Posted January 14, 2010
Police today stepped up their hunt for the killers of a gangland figure shot dead in a Glasgow supermarket car park.Terrified shoppers at Asda in Robroyston feared for their safety after the shooting at 1.25pm yesterday.
Although the victim has not been officially identified, it is understood to be Kevin Carroll, known as The Gerbil. He is believed to have been shot five times.He was an alleged associate of the Daniels crime family and had survived two previous attempts to kill him.The attack happened at the main entrance of the store in Saughs Road when masked men opened fire on a black Audi parked outside.Another three men in the vehicle were not hurt.
It is thought Mr Carroll was lured there under the pretence of a meeting with associates.One witness described leaving the supermarket to be confronted with horrifying scenes of the dead man slumped in the backseat of the car. The glass of the back window had been shattered by bullets.
She said: “I was inside the store at the checkout, paying, when I heard the shots, but I didn’t realise that’s what it was – I thought it was firecrackers or something.“I came out and the car was right in front of me with the back window shot in. The door was open and you could see his legs hanging out the side.“The paramedics were around him, but he was obviously dead. You just don’t expect this sort of thing in Robroyston.”The assailants had made off from the car park in a black or dark car.
Extra patrols were in place in the area today to allay public fears, but police believe Mr Carroll, also known as McCabe, was the intended target.
Local Labour MSP Paul Martin voiced his concerns.He said: “I am concerned that such a serious incident could potentially have been a great threat to innocent members of the public.I have sought assurances from senior police officers that action has been taken to reassure the public.”After the shooting police sealed off the entrance and cordoned off the car park. They also set up an incident room near the store’s petrol station. Workers on their lunch breaks were among those stranded by the car park being sealed off.Dozens of shoppers, many of them elderly, were herded into the main foyer and kept there until almost 4pm while forensic teams examined the crime scene, spoke to witnesses and erected a white tent around the damaged vehicle.Some customers who had left the store before police closed off the entrance spent hours sitting in their cars after police redirected them into the car park while they conducted preliminary investigations.
With Mr Carroll an alleged associate of the Daniels family, a Glasgow crime gang, the shooting points to possible links with a violent drugs war and vendettas between rival families.It is understood he may have been targeted following a bungled ‘hit’ on a member of the rival Lyons family this week.Detective Superintendent Michael Orr said: “While we believe this was not a random attack and he was the intended target, it does not lessen the severity of this crime.“Our priority is tracing those responsible. He was someone’s son, loved one and friend and this murder will be thoroughly investigated.”Mr Carroll is alleged to have had long-standing links to organised crime through his association with north Glasgow’s Daniels family, alleged to control one of the city’s major drug rings.His girlfriend, Kelly Bo, is the daughter of clan boss Jamie Daniel.
Mr Carroll was left fighting for his life in November 2006 after being shot in the stomach in a drive-by shooting in Bishopbriggs.He and a friend, Ross Sherlock, were fired on at close range by gunmen posing as police officers.
Posted January 14, 2010
Two Royal Marines are to stand trial charged with the murder of a navy rating in Portsmouth.Engineering Technician (Marine Engineering) Kyle Bartlett died of serious head injuries after a fight in the Walkabout bar in Portsmouth, Hants, on May 5, last year.Marines Ben Scott, 21, who lived in Revenge Close, Southsea, Hants, and Mark Clarke, 21, of Finch Road, Southsea, were charged with murder and are to appear at Winchester Crown Court.Two other men, James Taylor and Luke Morton, are also standing trial alongside the two marines in connection with the death of ET Bartlett, who served on board Type 42 Destroyer HMS Liverpool
Posted January 14, 2010
Police executed warrants at addresses in Thornaby, Stockton, Maltby and Middlesbrough at about 9am yesterday resulting in seven men being arrested.
Two 31-year-olds, two aged 28, a 34-year-old , a 27-year-old and one aged 26 were held on suspicion of conspiracy to supply class A and B drugs.
Five of the men were appearing at Teesside Magistrates’ Court today.
In a separate raid a man and woman were arrested and bailed after the discovery of Class A drugs at a house.Police searched the house on Gilmour Street, Thornaby last Thursday after a tip-off from the public and found about £1,000 of the suspected Class A substance plus drugs paraphernalia.
