Major and minor players in the unfolding investigation
1) Ian Walker: Wealthy senior partner with Edinburgh solicitors Burnett Walker WS. Took his own life by hanging in June, 1988, after Law Society investigation into the firm’s accounts. Leaked police report linked him with Edinburgh gay community.
2) Colin Tucker: Partner with Burnett Walker WS. As a result of Law Society and police inquiries, he was charged with embezzling client funds. Trial took place at High Court in Edinburgh, December 1989. Found not guilty after defence claimed that Walker had forced his compliance by threatening to expose him as a homosexual. Struck off the solicitors’ register in 1990. Now a footman with the Lord Mayor of London. Defended at trial by Robert Henderson QC. Rumours begin suggesting existence of a ”list” giving identities of high-placed and judicial homosexuals.
3) Lord Dervaird: Appointed a High Court Judge in 1988 but resigned without explanation two days before Christmas, 1989 and three days after the Tucker acquittal. His departure followed a meeting attended by the then Scottish Secretary Malcolm Rifkind, the then Lord Advocate Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, and Scotland’s most senior judge the Lord President, Lord Hope. Resignation highlighted in leaked police report as coming three days after Colin Tucker’s acquittal, with suggestion that the acquittal had been facilitated by means of a secret list of homosexual Judges.
4) Robert Henderson QC: One of Scotland’s leading defence counsel and among the most flamboyant figures at the Bar. Educated at Glasgow University and admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1963. Took Silk in 1982. Police maintained that, during Tucker trial, Mr Henderson came into possession of the ”list” containing the names of homosexual legal figures. Business transactions of his were also the subject of a fraud inquiry but the Crown Office decided that he should not be prosecuted.
5) Lord Penrose: Now a High Court Judge but, as George Penrose, QC, the most senior Advocate-depute, recommended to the Lord Advocate that proceedings should not be taken against Mr Henderson because the evidence against him did not justify the allegations which would be involved in the case.
6) Gordon May: Former financial director with builders Teague Homes (Scotland) Ltd. Burnett Walker WS and Colin Tucker acted as company secretaries. May was accused, along with Tucker, of embezzling company funds. Trial at High Court in Dunfermline collapsed after six days and both were found not guilty. Defence conducted by Robert Henderson QC. Leaked police report, erroneously, credited Mr Henderson with defence of Mr Tucker in this particular trial. May now operating at Boys, Boys, Boys, a homosexual club in Thailand, along with James Lumsden, another former secretary of Teague Homes.
7) Neil Duncan: Jailed for four years for his procurement role in the Operation Planet homosexual rent-boy case. Leaked police document claimed that one of the rent boys would accuse a High Court Judge of illegal sexual practices. Case which followed a four-month police investigation involved 57 charges against 10 men. Crown Office instituted policy of no prosecution in cases of consensual homosexual conduct involving youths over 18. By the time the Operation Planet investigation came to court in February 1991, only 10 charges remained and five men had not guilty pleas accepted by the court. Only one case, involving a solicitor, went to trial and the jury returned a not proven verdict.
8) Tom Dawson QC: Now Solicitor- General, Scotland’s second most senior law officer. As an Advocate-depute, prosecuted the Operation Planet case. Arrived at Bar in 1973 and took Silk in 1986.
9) Tam Paton: Former manager of the 70s pop group the Bay City Rollers. His Palmerston Place, Edinburgh, house was alleged by police to be at the hub of the Operation Planet homosexual network.
10) Stephen Conroy: Jailed for six years in 1992 after being found guilty of a #280,000 mortgage fraud. Former lover claimed Conroy had a homosexual relationship with Lanark sheriff Douglas Allan. Later denied by Conroy and subsequently rejected in yesterday’s report. Conroy was originally represented by Robert Henderson QC but, because of pressure of work, Mr Henderson did not represent him at his trial.
11) Sheriff Douglas Allan: Appointed to the sheriffdom of south Strathclyde, Dumfries, and Galloway at Lanark in August, 1988. Aged 50, he joined the procurator-fiscal service in 1967 and, before becoming a sheriff, was regional procurator-fiscal of Lothian and Borders.
