Glasgow Crime Story podcast on Christopher Hutcheson released

Christopher Hutcheson spared no one in his quest to be the number one gangster in Glasgow.

Not even his own cousin.

Many people enjoy watching gangster movies as harmless entertainment.

But to 23-year-old Hutcheson they were his inspiration and the fictional characters his role models.

Hutcheson, above, was addicted to Mafia films such as Goodfellas and the Godfather series and watched them for hours on end at his flat in Ibrox, Glasgow. 

He even practised copying the chilling stare of actor Paul Bettany, the star of Gangster Number One which was one of his favourite movies.

Hutcheson wanted to dress and live like the men he idolised in the movies. 

His flat was decorated with the latest in Italian furniture and fittings. 

He had his own personal multi gym and worked out every day to develop his massive physique and bought £1500 Versace suits brought from the company's store in Glasgow city centre. 

He enjoyed his violent lifestyle and he had two tattoos which said Thug for Life and Touch of Magic - which had Satanic undertones. 

And he loved to have a beautiful woman - usually blonde - on his arm. 

Hutcheson took a string of females on expensive holidays to the Canary Islands and Spain. 

One holiday snapshot from the time shows him hugging a former lover on a cruise ship in Gran Canaria in July 2001 - only months before he murdered his two victims. 

The woman split with him shortly after returning from the trip because of his violence. 

Hutcheson was also a regular visitor to Blackpool where he got his tattoos. 

One former associate said: "Hutch liked to surround himself with good- looking young women, preferably blonde, and he could turn on the charm when he wanted to. 

"He lived his life the way he thought a gangster should and that meant the glamorous blondes, holidays and cars."

By the time he was in his early twenties, Hutcheson had established a reputation in the Govan and Ibrox as a hardman and a drug dealer, two areas where there were plenty of both.

Two men owed him money for drugs, in one case £350.

Like his heroes in the movies, he wanted to show that he was not a man to be crossed - even if one of those who owned money was his own cousin Daniel Hutcheson.

His first victim John Mitchell was a homeless man.

He died after being stabbed in the leg then tortured at Hutcheson's flat for almost 12 hours in September 2001, because of the £350 debt.

The terrified man had his hands pulverised with a metal dumbbell bar and a kettle of boiling water poured over them.  

He was then bundled into a car and taken to a remote bridge at Strathaven, South Lanarkshire, where Hutcheson pushed him off the edge. 

Afterwards, Hutcheson bemoaned the fact that Mitchell "hadn't even shouted `aaaarrgh'" as he fell. 

At the time of his death, it was treated initially as suicide but later became a murder inquiry when other injuries were found following a post mortem.

A few weeks later in November 2001, his cousin Daniel, then 23, a former soldier was lured to the same flat

Hutcheson strangled him with a piece of rope as Ferguson looked on.

Daniel's head was then cut off and the two are said to have played football with it.

 

Hutcheson then sat beside a burning oil drum for several days in a tenement back garden drinking beer and burning Daniel's various body parts and limbs which had been cut off, occasionally stoking the fire.

He also put Daniel's head into the oil drum used for the fire, wrapped in a bin bag.

It was later said that he had kept the head, which has never been found, on the mantlepiece of his flat for two days before disposing of it.

The body parts were then dumped at four separate locations, including under the Erskine Bridge on the River Clyde, in an attempt to conceal the crime. 

It would be later revealed that the pair carried out the dismemberment after spending the previous night clubbing in town to try and give themselves an alibi for the murder.

Daniel's body was found by two men out hunting rabbits with their dogs beneath the Erskine Bridge.

They had spotted the bundle in the water wrapped in in a black bin bag, tent and sheet.

When one of them opened it up with a knife they were both overcome by the smell and alerted the police.

It was five months since Daniel Hutcheson had gone missing and now a murder investigation was launched.

When detectives discovered the identity of the victim's cousin, they realised they had a good place to start their inquiries.

They also realised that Ferguson was a weak link and might talk.

Both Hutcheson and Ferguson men stood trial at the High Court in Glasgow in March 2003.  

At the time Hutcheson was serving an unrelated four-year prison term for drugs offences.

People lined up at the High Court in Glasgow to give evidence against Christopher Hutcheson, when they would have been terrified to do so in the past.

