The Iceman: The Rise and Fall of a Crime Lord

by Wilson, Jim

  For several weeks after the killing, his routine was the same. Each afternoon, he would steadily dispatch vodka after vodka, soothing his pain with the clear spirit. His personal soundtrack for the grieving process was repeatedly selected from the jukebox, as if on a loop. The melancholic tune that reminded McIntyre of Tony was ‘Sometimes We Cry’ by Tom Jones featuring Van Morrison. The lyrics that McIntyre immersed himself in during those long weeks of autumn 2000 were certainly appropriate. The haunting song ends with the lines:

  Sometimes we live,

  Sometimes we die,

  Sometimes we cry,

  Sometimes we cry.

  One regular recalls how McIntyre, a known McGovern enforcer who had survived being shot three years earlier, symbolised the feeling in Thomson’s after the murder. He said:

  He would play that song at least once a day, usually more depending on how much he’d had to drink. He was emotional about what had happened to Tony. This went on for months. A lot of us would joke that it would be us that would be crying if we heard it again – it got on your nerves after a while. We were careful not to let big Duncy hear us say that.

  Tony’s murder sent shock waves through the Springburn community and the Glasgow criminal underworld. In Springburn, many would feel a secret happiness about the end of a man whose heroin had claimed the lives of many sons and daughters. They knew about the many teenage girls, once the babes of proud parents, who were now forced to sell sex on The Strip in Glasgow in order to scrape together cash for another tenner bag, which allowed Tony to live the high life. Others openly welcomed his departure. They had tasted the family’s violence and drug dealing first hand. Some, however, were happy to remember Tony as a married family man rather than a violent thief and drug dealer.

  In the other major criminal heartlands – places like Possil, Paisley and Pollok – rivals kept a close eye on events as they watched and waited for the inevitable violent repercussions and the equally inevitable grab for power. Most now believed that the power and influence of the McGoverns was waning, with the family unable to control Springburn never mind further afield.

  Stevenson was the prime suspect, indeed the only suspect, after the murder of his former friend. Amassing evidence of his involvement was the unenviable – some would say impossible – task of a murder squad that was working long hours but making little progress. There was some hope in the form of witnesses who included those attending a nearby function and a teenage thief who had been on the flat roof of a shop near to the New Morven. When asked, none could – or perhaps would – be certain of what they saw.

  Some police officers joked about how the overtime generated from the large-scale murder enquiry was helping to pay for a new TV or that summer’s family holiday. It did not help their task that the McGoverns banned the police from releasing a photo of Tony. The public only got to see his face after an old police mugshot found its way to the Sunday Mail.

  Thomson’s bar was a hub of activity in the weeks following the murder. People like thuggish Billy Ferris, who was later convicted of a cowardly killing, started to appear on the scene like vultures circling a corpse.

  One regular said:

  Tommy would slip in now and again but he was quiet and drawn, he wasn’t saying much. The brother that most people seemed to defer to was Paul. He was soft-spoken and, as a young guy with trendy clothes and a fancy big four-wheel drive, you wouldn’t think he had just got out after doing a life sentence for murder. He never made a big deal about who he was or his reputation – unlike the other brother, James. The only one that kept out of the way was Joe. Guys like George Madden were always about.

  Above the gantry at Thomson’s were snapshots of Tony, his wife Jackie, family, friends, famous footballers and pub regulars in happier times. In those days when talk of banning smoking in pubs would have been laughed at, lighters were for sale bearing the words ‘Jackie welcomes you to Thomson’s bar’.

  The mother to Tony’s three young children, Jackie was now a widow. Strong, quiet and dignified, she would occasionally visit the bar to tie up loose ends. During these visits, any talk of Tony’s reputed girlfriend was respectfully muted.

  For those monitoring events, it was not until the following year that the violent ripples from Tony’s murder began. Mourner-in-chief McIntyre was one of the first to feel the waves. He had sunk his usual vodkas at Thomson’s over that Monday lunchtime in June 2001 before going into the barber’s shop next door for a haircut. As he made his way along the street with his wife Linda, the hit man struck.