12) Tam Dalyell MP: Labour Member of Parliament for Linlithgow. Relentless parliamentary campaigner on issues as diverse as the sinking of the Argentinian cruiser Belgrano, the Westland affair, and the bombing of Libya. He was indirectly responsible for the leaked report which highlighted police conspiracy concerns. The MP had raised the issue in a letter to Lothian and Borders Chief Constable Sir William Sutherland and the leaked report, intended only as an internal memorandum, had been prepared to allow Sir William to frame a reply. Mr Dalyell refused to give evidence to the inquiry.
13) David Johnston: Radio Forth news editor with first-class Edinburgh police contacts who presents a popular Sunday morning phone-in programme. A Magic Circle agnostic, he alerted Tam Dalyell to the apparent homosexual links in a number of court cases and associated events.
14) Michael Glenn: Convicted fraudster and police informer who shared cell on remand with Stephen Conroy. Loretto-educated, son of a military family, gay, he began touting story of conspiracy round newspapers before Magic Circle report was leaked.
15) Sir William Sutherland: Chief Constable of Lothian and Borders Police since 1983. Previously Chief Constable of Bedfordshire. As a chief superintendent in Surrey he headed the 1974 police inquiry into the IRA Guildford pub bombings. The ”Guildford Four” were released from jail in 1989 on the basis of discredited forensic evidence. Inverness-born Sir William, who was knighted in 1988, was caused acute embarrassment last year as a result of the so-called Fettesgate Affair when his police HQ was broken into and a cache of sensitive police intelligence files stolen. He also denounced the leaking of the Magic Circle report as an act of ”gross disloyalty and unprofessionalism”.
16) Hector Clark: Deputy Chief Constable of the Lothian and Borders force since 1984. He co-ordinated the nationwide investigation into the murders of Borders schoolgirl Susan Maxwell and five-year-old Caroline Hogg. In October of last year, he issued an unprecedented public apology to the former Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, following remarks made at a football match. Lord Fraser, now a Scottish Office Minister but Scotland’s most senior law officer during the period of the Magic Circle affair, had threatened to sue.
17) Lord Fraser of Carmyllie QC: Solicitor-General from 1982 and Lord Advocate from 1989 until his re-entry to politics as a Scottish Office Minister after the General Election in 1992. During his period as Lord Advocate, he was in charge of the international investigation into the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie.
18) Lord Rodger of Earlsferry QC: Appointed Lord Advocate, Scotland’s senior law officer, in April of last year. Previously held the post of Solicitor-General. He ordered the Nimmo Smith-Friel inquiry. Alan Rodger was educated at Kelvinside Academy, Glasgow University, and Balliol College, Oxford. He arrived at the Bar in 1974 and took Silk in 1985. He became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1991 and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh last year. He became an advocate-depute in 1985 and was home advocate-depute from 1986 to 1988.
19) Detective Chief Superintendent William Hiddleston: Lothian and Borders former top detective, with 32 years service, took retirement, unexpectedly, in October last year. As head of CID, he signed the Magic Circle report but was not its author. Chief Constable denied Mr Hiddleston, 53, had been forced out.
20) Detective Inspector Mike Souter: Formerly deputy head of Lothian and Borders fraud squad, he had seen a number of long-running fraud cases thwarted. Recently returned to work after heart by-pass surgery. After internal police inquiry into leak of Magic Circle report, he was moved to uniform duties. Now in charge of police cells at Southside police office.
21) Detective Sergeant Peter Brown: Former fraud squad member and involved with DI Souter throughout investigation into Conroy mortgage frauds. He was also party, with head of CID, to interview with Edinburgh lawyer who claims immunity deal was struck over Fettesgate raid. Moved to uniformed duties in Pilton when Mr Hiddleston retired in October.
22) Detective Sergeant Charlie Orr: Formerly based at West End CID, he was involved in long-running Operation Planet investigation into gay vice ring. Brother of officer who compiled Magic Circle report. Now moved to uniform duties.
23) Detective Inspector Roger Orr: Formerly based at Leith CID, assigned to compile Magic Circle report following chief constable’s receipt of letter from Tam Dalyell MP. Interviewed fraud squad officers and officers involved in Operation Planet and was given access to transcripts, tapes of interviews with informers, and other documentation to enable him to write report. Subsequently moved to uniform duties.
