He only did a fortnight in jail but we spent a whole lifetime inside
Joe Steele believes there is no longer any doubt that Tam McGraw, the gangster known as The Licensee, ordered the blaze that killed six members of the Doyle family.
He said: “The police who fitted me up when I was just a teenager, knew McGraw was the man who really was behind it.
“They told me to my face that they knew I hadn’t done it.”
Joe said McGraw, who died in 2007, wanted the Doyles frightened off after they threatened to move into lucrative ice cream routes in Glasgow housing schemes.
He bumped into McGraw, who reputedly secured police protection by informing on gangland rivals, the morning after the murders. Joe said: “I asked how he was doing and ‘how did last night go’ – meaning something entirely innocent, and McGraw jumped like a scalded cat.
“He blustered, ‘I called it off’ and looked wildly at the other man for back-up.
“Later, when I was arrested and sat in the dock charged with killing the Doyle family, it finally hit me why McGraw had behaved the way he did the day after the fire.
“McGraw ended up sitting in the dock with us, but he was the only one to get out while we were remanded.
“All in all, McGraw did less than two weeks in jail. We ended up spending a lifetime inside.”
Joe said claims of drugs being sold alongside ice cream cones were nonsense. He said: “This was a time when there were few shops in the schemes, and those ice cream vans were making thousands of pounds a week because everybody used them.
“There was no need for McGraw to sell drugs out of the vans when they were making so much money from ice cream and sweets, and the Doyle family were just hard workers who just wanted a slice of that.
“The routes were jealously guarded because they were so lucrative, so of course it was McGraw who decided to get rid of any competition to his vans, except the frightener turned into an inferno which killed the Doyles.
“McGraw’s drug dealing came later, but the myth that you could buy an ice cream cone and some heroin made good headlines, but it wasn’t true.”