It turned out that while he had plenty of enemies, he had few friends.

Ferguson also testified against Hutcheson during the trial despite being sat in the dock beside him.

His conscience had got the better of him and he had gone to the police and confessed all.

The charges against a third man of helping to dispose of the body were also dropped in return for him giving evidence.

One witness spoke about how Hutcheson had turned up at his house looking for a debt to be paid and pulled out the crossbow threatening to kill both him and his wife.

He admitted weeping and pleading for his life.

Regardless Hutcheson had shot him in the thigh.

His wife went straight to her grandmother and borrowed the money to pay off the first instalment on the debt.

However, Hutcheson was not finished.

Around the time of Daniel Hutcheson's murder, he and Ferguson bundled the same man into a car and took him to Duntocher, near Glasgow where he was beaten up. 

The attack only stopped when their victim cried out that he was "finished."

Many of the people that police interviewed described Hutcheson as a violent psychopath, capable of anything.

One man who had peddled drugs for Hutcheson claimed that Hutcheson also bundled him into a car and drove him to wasteland.

There he had a gun stuck in his mouth and was beaten to a pulp with a rope placed round his neck.

The man said that he was sure that he was going to die, but Hutchison let go of the rope and left him there.

Another witness electrician Derek Scanlon, then 22, claimed Hutcheson showed him the body of Daniel Hutcheson lying in the bath in his flat before it was dismembered.

He had been called to Hutcheson’s flat in Ibrox out of the blue on a Saturday towards the end of 2001.

Scanlon revealed that he did not believe Hutcheson when he said he had killed Daniel. He had laughed until he was told to look in the bathroom where he saw his body fully clothed in the bath. 

Scanlon said he went back to the flat the next day and was posted as a look out when Hutcheson and a third man took the dismembered torso, which was wrapped in a tent, into a waiting car.

Scanlan told the court he had only returned to the flat out of fear.

Quizzed as to why he sat in Hutcheson's flat and didn't leave Scanlon replied: "There was nothing else I could have done. Something could have happened to me.

"Christopher had the influence over people. If he said it you did it.

"I was ashamed of myself." 

After the fire went out, the contents of the drum were emptied into six rubbish bags and taken away in a wheelbarrow.

When he took the stand Ferguson said he had watched Hutcheson tie a rope around Daniel's neck and pull it until blood flowed from his nose.

Ferguson claimed Hutcheson made him describe the former soldier's facial expression while he held the rope round his neck.

Advocate-depute Norman Ritchie, who was prosecuting, asked: "Is it not evil to sit there and watch someone being executed?"

Mr Ferguson replied: “No. It's evil when you're doing this to someone. I wasn't.

"It's not OK to sit there, no, but no one would challenge Chris. 

"If there had been someone else there, they would not have done anything to stop him either."

Ferguson admitted cutting up Daniel's body but denied disposing of his body parts by burning them in an oil drum and scattering the remains.

Mr Ritchie accused Mr Ferguson of blaming Hutcheson for the killing.

"No,” Ferguson replied. "I'm just a mug telling the truth."

Ferguson lodged a special defence to the murder charge claiming that he was coerced into committing the crimes and said there was no one capable of standing up to Hutcheson at that time.

He also claimed that Daniel said to him shortly before his death: “I know that if you could help me you would."

One possible motive for the murder was that Hutcheson blamed Daniel for the death of his brother from a drugs overdose.

However, he is also alleged to have told a friend: “I just fancied going further to see what it was like."

Hutcheson is also said to have put his cousin's head under water several times after the strangulation to make sure he was dead.

The prosecution witnesses were all agreed on one thing though. Hutcheson could and would kill them if he had to.

In his summing up at the end of the trial the judge told the jury there was "sufficient evidence" for them to convict both accused.

Lord Bracadale said it did not matter whether Christopher Hutcheson or Andrew Ferguson strangled Daniel Hutcheson as they appeared to have been acting together.

He said: "There is sufficient evidence coming from more than one source which would allow you to hold that the two men were acting in conjunction in the murder of Daniel Hutcheson.

"If you are satisfied of that, it does not matter who actually strangled him.

"Whether you accept that evidence is entirely a matter for you." 

Though the trial had taken three weeks the jury only took four hours as the evidence against both men was overwhelming.