The drugs were already packaged ready for sale.Neighbourhood Policing Officer Darren Beer said: “This recovery was made as a result of good community information being passed to the local police and close liaison with partner agencies. We want to impress on the residents that any information on criminal activity will be acted upon.”
Posted January 14, 2010
GANGLAND godfather Arthur Thompson was considered a "consummate villain" by prison authorities who never expected him to leave his criminal past behind, official files revealed today.Documents previously kept from the public described the Glasgow hard man's time in jail at Aberdeen and Inverness in the 1960s.In one private letter, his wife pleads with the governor of Aberdeen prison to keep him in the north east over fears he will fall in with the wrong crowd if allowed to return to Barlinnie in GlasgowA long list of letters between authorities described Thompson's "subversive" activities, such as trying to stir up trouble by using other inmates and hiding an iron bar in his cell.A parole file from 1969 reads: "Thompson is one of the leading criminal lights in Glasgow with connections in London. A man one cannot take at face value."And it predicted: "Thompson will inevitably return to his lucrative club management and his position as a leader of the Glasgow criminal fraternity."
Thompson was born in 1930 and entered a life of crime at a young age on the streets of Glasgow. He died of a heart attack in 1993.
He was involved with well-known city gangsters and was briefly connected with the feared Kray Twins in London.
Attempts were made on his life and he was implicated in a number of serious violent crimes. He was found not guilty of culpable homicide in 1966.
That same year he stole clothes from a shop in Glasgow, leading to a four-year sentence in Aberdeen.
A Glasgow police file from the time stated: "The overall picture of Thompson is that of a violent, vicious and active criminal who will stop at nothing to uphold his position in the underworld as a hard man and to gain his own ends."In 1969, his wife, who was in Greenock Prison, wrote to the governor in Aberdeen asking for him to be kept there.She wrote: "He is Arthur Thompson (No. 660/67) he was told he may be sent to Barlinnie to be liberated and he doesn't want this as he fears he may get involved with the wrong type of people and he doesn't want that to happen."So would you please try and have him kept in Craiginches sir and oblige."
But the governor, Mr Williamson, warned that Thompson would "put the screw" on a number of locals in Aberdeen, urging that he should "seek protection" before being liberated from Barlinnie.In the previous year the governor described Thompson as a consummate villain, adding: "It is well known that Thompson and [NAME REMOVED] are thugs of the worst kind and run warring factions inside and outside of prison, with the blind hatred of their kind."His removal to a secure unit in Inverness had a "marked effect on the morale of the other prisoners", the governor added.Thompson regarded parole as a "political gimmick" and was turned down for release several times.The documents were among thousands of files opened to the public at the National Archives of Scotland in Edinburgh.Scottish ministers decided in June last year to reduce restrictions on historical records under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.
Posted January 14, 2010
mother of the Hells Angels bikie Peter Zervas has taken back $20,000 in cash she had provided to keep her son out of jail after he was charged last week with threatening her and damaging property at the family's unit in Lakemba.Yesterday Fredericka Bromwich asked Central Local Court to recover the money she had provided to ensure her son's freedom as he faces charges of riot and affray in relation to a brawl between members of two rival bikie gangs at the domestic terminal of Sydney Airport in March.
Her youngest son, Anthony, was killed in the melee after he was allegedly hit in the head with a steel post. Eleven Commanchero have been charged with his murder.Police allege that Mr Zervas, who was shot five times as he returned home days after the brawl, destroyed or damaged hundreds of dollars of his mother's property, including six ceramic plates and a glass dinner table, nine days ago.The next day police charged him with stalking, intimidating and intending to cause his mother physical or emotional harm. He was also charged with possessing ecstasy and 46 tablets of the anti-anxiety drug Xanax.Mr Zervas faced Burwood Local Court last week charged with the offences and was granted bail. But on Wednesday he was arrested and taken into custody by police after his mother indicated that she wanted to withdraw her financial support.The court had previously required that Mr Zervas live at the Lakemba unit, but that condition was deleted.
Yesterday the magistrate Jane Culver added a further condition to his bail: that he not contact or approach his mother or go within 100 metres of her property.A family friend later provided security and Mr Zervas walked free from the court yesterday afternoon. The case will resume on March 18.
