Vicious Scots gangster's sinister plot to murder crime lord inspired by The Godfather

Mark Clinton admitted his 'deadly serious' plan to decapitate Tam McGraw.

One of Scotland’s most vicious gangsters planned to murder Tam “The Licensee” McGraw and leave his decapitated head in the crime-lord’s bed for his wife to discover.

Mark Clinton’s macabre plot –inspired by film classic The Godfather – was thwarted when McGraw died of a heart attack.

Clinton made the ­confession to Glaswegian crime photographer Brian Anderson during a photo assignment at the hood’s Coatbridge flat – outlining a grim alternative plan.

Anderson, 44, said: “I was taking photographs at Clinton’s home when he told me he was going to decapitate Tam McGraw.

“The pair had gone to war and he hated McGraw’s wife Margaret who he saw as the power behind the throne and someone who was supposedly calling the shots.

“He told me he’d planned to ­decapitate Tam McGraw and put the head in Margaret’s bed, but McGraw had just died. He said, ‘I’m going to dig his body up, I’m going to decapitate him and I’m going to stick his decapitated head in Margaret’s bed.

“He went into detail about exhuming McGraw’s body and taking his head off.

“I thought, ‘f****n’ hell’ and laughed nervously, but he glared at me. He said, ‘No, Brian, I’m deadly serious.’ I thought I’d better stop laughing.”

Anderson added: “He then pulled out a sword and started waving it around his living room like a Japanese warlord. I thought, ‘Oh s**t’. He was a serious character.

“I felt a bit weird because, for him to even say that and have the double whammy of putting the head in the wife’s bed, who thinks on that level?”

McGraw had built a notorious ­reputation through organised crime, including drug trafficking and extortion, which netted him an estimated £14million. However, there was ­speculation that he was also a police informant, putting him at loggerheads with rival criminals like Paul Ferris.

In 2002, McGraw was attacked not far from his home and stabbed. Protected by a bulletproof vest, he avoided severe injury but needed hospital care.

He died aged 55 in July 2007, after collapsing at home in Mount Vernon, Glasgow, from a heart attack. Anderson said: “Clinton wanted to put the head in Margaret McGraw’s bed, but McGraw got cremated so that stopped that scenario.

“I photographed Clinton various times. He lived a dangerous life.

“While I was in his flat he ­assembled a contraption at his door.

“It was rope attached to a sword set up like a guillotine. The rope was tied to the handle so that if any intruders came in it would decapitate them. It was a booby trap.”

A feared gangland enforcer from the east end of Glasgow, in 2003, Clinton was accused of the murder of rival gangster Billy McPhee.

Families, including children, had been watching a rugby match as a man entered the Baillieston Tavern in Glasgow and stabbed McPhee repeatedly. The hitman paralysed his victim by thrusting the six-inch blade into McPhee’s neck then stabbed him 12 more times in his eyes and face. He then strolled out of the bar.

McPhee, 38 – an associate of McGraw – died from his injuries.

Clinton was cleared of murder when witnesses failed to ­identify him in court. He also featured in a 2005 Channel 5 documentary, telling reporter Donal McIntyre that “stabbing someone was the easiest thing in the world to do”. The show ended with Clinton in a coma after being attacked outside a nightclub.

The thug was caged for six years in December that year for carrying a knife and threatening building site workers. He had warned Anderson that the workers were in danger.

He said: “I photographed Mark Clinton several times. He told me the Job Centre was trying to make him go to work on a building site. He said, ‘If anybody tells me to dig a hole, I’ll dig a hole but he’s going in it’. He later got imprisoned for threatening people on a building site.”

Clinton, 48, died alone in his Paisley flat in 2019. There were no suspicious circumstances.

● Brian Anderson, who has spent 40 years snapping some of the world’s most dangerous criminals, has a YouTube channel about his underworld encounters at www.youtube.com/@editorpubliceye

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