What happened that day and later in the High Court was to highlight the shortcomings of the legal system in Scotland. It all began with something we are all familiar with – two cars making for the same parking space at roughly the same time. Although it is a familiar scenario, it is not usually one that results in violent death.

  What happened next on that August day in the fruit market was as disgusting as it was astonishing. Ann Whittle had left her husband Norman’s car and was in the process of guiding him into a space that was becoming vacant. As she did so, Norman was impeded when Carol McMillan, a thirty-four-year-old from Holytown in Lanarkshire, placed her hands on the bonnet to prevent him moving into the space. This was clearly done in an effort to let her partner, Charles Freeburn, also in his mid thirties, get to the space first as his car was nearby. This was bad enough – a touch of what you might call parking space rage – but what happened next was completely out of the box. A verbal argument about ownership of the parking slot took place and, during it, Carol McMillan pulled Ann’s hair and kicked her about the head three times as she crouched on the ground. Onlookers said McMillan’s face was contorted with rage and she seemed to have gone berserk.

  Ann Whittle collapsed and died of a heart attack, there and then, as a result of the ferocious assault. In the midst of all this mayhem, her husband Norman attempted to come to her aid but witnesses say he was physically prevented from doing so by Freeburn. Bear in mind that this was all being watched by hordes of Sunday afternoon shoppers and some of them saw McMillan, obviously aware of what she had done, using her mobile to dial 999. During this call, she reported to the police that she had been assaulted rather than the other way round. The horrific incident was also seen by two security men who were prevented from coming to Ann Whittle’s aid by a high security fence between them and the car park.

  The police were quickly on th
e scene and witnesses ran to tell them what had happened. McMillan was arrested, charged with Ann’s death and detained. The trauma of what had started as a quiet day out in the sun must have been horrendous for her husband Norman. Indeed, when I met him almost two years later in Baird Street Police station to discuss the case and how I could help, he still seemed far from fully recovered. Two days after the death in the car park, on 17 August 2004, Carol McMillan appeared in court charged with murder. Her next appearance was on 3 May 2005 when she pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of culpable homicide. On the very same day, there was another blow of fate for Norman Whittle when his son Craig, aged thirty-five, died from a fall as a result of an epileptic seizure.

  Life was already dealing Norman Whittle, a retired builder, a hard hand but it was to get even worse. A couple of months later, Carol McMillan walked free from Dunfermline High Court, having being sentenced by the presiding judge, Lady Dorrian, to probation and community service. The media storm was enormous – it was a verdict that shocked the whole of Scotland. One comment from Lady Dorrian annoyed me particularly – at one stage in the case, she remarked that there was not much chance of McMillan repeating this crime. Oh, really? So that’s OK, then. The papers, the TV reporters and anyone who had followed the sensational case were all entitled to ask the question, ‘How can this be justice?’

  On the day after the sentencing, the family urged the Crown to appeal against what was obviously a hugely lenient sentence and they started a petition that eventually had around 30,000 signatures. Early in October 2005, the Lord Advocate, on behalf of the Crown, did lodge an appeal, claiming that the sentence was too lenient. The family’s petition was calling for a ten-year sentence. On 20 October, the appeal was heard by three High Court judges and, a fortnight later, Carol McMillan was sentenced to four years in jail for the vicious attack on Ann Whittle. Most would observe that it was no more than she deserved. Incidentally, at his trial, her partner Freeburn had his sentence deferred for six months for good behaviour. He complied with the court order and was then admonished.

  The family cheered the appeal court verdict and, with McMillan finally behind bars, the papers reported that Norman Whittle, whose wife it turned out had had an undiagnosed heart condition, said it was a result he had prayed for. He said, ‘I burst out crying, thinking of my wife. I am just so happy today. We deserved justice.’

  At the appeal, Lord Cullen, who sat with two other judges, said, ‘There is no reasonable alternative to a custodial sentence.’ As he spoke, McMillan sat hunched in the dock.

  Brian McConnachie QC had told the appeal:

  The position of the Crown is that the circumstances of the offence were such that there was no sentence which could be imposed other than a substantial custodial sentence. It was an assault in which a significant level of violence was used, involving pulling of the victim’s hair and kicking her on the head while, to all intents and purposes, she was on the ground and helpless.

  While the victim was literally dying in the street, McMillan went on the phone, while sitting on the bonnet of Mr Whittle’s car, telephoning the police and claiming that she was being assaulted by Mr Whittle with his vehicle and that she was the one who had been the victim of an attack. It is clear, at the time these injuries were inflicted, there was no hint of remorse from McMillan.

  Mr McConnachie went on to say that the sentencing judge, Lady Dorrian, had taken McMillan’s personal circumstances into account too much – although it was not disclosed exactly what those circumstances were.