Posted January 14, 2010
Vojislav Šešelj stated before the Hague Tribunal that Željko Ražnatović, aka Arkan, had “shot 20 Muslim civilians“ in April 1992 in Zvornik.During the cross-examination of the prosecution’s protected witness, Šešelj suggested that members of Ražnatović’s paramilitary unit had also committed other crimes that he himself has accused of by the Hague Tribunal.Ražnatović, a gangster and paramilitary leader, was shot and killed in Belgrade ten years ago. “Did you know that Arkan led a group which shot 20 Muslim civilians in front of their wives and children in Zvornik in April 1992?,“ the president of the Serb Radical Party (SRS) asked the witness, according to a Radio Free Europe report. Šešelj said that a woman whose husband and two sons were killed had testified about the crime earlier in the trial. The trial will be continued next week and it is expected that the prosecution will call their last witness.
Šešelj is accused of the crimes against non-Serbs in Croatia, Vojvodina and Bosnia-Herzegovina between 1991 and 1993. Ražnatović, a gangster and collaborator of the former Yugoslavia secret services (RDB), was shot and killed in Belgrade ten years ago.
Posted January 14, 2010
After growing up in the city’s Springburn, Thompson became a money lender in the 1950s and, amid claims of protection racketeering, became a wealthy man.In the 1960s, an attempt was made on his life by a Welsh crime family. His mother-in-law died when a car bomb intended to kill him exploded. Two of the suspects of the bombing were later said to have been driven off the road by Thompson and died.Rumoured to have links with the Kray twins in London, Thompson established himself as the most feared and respected gangster in Scotland, with his house ‘The Ponderosa’ in the city’s Blackhill his crown jewel.By the 1980s, the Thompson family - led by Arthur’s son Arthur Junior – was deep into the drugs trade, and they were the undoubted godfathers of Glasgow’s crime world. But in 1991, things took a bitter twist for Thompson and his crime empire.On 18 August of that year, Arthur jnr, nicknamed ‘Fat Boy’, died after he was shot three times in a hit. Paul Ferris, a former enforcer of the Thompson family who had since fallen out with them, was arrested and charged for the murder.
On the day of Fat Boy’s funeral Robert Glover and Joe 'Bananas' Hanlon, who were also suspected of involvement in the murder of Thompson jnr, were discovered dead. They had been executed. Their bodies, it was said, were dumped on the route of the funeral cortege.Hundreds of witnesses, including Thompson himself, were called to give evidence at the trial of Ferris. But the crime boss, it was all in vain. Ferris was acquitted of all charges. Tabloid newspapers of the day predicted a gangland bloodbath following the court’s decision. Thankfully, this didn’t happen.An embittered and broken Arthur Thompson died in the city where he became notorious in March, 1993.
Posted January 14, 2010
Dean Curtis Madill appeared before Judge Doug Cowling to enter the pleas to the incidents in March and May. The incident came to light later in May 2008 after the victim in the case, who cannot be identified by court order, was seriously assaulted on May 23. The man was 29 at the time.
Madill pleaded guilty to assault and unlawful confinement in the March incident and aggravated assault in the May incident. He was sentenced to a conditional sentence of two years less a day for the aggravated assault and concurrent conditional sentences for the assault and forcible confinement.It emerged that the case began with the victim being accused of stealing a motorcycle in February 2008 belonging to the son of Nanaimo Hells Angel Lea Sheppe. Madill, with Sheppe, 58, allegedly went to confront the man in March. When Madill seriously beat the man in May, Sheppe was not present.The man suffered a serious head injury in that attack and required hospitalization. He is out of hospital and continues to recover.After the May incident came to light, the investigation grew to include RCMP officers from Vancouver specializing in organized crime activity because of Sheppe's alleged involvement in the March incident.
Posted January 14, 2010
Police arrested 12 mafia suspects on Tuesday over an attack on African immigrants in the southern town plagued by racial violence last week. Police said they had dismantled the local clan in the town of Rosarno of the 'Ndrangheta, Italy's most powerful mafia group, which operates out of the southern Calabria region.
They issued 17 warrants for mafia activity, including five for people already in prison on other charges.
Protesters in central Rome carried oranges covered in fake blood to symbolise the violence towards immigrants and their exploitation in Italy's citrus fruit harvests. Egypt's foreign ministry said the Rosarno incident showed "religious and racial discrimination and hatred of foreigners," and called on the international community to respond.
