Career criminal caged after attack on journalist
A thug who gunned down a woman in a post office is back behind bars after a vicious acid attack on a journalist.
William “Basil” Burns, 56, posed as a postman to throw corrosive liquid in the face of crime writer Russell Findlay on his own doorstep.
The brute was yesterday slapped with a 15-year extended sentence after he was found guilty at the High Court in Aberdeen.
Burns, of Paisley, had previously been locked up for a decade and a half for the shooting during an armed robbery at a Linwood postal branch.
Lord Matthews slammed the yob for his “bad record” and labelled him a “dangerous man”.
He said: “You have been conv i c t e d o f a v i c i o u s, premeditated attack by the throwing of sulphuric acid into the face of a journalist on the threshold of his own home two days before Christmas. You were caught virtually red-handed and your own evidence was an obvious fabrication form start to finish, plainly being made up as you were going along.
“Leaving aside your own explanation why you were there, the only reason I can discern for your actions is that you objected to something that your victim wrote.
“There are ways and means of dealing with grievances, real or imagined, against the media and this was plainly not one of them. The freedom of the press is an essential tool in the armoury of any democracy and attacks of this nature will not be tolerated.”
Burns has an extensive criminal record, including the gun attack in 2001.
He was also jailed for six years for threatening a security guard with a firearm after he swiped a cake from Paisley’s Marks and Spencer store in 1996.
Burns tossed sulphuric acid in Mr Findlay’s face before knocking him to the ground and attacking him.
The reporter fought back as his daughter ran pleading for help at a neighbour’s home on December 23, 2015. Pals poured buckets of water over his face in an attempt to dilute the acid.
Burns had denied the offence, but was found guilty of assaulting the journalist to the danger of his life at a trial at the High Court in Glasgow last month.
He insisted that he had gone to Mr Findlay’s house to beat him up because the former Sunday Mail journalist had a photo showing him in a compromising position with a young blonde woman.
Burns will spend 10 years in prison and another five years on supervision when he is released.
Lord Matthews, in a sentencing statement, maintained Burns had “bitten off more than he could chew” by taking on the newspaper man.
He added: “Mr Findlay did not take your attack lying down. He was able to overpower you and with the prompt assistance of neighbours you were detained there and then.
“Due to the intervention of those neighbours, Mr Findlay’s injuries were not as bad as they might have been. It is, or should be, wellknown that acid has the potential to cause catastrophic damage and it is no thanks to you that this was not the case here.”