Thirty years ago, one of Glasgow's most notorious gangland leaders of the 20th century was pronounced dead at the city's Royal Infirmary from natural causes.
Dubbed 'The Godfather', Arthur Thompson Snr, who had reigned supreme in the city's criminal underworld for several decades, died on March 13, 1993 at the age of 61 from a heart attack.
It was an unlikely death for the drug baron and former money lender, who had been a top target for rival gang leaders and numerous other shady characters in Glasgow and further afield since at least the 1960s.
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Growing up through the Second World War young Arthur was handy with his fists, better with a blade, and he earned himself a ferocious reputation. Although he wasn't very tall, pushing 5'9”, he was broad and mean, with a flattened nose and a chilling, thousand-yard stare.
'Crucifixions' and the Kray Twins
Arthur's start in crime was as a strong arm for money lenders, the business he moved into on his own as he left his teens. He had a failsafe method of collection. Those who didn't pay up promptly were usually crucified, nailed to the floor or to a door.
He also became a friend and enforcer for the Krays. There's a story, or legend, that he made himself known to them by bursting into a club they drank in, the Double R, brandishing a gun and shouting, “I'm Arthur Thompson, from Glasgow. Remember my name”.
For a time he was involved in heists and bank robbery, with a crew which included safecracker Paddy Meehan, later to be wrongly jailed (and subsequently pardoned) for murder. He served an 18-month sentence for extortion, but decided that prison wasn't for him and he would put his money mainly into legitimate businesses, dancehalls and pubs, always through nominees.
But violence was never far away.
In the 1960s he was at war with another crime family, the Welshes, from Blackhill. In 1966 he dodged death when a bomb under the passenger seat of his car killed his mother-in-law. Shortly after, out driving, he spotted the two men he believed were responsible, Patrick Welsh and his associate James Goldie, and ran their van off the road and into a lamppost. Both men died, Arthur was charged with their murder but, unsurprisingly, the police were unable to persuade witnesses to testify. Just to keep it in the family, three years later Arthur's wife Rita barged her way into Welsh home and stabbed Patrick Welsh's wife in the chest. She served three years.
The Welsh name, like that of Thompson, runs like a poisoned river through Glasgow crime. Paul Ferris, who was to be charged with young Arthur's murder, was bullied by the Welshes when he was developing his crime moves in Blackhill. He retaliated brutally, a slashing and a scalping were involved, which was what brought him to the attention of Arthur, who hired him, treated him like another son, and put him to work as an enforcer and debt collector. A fateful mistake.
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The sobriquet 'Godfather' is now ritually slapped on to any crime figure who hits the headlines, but there are similarities between the Thompsons and the Corleone family in the films and Mario Puzo novel. Sonny Corleone is ambushed and shot down. Like Arty. There is a weak younger son in both families, Fredo a fictional parallel to Billy Thompson, ridiculed and too weak to take over as clan leader, heroin-addicted, assaulted and stabbed several times, although, unlike Fredo, he survives.
Drugs baron
By the 1980s the big money in crime was in drugs, heroin particularly, which flooded the city. The market then was reckoned to be worth £300 million. It was bonanza for the Ponderosa. No matter that with it came hundreds of overdose deaths, including Thompson's daughter Margaret. Billy, too, took to the needle, both supplied by Arty, now head of the clan, swimming in cash and, unlike his father, highly visible and conspicuously wealthy. But also a target for those who wanted to take him down and take over.
The foundations of a coup were laid in 1985 when Fat Boy was sentenced to 11 years for supplying heroin. He believed he had been set up, and he probably was.
A police stakeout saw him delivering to a street supplier in Easterhouse, John 'Blind Jonah' McKenzie. Thompson spotted the set-up and drove off at high speed with the police giving chase, chucking packets of heroin from the the window as he dodged in and out of traffic.
But with his son Arthur Thompson Jnr banged-up and Old Arthur's malign influence waning, his bevvying spiralling, other gangs and godfathers now began to unpick the Thompson empire. The old Godfather had reach, however, and might still pose problems. So he had to be removed.
Two attempts were made to take him out. In 1985 he was shot in the groin outside the Ponderosa. He managed to drive himself to the private Ross Hall hospital on the outskirts of the city, where he claimed, in legendary hard man style, that a drill bit had snapped and pierced his groin, a story he retold to the police who inevitably turned up to interview him.
Then three years later, returning alone from his local pub, the Provanmill Inn, he was run over by a car driven by two men, and rammed up against a fence, again outside the Ponderosa. They also fired several shots at him, missing, but throwing down the pistol, hoping to incriminate him. Thompson suffered a broken leg.
In August 1991, Arthur Thompson Jnr, also known as 'Fatboy', died after being shot three times outside the Ponderosa. Paul Ferris, a former enforcer for the Thompsons, was arrested and charged with the murder and remanded to Barlinnie.
In 1993 Arthur Thompson Snr would die aged 61, in the most unlikely circumstances, of natural causes, in his bed in the Ponderosa.
The Thompson empire had come to an end.
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