The Icy Cold Stare of a Killer

Ever looked a murderer in the eyes and no, I’m not talking about my wife again !

I was reading the Daily Record on-line the other day and the on-going activities of Ian ‘Blink’ McDonald (pictured). Glasgow’s most notorious criminal was leading the front pages once again. Within the space of three days there had been two separate attempts on his life and this will undoubtedly continue until he’s in a wooden box, six feet down, but it was a mention of one of his previous crimes which made me realise I’d come face to face with the guy a few years back.

Below is McDonald’s summary from his ‘CV’:

Ian "Blink" McDonald is one of the most infamous gangsters in Scotland's bloody history. Life long friend of Paul Ferris, Blinks’ chequered career has involved armed robbery, several allegations of murder and turf wars. Highly respected throughout the UK by the criminal fraternity, Blink is regularly described by the Scottish press as a vicious psychopath.

So now you have the picture of the guy but let me explain where I ‘met’ him. It wasn’t a pleasant experience.

Not long after I started work with BT in London, I used to pop down to the Old Bailey, London’s Central Criminal Court, which is reserved for the highest profile criminal trials. After a few visits I got to know the process for getting into the public gallery of the more interesting trials. It’s not always possible, unless you know the names of the people on trial, to work out what trial is which, so the idea is to ask the officers outside each courtroom what’s happening. They’re usually very good and will tell you if a trial is having a long legal argument (boring), is in the opening addresses (somewhat boring) or is in the final stages when the tension starts to rise.

On this particular day back in 1992, as I was wandering from court to court looking for something interesting, I came across Court No 6 with two armed police officers outside the public gallery. I asked the court officer if I could get in and he replied that as it was a ‘highly secure trial’ I could only gain access if I had my passport on me. Now it just so happened that I had my passport on me, as at that time I was commuting back and forth to Nice, so he was rather surprised when I produced it.

When I entered the court there was only one other person in the gallery, a rather attractive, but heavily made up woman. Not long after, there was a short recess for some legal argument and as the court emptied, apart from the lawyers and the judge, I sidled over to the woman and asked her what the trial was about. She was a bit reluctant to talk but I managed to get something about ‘6 Scottish guys on trial for bank robbery’.

The court then reconvened and the defendants piled into their benches which were just below where I was sitting in the public gallery. I noticed one of the defendants staring at me with a rather menacing look on his face. It didn’t take me long to figure out I was actually sitting next to this ‘gangster’s moll’ so I moved over a bit but he kept looking at me. It was quite disconcerting despite the fact that there was no way he could get to me, but yes, his cold staring eyes made me feel quite queasy.

In the couple of hours I sat through the trial, the alleged crime was laid bare – Blink McDonald (yes – the very same and the guy who looked at me in the court) was on trial with five of his mates for Bank Robbery. They’d made their way south to break into a branch of Nat West in Torquay and had tunnelled their way through from an adjoining shop on the Sunday, with the intention of surprising the bank staff on the Monday morning. But what they didn’t realise was that it was a Bank Holiday and when the bank eventually opened on the Tuesday, they were rather upset.

Unfortunately, there was a problem at the bank and one of the staff was shot, but lived. The police were hot on their trail but McDonald and his pals made it back to Scotland. Rather unprofessionally however, they had left a set of bank plans and other highly incriminating evidence in their caravan which they stayed in for a couple of weeks prior to the robbery. The caravan site owner recognised them, their prints were all over the bank plans, but most amusing of all was that a team of builders who were working on that Bank Holiday Monday saw McDonald and his cronies popping out of the bank for food several times that day! Just a bit suspicious.

McDonald got 16 years but was released after 10.

I did a previous blog on the gangsters in Glasgow – link below.

http://tomsfrenchblog.blogspot.com/2009_02_16_archive.html