  It was not the first time decisions of Lady Dorrian had been questioned. In the summer of 2006, as this book was being written, I allowed myself a wry smile when I came upon a national newspaper featuring a story ‘naming and shaming’ a number of judges for what were considered inappropriate sentences. On the list was Lady Dorrian. As I said, I had been approached by the Whittle family to help in their dealings with the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board and thankfully that matter is being resolved with the assistance of the detective in charge of the original case, Detective Inspector David Gemmill. But the bottom line is that the family of Ann Whittle have been taken to hell and back by the actions of the ‘Woman Who Nearly Got Away with It’.

  10

  THE VAN THAT NEVER WAS

  The police are often accused of paying too much attention to detail, the ritual of following procedures taking precedence above all else. But anyone who has pulled on the blue uniform and patrolled dangerous streets will tell you that sometimes procedures can save lives and that there is often a good reason for doing things by the book rather than reacting intuitively. I learned that lesson, often the hard way, on the streets of Glasgow on Friday and Saturday nights back in the sixties. The schemes were tough and so was the city centre. Sauchiehall Street, in particular, was no place to be late on a Saturday evening unless you were tooled up and a fully paid-up member of the Maryhill Fleet or the Roystonhill Shamrock. Strange as it may seem, in these days of pedestrianisation and city-centre gentrification, these two gangs often met ‘by appointment’ for a dust-up in the area of the old Locarno ballroom. Where there are now new luxury flats, blood was spilled on the streets with alarming regularity in those bad old days.

  There were laid-down procedures for the guidance of police officers called in to separate street fighting gangs. I have often heard laymen and -women complain that the use of the siren on a squad car simply warns the bad guys that you are on your way and allows them to escape. To some extent this is true but tackling gangs of thugs, whose main aim in life is to knock hell out of each other with razors, staves, stones or chains, requires a special approach We were always taught that, when called to a scene where there could be literally hundreds of combatants in bloody action, the sound of the siren screaming loudly through the night air helped stop the fight and made the street armies scatter. This saved lives and serious injuries – even if, on occasion, it let a villain or two escape.

  In those days, the first stop after attending city-centre incidents was usually the casualty department in the Royal Infirmary – one of the busiest emergency medical facilities in Britain on Fridays and Saturdays at the time! – to check on the injured. It was important to find out if anyone had died as what might have just been a street rumble could turn into a murder inquiry. Gang fights give the police many problems but the most difficult of all was trying to prove, after the event, who had hit whom and who had thrown what at whom – in other words, to differentiate between attacker and attacked. It always was and always will be a minefield.

  The history of true crime is riddled with illustrations of the problem. Almost eighty years ago, the death of one of the thirties’ gang leaders highlighted the difficulty. James Dalziel was the ruler of a south-side gang known as the Parlour Boys who were based in a local dance hall. Then, as now, dance halls could be the focus of trouble with rival gangs fighting over the choicest of the local girls who would be decked out in their finery and on the pull. Often the men would have poured out of the local spit-and-sawdust drinking dens blind drunk. Problems stemming from drug use were in the distant future but the illegal chemical route to nirvana had its forerunner in a simple excess of booze. After an affray one night in the Bedford Parlour Dance Hall, in Celtic Street, Dalziel – known to his fighting mates as Razzle Dazzle – ended up taking a trip to the nearby Victoria Infirmary, mortally injured, on the back of a lorry commandeered into use as a makeshift ambulance. He was dead on arrival and no fewer than sixteen men appeared in court accused of inflicting stab wounds or razor slashes.

  At the height of this affray in the dance hall, women screamed and fled for cover as the men battled it out with razors, knives and bottles. After an intense weekend of police activity, sixteen of the dancers were arrested. The police operation involved one of the largest identity parades ever held in the city – or anywhere else, I suspect. Almost a hundred young men and women who had been at the dance took part in the line-up. When the accused, all in their twenties and t
hirties, finally appeared in court, most sported bloodstained bandages on their heads or bodies. The man suspected of delivering the killer blow somehow got the jury on his side and escaped the rope.

  The whole business showed just how difficult it is to mete out justice after a gang fight and I had a similar experience myself in the sixties. The location was the old Locarno in Sauchiehall Street. At one time this a real hot spot and it was frequently visited by cops trying to sort out the bad guys from the folk just there for a night out and a twirl round the floor with the prospect of what Glaswegians call a ‘lumber’ at the end of the night.

  Extra patrols were often at the ready to rush to an incident and, if something serious happened, the manager would be briefed to close the doors to make sure the combatants didn’t do a runner. I well remember one night we arrived to sort out what was happening behind the doors the manager had locked. There were 200 male dancers in the hall. We propped the victim, who was bleeding profusely from his injuries, on a chair and put down towels to catch the blood before arranging for the dancers to file past, one by one, to let him try to finger the villain. Some hope with such a number of possible assailants! The injured guy was on the verge of passing out from his injuries when he managed to gather enough breath to tell us that the person who had chibbed him had red hair. Suddenly the suspect list had narrowed to eight people. That time, we got a result and the person responsible for this bloody attack got eight years but, if he had not had red hair, would we have caught him?