Glasgow crime stories: The murder of lawyer Marshall Stormonth

After graduating from Edinburgh University Marshall Stormonth had decided to specialise in criminal law.

However his preference was to prosecute the bad guys not defend them.

The Greenock born solicitor could have made more money from private practice.

Instead he joined the Procurator Fiscal service starting at Hamilton Sheriff Court in 1989 then moving to Glasgow Sheriff Court three years later.

By then he was one of the youngest depute Fiscals in the country with an exemplary professional reputation.

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Marshall was also a very talented musician and singer with a strong interest in Gaelic culture and music. He had also won many solo singing awards at National Mods in previous years.

Marshall had spent the evening of November 16, 1993, with two fellow lawyers in the Tron Theatre Bar in Glasgow city centre.

The three had eaten there and remained until closing time drinking and chatting.

Crucially he decided to drive to his home in Glasgow's West End rather than get a taxi.

As a court prosecutor and gay man he was well aware that the city where he had made his home had a dark side with callous brutality never far aware.

But he would never suspect that he was about to be it's latest victim.

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Less than three hours after leaving the bar Marshall Stormonth was found dead in his burning flat in Botanic Crescent close to the then offices of BBC Scotland in Queen Margaret Drive.

A champagne bottle had been smashed over his head. He had been strangled with his belt and tie and his flat set ablaze.

His face was so badly disfigured by the fire it was almost unrecognisable.

There was no sign of smoke inhalation, indicating that Marshall was dead before the fire had been started.

The police investigation centred on two brothers Stephen and Dean Ryan said to work as male prostitutes or rent boys.

They were known to the police for hanging around popular gay pick up points including Kelvingrove Park and The Kelvin Walkway.

Detectives suspected that the two brothers were luring gay men with the promise of sex then robbing them.

Most of their victims were unlikely to tell the police because they did not want people to know of their night time activities. Some had not come out as gay while others were married or had other partners.

Those who did speak out and later gave evidence in court said they saw a man they knew as Marshall in his Renault Five stopping in Kelvin Way near Kelvingrove Park about 11.30pm that night.

It was there that the two Ryan brothers both from Garturk Street, Govanhill, on the city's Southside met their victim. Less than an hour later he would be dead.

Armed with a replica firearm they forced the terrified lawyer to drive them to his home.

Once inside the building they then hit him on the head with the bottle, bound his wrists and ankles, placed ligatures round his neck and then finally set the flat on fire to destroy any evidence.

The brothers then tried to withdraw cash from a nearby Bank of Scotland ATM shortly after midnight using the victim's card.

But the card was retained after three failed attempts to enter the victim's password.

Bizarely one of the brothers then phoned several newspapers including the our sister paper, the Glasgow Herald around 2:15am.

The caller told the journalist that he wanted to tell him about a murder and said the victim was a Marshall Stormouth from the Procurator Fiscal's office.

Around the same time the victims body had been found after a neighbour alerted Strathclyde Fire Brigade when he saw the smoke..

The caller said of Marshall:''He has picked up a boy and he has murdered him and he has burned him.''

One of the journalists asked the caller's name and he said ''Mr Tomkins''.

The information was to later prove crucial to the police investigation.

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Steven Ryan, above, had previously worked for Securiguard Services as a security guard.

The firm were able to tell police that he had had guarded a garage called Tomkins Brothers.

Both brothers stood trial at the High Court in Glasgow in March 1994.

At the start of proceedings the judge took the unusual step of asking the press not to name any of the gay witnesses who would evidence about being in Kelvingrove Park on the night of the murder.

The case against both men was overwhelming.

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Fibres found on the victim's trousers, a pillow and car matched a pair of red jeans belonging to Dean Ryan. His fingerprints had been found both inside and outside the flat.

The court was told that the victim had been prosecuting a trial earlier that day and had gone to the pub with the two defence lawyers.

One of them, the late Paul McBride, Q.C., told the court:''It was a normal after-work occasion. I had never met Mr Stormonth prior to this case but I found him a down to earth, pleasant man and very good company.

"We left the Tron around 11.30pm, and I understood Mr Stormonth was going to get a taxi home.

"There was nothing untoward about his behaviour. He was neither up nor down.''

It also emerged during evidence that Dean Ryan was a police informer and used the name Tomkins as a cover.

Two other witnesses claimed Steven Ryan had admitted the murder to them but showed no remorse.

He even demonstrated how he had strangled the victim using his belt and tie.

At the end of the trial the jury found both brothers guilty of murder.

Steven was given a life sentence and his young brother was ordered to be detained without limit of time.

Little was heard about either brother in the next ten years.

In 2003, Steven Ryan failed to return to Edinburgh's Saughton prison after a work placement on the Training for Freedom programme, He handed himself in at a police station a month later.

However 12 years later he was back in the dock, once again standing trial for murder.

The older brother had stabbed 65 year old stranger and cancer survivor Gordon Murphy 15 times with a scissor blade in an unprovoked attack in Govanhill, Glasgow in December, 2014.

He struck just 11 months after being released from prison in January 2013 for the Marshall Stormonth murder Bizarrely and with echoes of his previous murder he dialled someone to tell them about the crime.

In this he called 999 to say a man had been stabbed and even gave the location before walking off CCTV later showed him duping the murder weapon in the canal in Possilpark on the north side of the city He was convicted of murder following a trial at the High Court in Glasgow in October, 2015.

Judge John Morris QC ordered Ryan to serve a minimum 25 years as he was given a second life sentence.

Describing the “barbarity” of this latest crime, he told Ryan: “It may be that you will never be released.”

The court heard that Ryan's life sentence for the murder of Mr Stormonth involved a punishment part of 10 years but he spent double that behind bars before being freed in January, 2013.

Almost 30 years later there are still mysteries over Marshall's death, including his movements on the night he left the theatre bar.

Had he met one of the Ryan brothers on previous occasions, or even both?

Did they set out that night to find a gay man to rob?

Was it a genuine sex pick-up which somehow turned out wrong?

There was never anything to suggest in court that the Procurator Fiscal had actually solicited sex from the brothers in the park.

His presence on Kelvin Way, could have been completely innocent as it was on his way home.

Another theory is that Marshall had encountered one or both of the brothers in The Tron bar itself.

Steven Ryan later told one witness that he had met Marshall Stormonth in a bar earlier that evening.

Dominic d'Angelo, then editor of the magazine, Gay Scotland, said at the time:"The issue is not that he was a procurator fiscal who was gay. It is that he was an ordinary man who met someone who was willing to take advantage of him with fatal consequences. No-one deserves to die like that whatever his sexuality.''