  McIntyre, then aged thirty-eight, was shot in the head. The handgun was thrown to an accomplice who made off while the gunman escaped in the most bizarre of getaway vehicles – a Number 45 bus. A passer-by took McIntyre to the local Stobhill Hospital from where he was sent to the Royal Infirmary for life-saving surgery. Typically, he would not talk to the police, instead vowing to deal with it himself.

  This daylight attack on McIntyre took place just one week after Tommy McGovern had been the target of a gunman. Four shots were fired at Tommy in a Springburn car park, each one missing the intended target. Tommy, armed and ready, fired shots back but they also failed to connect. The two Glaswegian gunslingers took poorly aimed potshots at each other. It was only good fortune that no innocents in the vicinity were maimed or even killed in the frenetic and inept crossfire.

  Many people thought that Stevenson was behind the attack on McIntyre because he was so well in with the McGoverns. But the truth was even more incredible – McIntyre was shot because he was deemed responsible for setting the trap from which Tommy had escaped the previous week. He was blamed for trying to lure Tommy to his death. He had been accused of switching sides because he feared Stevenson and recognised that the McGoverns’ influence was waning.

  The failed attack on Tommy was another clear signal that Stevenson was intent on taking the war to the McGoverns – as the saying goes, the best form of defence is attack. Turning McIntyre to his cause was yet another signal of his rising influence but he knew that, to guarantee his safety, he needed to deal with the two brothers most capable of seeking revenge – Tommy and Paul.

  Several months later, just over a year after Tony’s murder, a botched attempt was made on Paul’s life. By now, Paul was a ‘businessman’, running a security firm with his partner Madden. Whether the amateurish move against Paul was the work of Stevenson or perhaps rivals in the gang-corrupted security industry is not known.

  If there was ever a time for the McGovern clan to stand united, this was it. A sibling feud had not only led to the death of one brother, it had brought about the public exposure of their criminal empire and the near-collapse of their business. However, there was to be no united stance. Their knack for inflicting mutual harm triumphed over the requirement to maintain solidarity in the face of common enemies. In the same month as he fled a gunman, the youngest of the five brothers, Paul, had a blazing fall-out with eldest brother, Joe. Paul blamed Joe’s twenty-one-year-old son Joe Jnr for stealing a drugs haul worth around £30,000. Not long after Tony’s murder, the boy had featured in a BBC prime-time documentary about car theft. The fly-on-the-wall programme had shown a traffic policeman cornering the sweaty youth in a Possil bingo hall after he was seen fleeing from a stolen car. The glove under his table matched the one in the car but the charges were dropped. It did not help that the bingo hall’s CCTV cameras failed that night. Even now, Joe Jnr tags along with the family-run shoplifting gang and often trawls the pubs selling their weekly haul from the high street. For years, his mum Anne has been one of the members of the Jean McGovern and Annette Daniel organised shoplifting gang.

  When accused of the drugs theft by his furious uncle, Joe Jnr claimed that they had been stolen from him and his dad backed him up. Paul McGovern did not believe a word of it and, even if the story was true, it did not do the family’s reputation any good if a mystery man could simply swipe drugs from the brothers without reprisal. Joe Snr did not take kindly to the youngest o
f his four brothers, ten years his junior, impugning the honesty of his son. At least this particular family fall-out stopped short of violence.

  17

  Paying Respect

  Some in the McGovern family were not happy. It was the day after Tony’s funeral and that day’s newspaper reports were suitably scathing about this gangland send-off. Several McGovern members also had issues with the priest who had conducted the service. They suggested that someone ought to have a word with Father Noel Murray, the same priest who had married Tony and Jackie in 1992 and married elder brother Joe in 1989.