(see bottom for full article screenshot)
From subsequent press reports when Old Fettesian, Colin Tucker – now living in the Mansion House London – was charged with embezzlement from Burnett Walker clients, it transpired that Ian Walker was living a double life. The respectable family man and businessman I met was in fact a closet homosexual who with his lover and colleague Colin Tucker was stealing millions from clients, and when the impending revelation of his theft was about to come to light he took his life by hanging himself in his garage. LINK
I was later to learn that Colin Tucker was charged with theft from the clients of the law firm that represented me, but with the assistance of a key player in the Edinburgh legal scene, solicitor David Blair-Wilson, LINK he was acquitted.
Blair Wilson was one of many Edinburgh lawyers who were in the news at this time as the so called ‘gay judges & rent boys scandal‘ was breaking. LINK Perhaps the most high profile event at this time was the resignation of Lord Dervaird in 1989. The whole of the media was buzzing with these stories but I did not associate Ian McFarlane Walker or Colin Tucker with these stories at the time, though it turned out they were pivotal in these events.
Having sex with children is a serious offence against the law, and in the late 1980’s having homosexual sex with anyone under the age of 21 was an offence. So when it was suggested in the press that there was serious concern that a select group of people nicknamed the “Magic Circle” because of their knowledge of criminality in this regard among judges were able to threaten blackmailing them in order to gain court verdicts in their favour Tam Dalyell, MP demanded a police investigation. LINK
An investigation was ordered by the Chief Constable of Lothian and Borders Police, Sir William Sutherland who tasked Detective Chief Inspector Roger Orr and a team including his brother Detective Sergeant Charlie Orr to carry it out. The inquiry and resulting Orr Report were kept secret and securely locked up in the Fettes Police HQ. That is until July 19 1992 when the Fettes, Police HQ in Edinburgh was sensationally burgled in what came to be known as ‘Fettesgate‘ and the Orr Report along with other top secret papers were stolen! LINK
The Fettes burglar was eventually identified as a homosexual criminal called Derek William Donaldson who first sold the report to a newspaper and then offered immunity from prosecution to the burgler on condition that they return the report, an offer, when accepted, the highly embarrassed Edinburgh police force were happy to accept. LINK
Once the terms of the Orr Report was in the public domain the press ran with details of its findings, which reveaked disquiet among the police force and a belief that in 5 cases there was reason to believe that persons of positions of influence in the judiciary, Crown Office, and legal establishment, linked by common homosexual relationships were perverting the course of justice in having court cases or potential offences decided in their favour. LINK
Read in full HERE
Tangled web that distracts attention from real BLACK MAGIC CIRCLE
DUNCAN CAMPBELL uncovers the sordid background to the man behind last year’s notorious ‘Fettesgate‘ robbery — and reveals how he has spent more than a decade playing journalists, gays, policemen, and criminals against each other. THERE are few Scottish police officers who have served much of their time in Edinburgh who have not had to deal with Derek William Donaldson, the homosexual 32-year-old crook and self-acclaimed ‘Fettesgate raider’ who was imprisoned for 18 months at Edinburgh Sheriff Court for assault and robbery. Apart from his central role in the Fettes robbery, Donaldson was also one of a network of gay crooks who has assiduously encouraged detectives and journalists to believe in the fictitious notion of a homosexual ‘magic circle’ conspiracy among senior lawyers and the Scottish judiciary. These widely-reported rumours have until recently served as an effective distraction from their own criminal activities — which openly gay advocate Derek Ogg has dubbed the real ‘black magic circle.’ Only the slightest hint of this activity emerged in court yesterday. Since 1976, when as a teenager at Portobello High School (map) he was first convicted for housebreaking and theft, Donaldson has amassed convictions for almost 50 offences of fraud, theft, violence, and sexual offences against young people of both sexes. More striking than that is the list of confidence tricks for which Donaldson has not — so far — faced either trial or punishment. These include conning the Security Service, MI5, into believing that he was a useful counter-intelligence agent, and TV journalists into making a documentary in which a civil servant and former Portobello schoolmate, Brian Gentleman, was falsely portrayed as a Czech spy. They also include a visit last year to William Nimmo-Smith, the QC asked by the Lord Advocate to investigate the alleged gay ‘Magic Circle’ among Scottish lawyers and the judiciary. Posing as reporter ‘Allan MacDonald’ of the Daily Telegraph, Donaldson tried to get the advocate to be indiscreet about the likely conclusions of his report, published two months later. Donaldson secretly recorded the meeting, and then offered his tapes for sale to newspapers. The Scottish Sun were the only takers. From their Glasgow offices, they agreed a £10,000 deal with Donaldson. The terms Donaldson demanded included undertakings by the Sun not to tell their readers about his lengthy and unattractive criminal record, nor to show his photograph. The Sun also agreed to pass money to Donaldson by an unusual and complex route. On Friday Dec 18, the day the report was published- under the banner headline ‘FETTES THIEF CONS GAY JUDGES PROBE QC’ -News International Ltd. deposited £6500 in the clients’ account of Edinburgh solicitors Cochrane and Blair Paterson, of Abercromby Place, to be passed on to Donaldson. The next day, the Sun published a second report on Donaldson’s hoax, entitled NIMMO THE DIMMO That evening, an intensely distressed Mr Nimmo-Smith sought psychiatric treatement at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital. The theft from the Fettes offices of the Scottish Crime Squad (SCS) in July last year of many sensitive criminal intelligence files was the high point of Donaldson’s criminal career. This is the event now know throughout Scotland as ‘Fettesgate’ The documents he then stole included SCS’s dossiers on himself and a group of criminal acquaintances, and on such highly-sensitive police operations as ‘Operation Burnt Bush,’ a Scotland-wide intelligence investigation into the activities of the Animal Liberation Front. After details of some of the stolen documents were published, the police raided Donaldson’s mother’s house at Stenhouse, Edinburgh. They also raided a cover address in Dundee used by Donaldson for many of his fraudulent activities. This was the Queensway Guest House at 127 Broughty Ferry Road, which was then a DSS hostel for young men run by a close friend of Donaldson’s, Norman Lilburn. (It has since been closed). Lilburn, like Donaldson, is a criminal, with convictions for fraud, fire-raising, and sexual offences against young men. But no documents were found at either site. Then Donaldson’s solicitor at the time, Nigel Beaumont, bartered with Lothian and Borders CID officers for ”immunity” for Donaldson in exchange for the return of the original files. Before they were returned, however, Donaldson made copies. These and other copies remain hidden at several addresses around Edinburgh. However, in an unpublicised police raid several weeks ago, many of the copies were recovered from the Midlothian home of a retired businessman, who has since died. Donaldson has always taken particular pleasure in using the media to tweak the tail of the police and other authorities, and in playing journalists, policemen, gays, and his criminal acquaintances against each other. Last autumn the Scotsman printed a series of unchallenged ‘exclusives’ from him and his solicitor, Mr Beaumont, about how the Fettesgate break-in took place, together with other allegations against the police. Delighted with this, Donaldson took to referring to his contact, the paper’s chief reporter, Alan Hutchison, as ‘Fido.’ Ironically, after leaving school, Donaldson had applied to join the police. When his application was rejected, he became a ‘police groupie’. He then used radio monitoring equipment to learn about police operations, staff, and command and control systems. Then he used this information to interfere with and disrupt police activities. By 1984, he had been convicted of more than 40 charges of fraud, theft, reset, criminal damage, and offences against the person and the Companies Acts. Then, while on the run from the police in London, he moved on to hoaxing MI5. That summer, Donaldson met Security Service counter-intelligence staff in a secret Whitehall basement called ”Room 055” and made allegations about former Portobello schoolmate Brian Gentleman. When both MI5 and the Czech intelligence service realised that they were being deceived, Donaldson took the tale to journalists instead. A 1986 Channel 4 documentary accused Gentleman of being a Czech spy. But Special Branch investigators found no evidence for this – and Gentleman kept his job at the Department of Trade. The truth was that it was Donaldson who had tried to spy for the Eastern Block, and to get Gentleman to become a Czech spy. When this plot failed, Donaldson approached a gay Edinburgh friend, former soldier Terry Smith, and asked him to arrange for serving gay Army officers to be photographed secretly in compromising sexual scenes. By threatening them with exposure of their homosexuality, Donaldson then hoped to blackmail them into passing over documents and information for him to sell. Smith refused to take part in the plot, and instead warned the police. After this, the two became bitter enemies. According to one of Donaldson’s closest criminal acquaintances, at one meeting he produced a gun and announced that he was going to kill Smith. At this point, however, Donaldson’s solicitor, Nigel Beaumont (who was also present), persuaded him to hand over the weapon and disarmed him. During the mid-1980s Donaldson was a gay fraudster who earned his money running DHSS hostels. He and others bought large properties with fraudulently obtained mortgages, and filled them with young men on the dole. One such hostel (at the time) was the Murrayfield Hotel in , Edinburgh; another was in . Both were run by ‘D & S Properties,’ a partnership between Donaldson and Grant Gordon Sutherland, a heterosexual businessman who was jailed soon afterwards for a different fraud involving meat packing companies. Other such DHSS landlords – and members of the gay ‘black magic circle’ – were Norman Lilburn and journalist John Hein. In November, 1986, Donaldson was sentenced by the High Court to six-and-a-half years’ imprisonment for mortgage and insurance frauds and for sexual offences against young men and a young woman. After his sentence was reduced on appeal to five years, he was released from Shotts prison in July, 1989. He was quickly back in fraudulent activities. He teamed with two other former DHSS landlords, Gordon Gosnell and John Hein, the one-time editor of the magazine Gay Scotland. From premises in Hope Street, Glasgow, the three started operating 0898 premium rate telephone services, which they used for major frauds against British Telecom. Advertisements for Donaldson’s services, ‘Crossed Lines,’ started appearing nightly in the Edinburgh Evening News. Hein was a telephone expert, and the brains behind the fraud. During 1989 he devised and perfected a special method of making fraudulent phone calls from public phone boxes to the 0898 numbers run by himself and Donaldson. Every time such a fraudulent call was made BT was obliged to pay the operators of the 0898 service – Hein or Donaldson – up to £200. In November, 1989, Donaldson recruited an unemployed gay man to travel round Edinburgh late at night, making the special calls. Soon Donaldson was earning £5000 a week from BT. He rented a new car, luxurious West End flat in Learmonth Terrace, and boasted to cronies that he was ‘living like a lord.’ Then, taking a lavish holiday in the sex suburbs of Bangkok in January 1990 with boyfriend (and co-accused at yesterday’s trial) Billy Langa, he was arrested. British Telecom computers had detected the fraud – and Donaldson himself had been watched and identified while making a fraudulent call from an Edinburgh suburb. Donaldson was arrested by the Scottish Crime Squad and charged with £40,000 fraud and attempted fraud against BT. Donaldson then turned on his former ‘manager,’ Dean Barnes, who had admitted in a statement to police how Donaldson had told him to fiddle calls to Donaldson’s services. It is claimed that Barnes and his mother were threatened with maiming or death and, in consequence, Barnes agreed to lie at Glasgow Sheriff Court at Donaldson’s trial in May 1991, and did so. Donaldson was acquitted. Two months ago Donaldson’s solicitor, Nigel Beaumont, was arrested and charged by Lothian and Borders Police with attempting to suborn Dean Barnes to commit perjury at Glasgow Sheriff Court in May, 1991. Mr Beaumont denies the charge. MEANWHILE in Edinburgh, Donaldson carried out an insurance fraud on his mother’s house in Stenhouse. On February 14, 1991, he set fire to her kitchen with a Calor gas stove. Two claims were made for the costs of building a new kitchen; once from an insurance company, and secondly from the building society which had helped his mother buy her former council home. Moving to Kirkcaldy, Donaldson moved in with another gay mortgage fraudster, Willy Hampton. Hampton had successfully run a string of mortgage frauds in Edinburgh and Kirkcaldy. He had even obtained mortgages on behalf of his 17-year-old boyfriend. Donaldson and Hampton took over and ran a snooker hall in Methil called