Hutcheson was found guilty of the murder and sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment for the double murder, with a minimum term of 25 years before parole is considered.

Andrew Ferguson, then 19, was also found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment at a young offenders' institution and told he must serve at least 17 years.

Christopher Hutcheson was also found guilty of attempted murder and a number of serious assaults.

After the verdicts were announced there was shouting in the court and proceedings had to be adjourned.

Daniel Hutcheson's mother, Lorraine O'Connor, rushed forward as Christopher Hutcheson was led down to the cells and had to be restrained by police officers as she hurled abuse at him.

Speaking outside court, she said: "Apart from bringing back the death penalty, justice has been done. He should burn in hell."

Ferguson's family, meanwhile, protested his innocence and a number of his supporters had to be escorted out of the courtroom.

Before sentencing trial judge Lord Bracadale said both men had taken part in described as "barbarous acts".

He added: "If people failed to pay or otherwise offended you, they were severely punished.

"In the case of John Mitchell, having on an earlier occasion stabbed him and three days earlier having spent a day torturing him, you took him to a remote area and without the slightest hesitation threw him off a high bridge and left him to die.

"Three months later you, Andrew Ferguson, and you, Christopher Hutcheson, murdered Daniel Hutcheson, you put his body in a bath of water and thereafter both of you behaved grotesquely.

"After a night at the dancing you went to B&Q where you bought a saw, bin bags, rubber gloves and cable ties and you dismembered the body in the back garden.

"Everyone who heard the evidence in this case was deeply disturbed by it and people everywhere will be horrified to hear of such barbarous acts being committed in their midst."

During the trial Hutcheson appeared calm and unmoved and was even said to have smiled at some of the testimony.

There were also claims that he attacked Ferguson as they were being taken downstairs to the cells after objecting to the evidence he had given against him,

Hutcheson is also said to have raised his hands above his head and applauded when members of the court cheered both the verdicts and the sentences.

In an interview a few days later a young woman who knew both men revealed how Hutcheson was obsessed with the Gangster Number One movie.

She said: "He loved gangster films. He used to say, `I will make the front page. I will do something that will go down in history'. 

"If anyone like Andrew crossed him, he would say things like, `I'll hang you like a rabbit or bite your face off'. He even attacked Andrew twice in the dock after the jury left the court. 

"His favourite phrase was, `I am gonna murder you'. The only difference between him and other thugs was he meant it." 

Like the thug played by Bettany in the 2000 movie Gangster Number One, Hutcheson had a gang of terrified associates, like Ferguson, to do his bidding. 

And, again like the Bettany character, Hutcheson often carried a small machete to threaten his network of terrified dealers. 

In a newspaper interview following conviction and sentencing, Dr Richard Haynes, of Stirling University, claimed vicious people like Hutcheson get excited by violence - whether in real life or in films. 

But he added the capability for brutality would already have been ingrained in Hutcheson's personality. 

Dr Haynes, added: “I do not think this man became violent by watching these films. 

"He is already aggressive but will use these films to stimulate his interest in violence. 

"The capacity for acts of sadistic brutality is already there. What violent movies do, however, is continually feed that appetite for violence."

"This man had a capability for violence long before he started watching gangster movies - but those films helped feed that." 

While serving his four-year prison term - and before he had even stood trial for the double murder - Hutcheson is said to have written to the notorious killer William Beggs to boast that his murders were better.

Beggs lured supermarket worker Barry Wallace back to his flat in Kilmarnock in 1999 where he subjected him to a vile sexual assault before dismembering his body and dumping his limbs in Loch Lomond. He also dumped his victim's head on the beach at Troon in Ayrshire.

Beggs was given a life term at the High Court in Glasgow in October 2001 and is still behind bars.

It is not known what Beggs’ reaction was to the letter but thought unlikely he passed it on to the police.

Little is known about Ferguson now, but he would have been eligible for parole several years ago.

In 2010 he was slashed in prison allegedly on Hutcheson's orders, for testifying against him at the 2003 trial.

Hutcheson is due for parole in around five to six years’ time having served more than 20 years begins bars.

Whether he should or will be released any time soon remains to be seen.

One thing is certain. He will go down in history as he once boasted. But for all the wrong reasons.