  Eight long weeks after Tony’s murder, his body was finally released by the authorities. This had given the local florists plenty of time to prepare for that cold Monday morning in November. The biting weather was well suited to the pinched faces in attendance. The previous day, Tony’s multimillionaire pal David Moulsdale had stated his intention to attend. In the end, he did not and ex-footballer Charlie Nicholas was also absent.

  Tony’s oak coffin was carried from St Aloysius to the strains of the Celine Dion ballad ‘Immortality’ before being taken, in a slow-moving cortege, to Lambhill Cemetery.

  Father Murray was to later take a phone call from one female McGovern relative who was critical of what he had said – and what he had not said – about Tony. The priest, now in his eighties, who retired in 2005, said:

  A family member phoned up and said that I didn’t praise him for being a good family man. In the circumstances, I didn’t think I could start saying anything positive. I kept it quite theological or spiritual and said we were all children of God and that it was not for us to judge. I wasn’t going to start praising him – he was up to his eyes in criminal activity as far as I could gather.

  The problem nowadays is they expect a eulogy but what could I say about him? I just said to myself, ‘Keep it on the ground.’ I remember other clergy saying I had got out of it well. Some older priests in previous times might not even have let the body cross the chapel door.

  Many saw the funeral as a way of the family flexing its muscles – showing people they were still not to be crossed – but, in terms of gangland power, they had taken a major hit with the loss of Tony.

  Stevenson was on the run, out of reach and mocking them. Many in the former McGovern camp were switching sides. They could see a more attractive future as part of Stevenson’s new mob. Men like Willie Cross jumped ship. He would later join his new boss in the dock.

  Soon, pub boss Jim Milligan was to flee when the family began taking a keen interest in what exactly he had been doing with much of their illicit income for all those years. Partly motivated by self-preservation, he also moved towards Stevenson.

  No matter how badly Tony’s murder had harmed their reputation and ability, the family were still actively involved in drug dealing. In January 2001, four months after Tony’s murder, they planned what they hoped would be a spectacular show of strength.

  The New Morven, where Tony had been shot as he sat in his car outside, was to be the venue for a massive tribute to him. Buses from Liverpool, with the McGoverns’ long-standing criminal allies on board, made the trip up the M6 and many gangland cronies from Glasgow and Ireland made the effort to attend. The Saturday night blowout was billed as a ‘rebel-oke’ – like a karaoke but mainly with songs of an Irish Republican theme. One source said:

  Stevenson had already been doing a bit of business with a few Ulster Loyalist types by then. The McGoverns had long enjoyed links with those close to the IRA and other Republicans heavily involved in crime. In the late 80s and early 90s, a Glasgow-based IRA criminal called John Friel, along with his then girlfriend Maureen McLaughlin, had helped to show them the ropes in the pub and property trade. Glasgow’s modern criminals have rarely split down sectarian lines but, around that time, it seemed to have the potential to go that way. Some of the brothers like Joe thought it was a bad idea. This event showed people that, even without Tony, they could do the business.

  Also around this time, the gang would hold ‘board meetings’ on the pavement near to their Blackthorn Street childhood home. One witness said:

  Every week, this big fleet of flash cars – BMWs, Range Rovers, Mercs – would suddenly appear from all directions. The cars were virtually abandoned in the street while the guys gathered round the pavement and stood talking. Maybe they were worried about their phones being bugged.

  The big funeral, the New Morven tribute and the pavement meetings were all designed by the McGoverns to say one thing: ‘We’re not finished.’ Stevenson, their friend-turned-nemesis, was, by then, too busy to listen.

  18

  Last Orders

  Jim Milligan’s ears should have been burning. ‘Guys like him are all the same. They start off OK but then start believing that they’re gangsters too. The bubble usually bursts soon after that.’ The gangland figure delivering his opinion of the McGoverns’ erstwhile business associate could have been speaking of many of the businessmen – and businesswomen – running firms in Scotland that had been launched with criminals’ dirty money and were busy laundering more of it.

