No getaway
Grisly cases show that you don’t have to pull the trigger to get life for murder
IF SOMETHING sounds too good to be true it generally is. You’d think alarm bells would be ringing when you’re offered 100,000 big ones for, er, driving a car.
But, nope, we’re expected to believe getaway driver Thomas Guthrie’s excuse in court that he was “paying back a debt” and had no idea the man he was driving to a house in Airdrie was really a gun-toting assassin who planned to brutally execute a man outside his own home.
This after he’d recced the place the night before – but honest guv, I didn’t know nuffin’.
Maybe on the advice of his legal team or perhaps in a moment of bravado, 25-year-old Guthrie pled guilty to murder before he was put on trial.
And this week he learned a valuable lesson – you don’t actually need to have pulled the trigger to get life in prison for cold-blooded murder.
Guthrie and his cohort, Neil Anderson, were both jailed for more than 40 years for the gangland execution of gym boss Gary More, 32, in Airdrie on September 6, 2018.
Anderson lured Gary from his home moments before the mystery gunman – he’s never been identified – emerged from a car and repeatedly blasted him on the head and body.
Guthrie – paid six figures to take part in the shooting – pled guilty to murder before the trial.
Both men received a mandatory life sentence, with Anderson getting a minimum punishment term of 21 years and 9 months, while Guthrie got 21 years and 7 months.
Meanwhile, police are still hunting for the assassin who calmly exited the car, blasted Gary 11 times – including three taps to the head – before sauntering back to the stolen Skoda and being driven off by the “still completely in the dark” Guthrie.
I’d loved to have been a fly on the dashboard during the drive from Airdrie to Milngavie, where they dumped then set fire to the car when Guthrie, who by this point must surely have realised he’d taken part in a massacre that left two young kids without their dad.
But fair play to him, he’s heeded counsel’s advice, copped to the charge and kept his mouth shut about who else was involved.
He’s not the first accomplice to feel the sharp end of the law using “art and part” – when two or more people are named on the same indictment, charged with the same crime which arises from the same set of facts. You might call it “guilt by association” but really the law requires a bit more than that.
Proof they knew what was going on and assisted in the crime.
Manny “The Contractor” O’Donnell was a big deal in Glasgow during the 90s.
A businessman, with links to gangland figures
and the IRA, who dripped in gold, drove flash cars and loved women was brutally executed in 1998.
And it would be a woman who drove him to his death.
Mary Ryan was an employee of O’Donnell’s and the one woman he craved above all others.
Thinking his luck was finally in, Ryan was meant to be driving O’Donnell to Tinto Firs Hotel in Newlands, Glasgow, but instead she took him to meet his killers.
A dog walker found his body under tarpaulin in East Kilbride the next day.
He’d been stabbed 20 times and shot through the chest and head.
Police said 27-year-old Ryan had lured O’Donnell to his death and a jury believed them.
She was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the 1998 murder and is still inside today.
She continues to protest her innocence.
The cold, hard truth is if you’ve got blood on your hands – whether you pull the trigger or not – you’re part of it and you’ll pay the price for that.
Ryan was the one woman he craved above all others