{"id":62267,"date":"2026-10-07T19:03:58","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T19:03:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/notorious-glasgow-gangland-enforcer-paul-ferris-dies-aged-62\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T19:03:58","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T19:03:58","slug":"notorious-glasgow-gangland-enforcer-paul-ferris-dies-aged-62","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/notorious-glasgow-gangland-enforcer-paul-ferris-dies-aged-62\/","title":{"rendered":"Notorious Glasgow gangland enforcer Paul Ferris dies aged 62"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

In 2020 Donald Findlay KC – who defended Ferris in court – told Hey Legal, external<\/span><\/a> that the case had been the most memorable of his career.<\/p>\n

He said: “The trial of Paul Ferris for the murder of Arthur Thompson Jr had virtually all the great characters of Glasgow in that trial one way or another.<\/p>\n

“Young Arthur was dead, his father was a witness, Ferris was regarded by the police as the heir apparent to Arthur Thompson Sr.<\/p>\n

“We had supergrasses, it just had everything that was going for it.<\/p>\n

“I forget how many charges that there were but of course Ferris walked on each and every one of them.”<\/p>\n

Following his release from prison in 2002 after being jailed on gun-running charges, Ferris turned to writing.<\/p>\n

His debut book was made into a movie which starred Martin Compston – who had found fame as a teenager in Ken Loach’s Sweet Sixteen – as Ferris.<\/p>\n

John Hannah played his arch rival, Tam “The Licensee” McGraw.<\/p>\n

The crime boss, who died in 2007 aged 55, had been linked to crimes ranging from drug smuggling to murder for more than three decades.<\/p>\n

The movie was shot in London due to problems securing permission from Glasgow City Council and the police to film in Ferris’s home city.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2020 Donald Findlay KC – who defended Ferris in court – told Hey Legal, external that the case had been the most memorable of his career. He said: “The trial of Paul Ferris for the murder of Arthur Thompson Jr had virtually all the great characters of Glasgow in that trial one way or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[2180,1017,17018,17019,9455,1181,17017,2373],"class_list":["post-62267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scotland","tag-aged","tag-dies","tag-enforcer","tag-ferris","tag-gangland","tag-glasgow","tag-notorious","tag-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62269,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62267\/revisions\/62269"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}