Conflicting testimony
and claims of police pressure revealed in drug baron?s murder
NEW EVIDENCE
which calls into question one of Scotland's most notorious murder
convictions has been uncovered by a Sunday Herald investigation.
Drug baron Justin McAlroy was gunned down on his driveway in
Glasgow's Cambuslang only six days after wining and dining Labour VIPs
Jack McConnell and John Reid at a dinner to raise funds for the party
in 2002.
Second-hand car dealer William Gage was jailed for life in 2004 when
three eyewitnesses told a jury they saw a white getaway vehicle leaving
the scene. A similar vehicle was later found in Glasgow's Easterhouse,
partly burnt out, with Gage's DNA and firearms residue on clothes left
inside.
But the Sunday Herald has discovered that vital evidence - including
allegations of police pressure which could have collapsed the trial -
was withheld from the jury.
The Miscarriages of Justice Organisation said it would now be making
a fresh submission to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in
a bid to get the conviction quashed.
Organiser John McManus said: "We always knew there were very serious
doubts hanging over this case. Now it seems there is perhaps something
more sinister."
Gage sensationally sacked his legal team in the middle of an appeal
hearing. It was too late for his new lawyers to enter fresh arguments.
But it was during that failed appeal last year that the Crown
admitted that the evidence of three eyewitnesses - Charles Bowman,
Stephen Madden and Agnes Edgar - was crucial to the conviction. Without
their testimony there is nothing to link the white Saab and Gage's DNA
in Easterhouse to the murder scene in Cambuslang.
At the original trial, Madden and Edgar claimed to have been driving
together past a building site near the murder scene when they saw a man
running towards the getaway car.
Madden recalled one of the vehicle's headlights was broken and the
other on full. The white car then followed them 100 yards to Newton
Station railway bridge where both cars stopped to
let another pass through the narrow tunnel.
But his testimony is starkly at odds with evidence given by Bowman,
the third eyewitness. Bowman - a security guard at the building site -
insisted the white car had driven under the bridge at high speed,
without stopping and with no headlights on at all.
The differing statements show that at least one of the two parties must have given inaccurate information.
On the night of March 7, 2002, Bowman was the sole guard on duty
when the killer struck. Two colleagues had warned that he could not
possibly be right - yet their evidence was never put before the jury.
In a defence statement, site foreman Fraser Cathcart said: "I would
be very, very surprised if anyone could see very much in Newton Station
Road from the window.
"First, you would have to bend over the desk and you could see only
the top half of Newton Station Road towards the roundabout and then
only a very small part of it anyway.
"You would be able only to see the east side of Newton Station Road."
Bowman claimed the white car was on the west side.
Site joiner James McKinlay - in a defence precognition - also
insisted the view was obstructed. But even more damning were his
accounts of long lunchtime conversations he had with his friend Bowman.
McKinlay recalled: "Charlie would often talk to me about it ... The
gist of what he told me was that, basically, he had seen very little
and heard only the screech of tyres. He went to the front window to
look but could only see the rear of a motor vehicle.
"He told me that the police were trying to put a bit of pressure' on
him to say that what he had seen was a white car but he did say that
what he had seen was definitely not a white car that the police had
suggested.
"Also, he said that he had had a few cans' that night and that his memory was unsure.
"Charlie had had a number of citations to attend court in relation
to the matter and always during such periods the conversation would
come back to the case again and what he had seen that night."
Edgar told the court she had been in the passenger seat of Madden's
Renault Laguna when she saw the white car and a man running towards it,
something she had repeatedly told the police in two statements to
detectives.
But away from the murder squad interview room, the 15-year-old had a
different story to tell. As far back as August 2002, the troubled
youngster was complaining of police intimidation.
In a statement given to Gage's original legal team, Edgar - who was
receiving psychiatric counselling at the time of her interview by
detectives - insisted: "I cannot recall what type or colour of the car
sic.
"I have been interviewed a couple of times by the police ... I was
given a hard time by them. I have tried to forget what happened and to
put it behind me."
ON the stand, Edgar claimed that the police had tampered with her
statement regarding the killer's clothing. She told the court: "I only
signed that statement so I could get away because I was in really bad
pain and I don't believe that an officer could actually keep a
15-year-old girl in so much pain in an interview room.
"I'm sorry but I don't like to be ... told that I can't have a psychiatrist or a social worker when I need it."
The final piece of evidence casting doubt on Gage's murder
conviction relates to Madden's description of the getaway car. The
takeaway delivery driver was adamant the getaway vehicle's left
headlight was broken, but, according to two separate tests carried out
in the days after the murder by three detectives and a specialist Saab
mechanic, the headlights were in full working order.
This vital evidence shows that either Madden's testimony was
seriously flawed or, if correct, it was a completely different car that
was found in Easterhouse. Whichever is the case, Gage's conviction
would seem untenable.
McAlroy was murdered six days after a Red Rose Dinner event hosted
by his father Tommy, a Labour Party donor in McConnell's Motherwell and
Wishaw constituency.
Gage, 34, was arrested two months after the killing and was later jailed for life with a minimum tariff of 20 years.
A Glasgow man appealing against his murder conviction has been given
more time to take fresh legal advice after he sacked his lawyer.
A situation arose that the jury was apparently looking for something which had never been mentioned
