Former crook Paul Ferris has revealed he has a new film coming out, but who is he and how did he become such a big name in Scotland’s underworld? We told earlier this week how the 61-year-old is planning his second film, following on from 2013 hit The Wee Man, which starred Martin Compston.
The first film told the story of Ferris’s childhood and how he became embroiled in a life of serious organised crime. The second film will detail how Ferris was arrested following a probe by MI5, Strathclyde Police and Scotland Yard. And here we take a look at how the gangster-turned-author embarked on his former life of crime.
Ferris, the son of an armed robber, grew up just 300 yards from the home of notorious Glasgow crime boss Arthur Thompson, which was known as the Ponderosa. He started out with a legitimate job, working as a van boy for a brewery firm after leaving school, before being offered £500 to be the getaway driver for a jewellery robbery.
Paul Ferris walks free from court.
By 16, Ferris had been locked up in a young offenders institution and, by the age of 19, he was a trusted enforcer for Thompson, who was known as The Godfather. Ferris became one of Scotland’s most feared men during his time under Thompson’s wing, and he was cleared over the shooting of John Hogg in 1984.
Ferris was accused off being the triggerman for the botched hit, which took place in Glasgow earlier that year and saw Willie Gibson as the intended target. Gibson and Hogg were cousins, and Hogg was struck as the pair walked home from a night out together. Arthur Thompson had paid for the hit on Gibson.
But when he mistakenly struck Hogg, the gunman shattered his thigh, leaving him with medical complications. Ferris then branched out on his own and ended up warring with his former mentor. The pair fell out in the 1980s, with Ferris claiming the Thompsons set him up over a drugs bust in Rothesay, on the Isle of Bute.
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He said a warrant for his arrest on the island had been issued before he got there. And he said only two people knew where he was going – Thompson Senior and Thompson Junior – leaving him unable to say for sure who was behind it. The fallout between Ferris and Thompson Senior has been linked to the fatal shooting of Arthur Thompson Junior and murder of two Ferris associates.
Known as “Fat Boy”, 31-year-old Thompson Junior was gunned down outside his father’s home in Glasgow’s Provanmill area in 1991. Ferris associates Bobby Glover, 31, and Joe “Bananas” Hanlon, 23, were shot dead shortly after. Their bodies were found dumped inside a car on the day of Fat Boy’s funeral.
Ferris was charged over Fat Boy’s murder and was found not guilty of the killing following a trial at the High Court in Glasgow in 1992. Glover, 31, and Hanlon, 23, were blamed for helping carry out the hit but nobody else has ever been charged in connection with the gangland assassination.
Scottish police officers labelled Ferris ‘Houdini’ after he walked free from Fat Boy’s murder rap, the shooting of Hogg, and drugs and firearms charges in court cases they believed were airtight. But he was caught ferrying guns to Glasgow as part of a groundbreaking undercover probe in the late ’90s.
Operation Abonar involved MI5, Strathclyde Police, Scotland Yard, and the South-East Regional Crime Squad (SERCS). Officers snared him smuggling three MAC-10 submachine guns, Uzi magazines, silencers and dozens of blue-tipped and copper-jacketed 9mm ammunition to Glasgow – in an Opal Fruits box in 1997.
Law enforcement believe he planned to use the deadly weapons to wreak havoc on the streets of Glasgow and, in 1998, he was jailed for 10 years over the gunrunning plot. But he appealed and the sentence was reduced to seven years, seeing out his sentence within London’s notorious Belmarsh Prison.
He vowed to go straight while serving his sentence, due to the involvement of MI5 in the probe which snared him. He published his first book whilst behind bars and has written several more on his life of crime since his release from jail on licence in 2002. Ferris, who now lives in Ayrshire, has also appeared on several podcasts.
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