  In the underworld village, where gangsters of a certain level know each other and often do business when convenient, most will know a man who knows a man who can help an associate. In Glasgow, like any city in Britain, there are bankers, lawyers, accountants and estate agents happy to take on new business. They do not ask awkward questions because they already know the awkward answers. The motive of these corrupted professionals is most often greed but, in a few cases, their co-operation is assured through blackmail. Their new clients may not only keep a keen enthusiasm for cocaine or prostitutes a secret but may be helpful on the supply side too.

  The other staff that must be recruited urgently are the frontmen, people with no obvious criminal connections whose names can be used on official company documents – preferably plausible business types capable of talking a good game. Jim Milligan fitted the bill perfectly. The one-time electrician always fancied himself as a ‘player’ – a term only used by those who believe gangsterism should be worn like a badge of honour. It was not long before this wide boy from Springburn would get involved with the McGoverns. He was soon running Jimmy Nick’s Properties Ltd. Controlling a maze of five other firms, the chain owned Thomson’s bar and the New Morven, both in Springburn, and trendy Cafe Cini style bars, one in Glasgow’s city centre and another in Greenock.

  Milligan’s business partner was ex-Celtic footballer Charlie Nicholas who often visited Milligan for lunchtime social visits in the company’s Springburn office. His silent partners were the McGovern family. Milligan had long been a friend of Nicholas. He had even lived with the footballer’s parents for three years and they treated him like a member of the family.

  Milligan and Nicholas had met in 1981 at the former Warehouse disco. Milligan was a bouncer while Nicholas was a fresh-faced Celtic star. Many years later, Nicholas admitted in court that he’d been ‘young and naive’ to go into business with Milligan. Both men were interviewed by the police officers investigating Tony’s murder outside the New Morven. The pub’s licensee was John Fox, a man who later fronted M&M Security for murderer Paul McGovern.

  For Milligan, the first sign of trouble came in June 2000 when hundreds of fleeing customers ran for their lives as flames destroyed Cafe Cini and the nearby G1 nightclub in Greenock. The intense fire, started in the empty flats above Cini, took two hours to control. It was part of the tit-for-tat attacks between Stevenson and the McGoverns but Milligan was quick to lie in public about the motives behind the blaze. With as straight a face as he could muster, he said, ‘This isn’t about gangsters – it’s about people in Greenock who have never accepted us here from the outset.’

  The fire prompted a public vow from a sickened Nicholas to get out of the pub game after fifteen years. Following Tony’s slaying several weeks later, Nicholas said he had sold his 50 per cent stake in Jimmy Nick’s. Having one pub torched as part of a gang war was bad but a mobster ge
tting shot outside another bar was altogether worse.

  For Milligan, the morning after the night of Tony’s murder must have been more painful than the worst hangover in his pub chain’s history. The game was up. His complex creative accounting was set to unravel. Behind the smoke and mirrors, the McGoverns were to discover a seven-figure black hole in their fortune. Milligan would have a lot of explaining to do or he would have done if the McGoverns were the type of people who were in any way interested in explanations.

  He attended Tony’s funeral a worried man but, by the time the Clydesdale Bank pulled the plug on Jimmy Nick’s Properties Ltd, he had fled Scotland. In February 2001, the chain of companies went spectacularly bust, owing up to £1 million.

  Milligan’s large and luxurious family home overlooking a golf course near Gartcosh in Lanarkshire had been hurriedly emptied of personal effects before being abandoned. When the McGovern team arrived at the house, there was no sign of Milligan so they trashed his home, making it uninhabitable – not that its occupant planned to return.

  Rumours of the McGovern family threatening Nicholas were never substantiated but they did put word out through contacts. ‘If you know where Milligan is, let us know immediately. If you don’t, then you’ll get it as well.’

  It was no surprise that Milligan drifted towards the protective sanctuary of Stevenson. For several years, he dared not risk returning home. There was an endless list of countries in which this Glasgow gangland fugitive was supposedly holed up.

  Years after Milligan’s hasty departure, the McGovern anger has still not abated. One former associate said: