How Sex, Scandal and Deceit Founded a Drugs Empire

The Happy Dust Gang

The story behind the rise and fall of Scotland's first cocaine smugglers and the beginnings of a major crime syndicate

David Leslie has worked for the News of the World since 1970. Since then, he has covered scores of major stories, including the tragedies of Zeebrugge, Piper Alpha, Lockerbie and Dunblane. Since 1994, he has concentrated on crime and major investigations. He is also the author of the bestselling Crimelord: The Licensee, about the elusive multimillionaire gangster Tam McGraw.

Charlie, snow, toot, white: cocaine goes by many different names. But in Glasgow in the early 1980s, they called it Happy Dust. 
 
At no-holds-barred parties of the glamorous and wealthy, cocaine was the new aphrodisiac. A few lines of Charlie and a humdrum party could become an orgy. 
 
Hot from the forests of Colombia, Charlie flooded onto the streets of Glasgow and was passed along the line to the cocktail set, highly paid sports stars and yuppies desperate for kicks and thrills. Behind it all was a man they called the Parachutist. 
 
But all too soon, the party was over. People became too greedy and the Parachutist was double-crossed. Some of the gang did shady deals with detectives in hotel rooms; others flew to seek shelter in the sun, their reputations destroyed but not their fortunes. 
 
The good times might have been over for the Happy Dust Gang, but their legacy lives on to this day.

A Mother's Tug-of-Love Torment

Mummy, Take Me Home

The true story of a Scottish woman's tragic descent into alcoholism and drug addiction after failing to secure custody of her daughter from her former Texan Lover

Leslie got closer to the case than anyone and expertly brings this modern-day horror story to life

David Leslie has worked for the News of the World since 1970. He is also the author of the bestselling Crimelord, about the gangster Tam McGraw, and The Happy Dust Gang.

'Mummy, take me home,' sobbed little Jasmine Chapman as she was ripped from her mother's arms. But there was nothing that Morag could do . . . except continue to fight for custody of the child she loved so much. 
 
When their relationship ended, Jasmine's parents argued bitterly about her future. But they were unable to come to an amicable agreement, and a UK court ruled that the case be heard in the US, the home of Jasmine's father. Fearing that she would lose her child, Morag fled from Texas with her daughter, only to be hauled back in shackles and incarcerated in a grim American prison. 
 
When Morag was eventually freed and awarded custody of her little girl, she thought her nightmare was over. However, back in the UK, every move she made was watched and every mistake recorded. Morag sank into deep depression and became lost in a haze of alcohol and drugs. The once beautiful and desirable young woman found her life spiralling out of control. Eventually, she lost the daughter she had fought so hard to keep. 
 
Mummy, Take Me Home is the gripping and disturbing true-life story of a tug of love that no mother should ever face and no child should be forced to endure.

The True Story of Tam McGraw

Crimelord: The Licensee

A controversial exposé of Tam McGraw, one of Scotland's most wealthy and infamous gangsters

David Leslie has worked for the News of the World since 1970. Since then, he has covered scores of major stories, including the tragedies of Zeebrugge, Piper Alpha, Lockerbie and Dunblane. He has been based in Glasgow since 1994, concentrating on crime and major investigations.

Crimelord is the gripping life story of elusive multimillionaire gangster Tam McGraw. A notorious criminal kingpin, McGraw has risen from extreme poverty in the East End of Glasgow to become one of Scotland's wealthiest men. 
 
When hash started to flood into Scotland from the late 1980s onwards, suspicion centred on McGraw, leader of the infamous Barlanark Team. After a two-year surveillance operation, police discovered the drug had been hidden in buses carrying young footballers and deprived Glasgow families on free holidays abroad. It was a scam reminiscent of the movie The Italian Job, only this time Scots kids had been sitting on hash worth over £40 million. Police claimed McGraw was the financier and mastermind but in 1998 a jury declared him innocent while other suspects were jailed. 
 
As McGraw refuses to discuss his life publicly, his remarkable tale is told through friends, fellow crooks and the occasional rival. It is an outrageous, often hilarious, true gangster story.

From Gangland Goodfella To Army Officer

The Underworld Captain

An explosive account of a soldier's secret involvement in Glasgow's violent gangland

Captain Alexander Shannon has been a member of HM Armed Forces since 1983. He has risen through the ranks to become a captain and currently works as a Permanent Staff Administration Officer. David Leslie is the author of the bestselling Crimelord, about Tam McGraw, as well as The Happy Dust Gang, Mummy, Take Me Home, The Hate Factory and The Gangster's Wife.

Alexander Shannon escaped a shady past to enjoy a glittering career in the army, only to end up back in the thick of criminal activity. 
 
Shannon's time as a soldier saw him posted to the Falklands, Northern Ireland and war-torn Bosnia. The rigours of army life took their toll and he found himself drawn into a series of ruthless gang wars. He used the skills he'd learned in the forces to hide weapons, work for drugs racketeers and plot a massacre, and he was offered a fortune to work as a Mafia-style contract assassin. 
 
He was questioned over brutal killings and accused of a triple murder attempt, yet his dedication and determination to succeed in the army brought him accolades and a series of promotions. In The Underworld Captain, Shannon explains how he managed to combine a successful army career with dangerous gangland dealings for so long and how he finally broke free for good.

An Empire Built on Cards

The Gangster's Wife

The revealing story of Margaret McGraw and her life with gangster Tam 'The Licensee' McGraw

David Leslie is the author of the bestselling Crimelord, about Tam McGraw, as well as The Happy Dust Gang, Bible John's Secret Daughter and Mummy, Take Me Home.

For almost four decades, Margaret 'Mags' McGraw was a keeper of secrets. Her husband, Tam, the notorious 'Licensee', amassed a fortune by leading a safe-cracking gang before masterminding a spectacular £50-million drugs racket. 
 
Mags was a devotee of Tarot cards and fortune telling, so when Tam and his associates wondered whether luck would be with them, it was to her that they turned. But Mags discovered that the cards warned of much more than years in prison cells: they predicted death. She learned that her own husband was also doomed to a fate that was unexpected by everyone but her: Tam died in the arms of the wife he called his 'rock' while her secret lover frantically tried to save him. 
 
In The Gangster's Wife, Mags reveals her gripping life story, from being a London clippie through often hilarious days running an ice-cream van during the infamous Glasgow Ice Cream Wars to managing a notorious bar, being agony aunt to the toughest criminals around, hiding a secret love and sharing a life with The Licensee.

Thirty Years Inside with the UK's Most Notorious Villains

The Hate Factory

You've read The Ferris Conspiracy. Thought Paul Ferris was bad? Meet his brother.

David Leslie has worked for the News of the World since 1970. He is also the author of the bestselling Crimelord, about Tam McGraw, as well as The Happy Dust Gang, The Gangster's Wife and Mummy, Take Me Home. He lives in Glasgow.

Convicted murderer Billy Ferris has endured more than three decades behind bars in many of Britain's prisons. In The Hate Factory, he candidly documents his experiences in jail with some of the UK's most notorious criminals. 
 
 Jailed for life in 1977 for a crime of passion, Ferris experienced betrayal and treachery on the inside. He unexpectedly formed friendships that led to his being labelled a 'bombers' crony' and found love while on the run after a dramatic escape. He vividly describes the cruelty, savagery and degradation that go hand in hand with prison life and details the nightmare that was Wormwood Scrubs, the prison he christened 'the Hate Factory'. He relays what happened when his cell was used as a courtroom for an IRA punishment trial and how he hatched a plan to assassinate the son of a legendary underworld godfather and plotted to murder an informer. 
 
 Over the 30 years during which Ferris has been imprisoned, his fellow inmates have included some of the UK's 'most wanted' from London underworld enforcer 'Mad' Frankie Fraser to Archie Hall, the serial killer dubbed 'the Monster Butler'.

David Leslie

Murder, Drugs and a Mother's Secret Heartbreak

There was one partner the pretty young women who danced away the 1960s in Glasgow's Barrowlands were desperate to avoid: Bible John, so named because he quoted scripture to his victims. He was being hunted for three brutal unsolved sex murders, and each of his victims had been picked up after a night at the famous dance hall. 
 
Police were still investigating the first terrifying murder when Hannah Martin was raped on her way home from the Barrowlands. When Bible John struck twice more, Hannah confided to friends that his description matched that of her own attacker. 
 
The next shock came when Hannah discovered she was pregnant. Her distraught father banished her from the family home and forced her to give her child up for adoption. She would never see her daughter again, but in a bizarre twist three decades later, an investigation into the infamous World's End murder would result in Hannah's daughter discovering the identity of the mother she never knew. Tragically, the news came too late for them to be reunited, but it set her on a course to uncover the shocking secrets of her mother's life. 
 
Did Hannah know Bible John? What did Hannah Martin reveal of her baby's father? How did she then become a member of a multimillion-pound drug-smuggling gang? Why, after expecting a huge bounty, did she die in poverty? The answers are all here in Bible John's Secret Daughter.

David Leslie

Books by David Leslie

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