There is not a single morning when I have not woken up thinking about what he did. He deserved every one of those years
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Anthony Mcgladrigan, right, and brother John at a wedding in 1999 lost a son, Anthony’s younger brother, John, who drowned when he was just 19 during an aid mission to Ghana in 2004.
Jane, 74, a retired paediatric nurse, said: “There’s not a morning I wake up and don’t think about what Hay did. He came up to Anthony’s house, banged his door down, pushed past him, grabbed his kitchen knife and killed him on the floor. I can’t get it out of my head.
“I was starting to get a little bit better until I listened to that stupid appeal. I don’t understand how lawyers can stand up for people who have admitted they are guilty of murder.
“The law is an ass and it is certainly not for the victims. I am angry and disgusted. I am also emotionally damaged. This has really affected our health but Our family will never get over it. It’s devastating
I don’t think they give a damn.” The couple raised three sons in Cumbernauld. Anthony, Mark and John were all pupils at Our Lady’s High School in the town. Anthony moved to Aberdeen as a teenager to take a job as a waiter at the Treetops Hotel, where he met wife, Fiona. Anthony, who was a restaurant manager at the Sandman hotel in Aberdeen, was in bed with his wife at their home near Cuminestown when Hay’s friend Austen Smith banged on his door and begged to be given refuge.
CCTV footage showed a barefoot Hay swaggering towards the house swinging a baseball bat. He had taken cocaine and the stimulant M-cat and he had earlier told Smith he “wanted a word with him”.
He was described as “tripping” and his behaviour was said to be “increasingly strange”. Smith hid in a bathroom after he was let in. Anthony locked the door but Hay used the baseball bat to smash glass on the back door and force his way in. When Anthony confronted him in a bid to protect his family, Hay grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed him nine times in the chest and back. Fiona tried to stem the bleeding with towels but Anthony died in hospital. Devastated Fiona has never spoken publicly about her husband’s death.
Gerry said: “Our family will never get over it and the appeal has been so upsetting because it brings it all back to the fore again. Jane’s had days in bed, just no energy.
“I’m no medical man but she’s emotionally and physically drained by the mental turmoil. It’s been devastating.” Defence counsel Ian Duguid told appeal court judges Lady Dorrian, Lord Brodie and Lord Turnbull he did not seek to undermine the seriousness of the offence but the killer’s age should have been taken into consideration.
He said: “Mr Hay’s position is he is ashamed, disgusted and shocked by what he is responsible for. He reflects on that every day of his life. He is somebody who is capable of being rehabilitated. This was not a premeditated murder. He was acting out of character.”
In a written ruling handed down last week, Lady Dorrian said: “We consider that the sentencing judge may be said to have erred in the process by which she arrived at the sentence imposed, resulting in the imposition of a sentence which was excessive.”
At the original trial, Lady Stacey told Hay: “Mr Mcgladrigan was the sort of person who tried to help others, if he could. By your actions, you have deprived Mr Mcgladrigan’s family. He was a man who had much to offer.”
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