Connections. The two men and other members of the ‘black magic circle’ also successfully defrauded the Royal Bank of Scotland and the Clydesdale Bank which involved opening false cash dispensing bank accounts. But the pair fell out after Donaldson made a sexual advance towards Hampton’s boyfriend. A squabble ensued, and Hampton took over running the Methil snooker hall. Then, in October 1990, there were two attempts to burn it down. The second attempt was successful, and the hall remains a hulk. Donaldson then tried ringing stolen cars and selling fake Armani sweaters at Ingliston market. But he was caught and prosecuted by trading standards officers. His new career as a police informant was, however, soon flourishing. Hampton was an early victim. After his Edinburgh mortgage frauds were detected, Hampton went into hiding in a friend’s west end flat. Donaldson tracked him down — and he was arrested within hours. He only narrowly escaped the unpleasant consequences of his lifestyle and actions. From inside prison, Hampton offered other criminals up to £1000 to have Donaldson beaten up. But the attempt failed after Hampton could not pay the fee he had offered. In characteristic fashion, Donaldson’s 1992 deception of William Nimmo-Smith, QC, was not initially planned as a deliberate intervention in the ”Magic Circle” affair. He had sought to interview the QC under false pretences because he wanted to settle scores with Smith, and was desperate to find out what Smith might have told him. The ”Fettesgate” theft was also, ironically, planned as an act of private spite. This event, perhaps the greatest blow to the reputation of a Scottish police force, began after CID officers attached to the elite regional Scottish Crime Squad — with headquarters in Glasgow, and offices at Fettes — agreed in 1990 to employ Donaldson as a ”registered” police informant. For years he had been trading information with policemen, journalists, and other criminals, and using the information he gleaned from each to play off detectives against fellow homosexual criminals. His new career as an official police ‘grass’ began after he was released from Shotts prison on parole in July 1989. It came to an end in July, 1992, when – aggrieved because he was not paid a fee of #500 which he had expected – he decided to get even by burgling the Scottish Crime Squad’s own offices. After the break-in, senior Lothians and Borders police officers learned about Donaldson’s recruitment by the SCS, and were astounded. They were appalled that the experienced CID officers concerned had not realised who had been running whom. All of the officers concerned have now been found new jobs, and are unlikely ever to return to plain-clothes police work. ‘The SCS’s relationship with Donaldson was an absolute disaster of informant handling,’ said one senior officer. ‘The key mistake in ‘Fettesgate’ was ever to let Donaldson into the building at all.’ ‘The gravity of this misjudgment beggars description. If ever a mackerel was launched to catch a sprat, this was it. Donaldson — of all people!’ BUT the roots of Fettesgate began far from Scotland. Early in 1992, a large consignment of Visa dollar travellers’ cheques were stolen while in transit from Czechoslovakia to England. This haul was then distributed to criminal networks throughout Europe. Some of the stolen cheques were passed to leading criminals in the Glasgow area, who made plans to cash them in Spain and in London. Although he was approached to take part in this scheme, Donaldson declined — but suggested instead the services of some fellow gay crooks. One who agreed to take part was Gordon Gosnell, of Linwood, near Paisley, the editor of a monthly Scottish gay magazine called Pulse. So, in April 1992, Gosnell travelled to London with four other men to cash the cheques. Donaldson informed the police about their plans. During the trip, Gosnell and three of his companions were arrested in London by detectives from Number 6 Regional Crime Squad. Donaldson, it appears, assumed that the arrests of Gosnell and others was the direct result of his ”grassing.” So he approached Detective Chief Inspector Jimmy Smith of the Scottish Crime Squad and demanded an informant’s fee of £500, payable (he claimed) on behalf of the Metropolitan Police. But, according to police sources, it was Gosnell himself who had brought about the arrests. He had blown the plot after becoming extremely drunk. ”He was like a smartly dressed Rab C. Nesbitt,” said one London detective. ”He waddled into a bureau de change in Paddington and asked to cash £20,000.” The cashier he met called the police and, after intensive surveillance, four men, including Gosnell, were arrested. A fifth escaped back to Glasgow. After the Fettes theft, Donaldson attempted to sell his haul to Scottish newspapers. But most were leery of potential charges of reset — and rightly so. Although Donaldson himself then remained Teflon-coated, the reporters whom he met were not so lucky. After Scotland on Sunday reporter Ron McKay published some details of the ”Burnt Bush” documents, he was arrested in Kent, flown back to Scotland, and charged with reset. Donaldson’s main contact on the Scottish Sun, reporter Alan Muir, faced an early-morning raid by police a day later. But the charges against journalists were dropped in November 1992 by Edinburgh’s procurator fiscal. JUST before Christmas, Donaldson told his mates that his next get-rich-quick scheme was going to be a roulette scam. He had, he claimed, devised a unique system for winning, play after play. This ”system” would make him up to £500 an hour, he believed. He spent weeks proving to himself that it would work. Then he made elaborate plans for a new life in 1993. He would join a host of London casinos, hire a luxurious new car, and move south to a new flat in the North London diplomatic suburb of St Johns Wood. But he never got the opportunity to see if the streets of London could indeed be paved with gold. On January 6 this year, three days after he savagely attacked me in an attempt to suppress Channel 4’s report on the Fettesgate and Magic Circle affairs, he returned openly to his house in Double Hedges Road, Edinburgh. He had, meanwhile, spent three days in hiding at the Holiday Inn hotel in Queensferry Road, Edinburgh. While on the run he had frequently been in touch with the Sun — and had secretly met his solicitor, Nigel Beaumont, who, it appears, told him that he could reasonably expect to be able to ”walk” from police custody, and thus to get away with assault and theft. On the day he was arrested at his house in Double Hedges Road reporters from the Scottish Sun were on hand to record what they and he supposed would be next day’s ”blunder by the plods” splash for the Sun. As the police led him off, a Sun photographer recorded every move, anticipating that he would be released after a few hours’ questioning. But the Crown’s evidence of Donaldson’s assault, theft and dishonesty was more than he had anticipated. He remained in custody. It was the one Donaldson story the Sun did not print. Herald Scotland
- Scottish Law Reporter Flikr Newspaper Articles
- Ian Pace: Colin Tucker, Fiona Woolfe, Fettesgate & Magic Circle
- 15/03/05
- Fettesgate: ‘Magic Circle’ spells panic in the police scotsman
The ex-Rollers guitarist claims that Paton tried to sexually assault him in the bedroom of the Gogar home in 1976 after locking him inside. McGlynn said that the home – known as Little Kellerstain – was used for gay orgies hosted by Paton and frequented by visiting celebrities. The bedroom where Paton slept has now been knocked down by the property’s new owner along with the sauna where he was found dead from a heart attack in 2009. The 55-year-old said that his drink was spiked by Paton who sexually attacked him when he was just 18.
He said: “I’m glad that the bedroom has been demolished. I wish I was there with a hammer to do it myself. I would’ve done it for free. I would’ve blown it up. The night I joined the band in 1976, Paton spiked my drink and assaulted me in the lounge”
McGlynn, who works as a developer and lives in Liberton, added: “Paton used to hold parties at the house where celebrities came up from London. There would be boys aged between 14 and 18 wandering around who would be abused. I was there, but I was too busy trying to protect myself to stop it. There was always a punch bowl in the lounge, which had been spiked with something. I didn’t know much about drugs but there were sleeping tablets and cocaine around”
Read in full edinburghnews
Rollers chief linked to sex abuse network 11/04/09
A GOVERNMENT adviser on sex crimes has claimed Bay City Rollers manager Tam Paton was involved with an abuse ring which claimed dozens of youngsters as victims. Sarah Nelson last night called for a full investigation into the depraved activities of Paton, who last week died of a heart attack at his luxury home near Edinburgh. Nelson, speaking in her capacity as an Edinburgh University researcher, said she had uncovered numerous allegations made against Paton over the years, many of them involving teenage boys who were afraid to go to the police at the time. Read in full Scotsman
TAM PATON & The Edinburgh “Scene”
70+ Articles & Blogs on Tam Paton, The Rollers, Walton Hop, King, Denning etc..
Major and minor players in the unfolding investigation 27 Jan 1993