The Glasgow crime story of safecracker Paddy Meehan

He was at the centre of one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in Scottish legal history that resulted in him becoming the first and only Scot to get a Royal Pardon.

The sensational story begins in July 1969 after a gang broke into the Ayr home of elderly bingo hall owner Abraham Ross, stealing jewellery, and torturing him and his 72-year-old wife Rachel.

The couple were left tied up for 30 hours, proving too much for Rachel, who died in hospital.

Abraham Ross survived the robbery, and he reported that the robbers had addressed each other as "Pat" and "Jim".

Police suspected two known criminals, Meehan and James Griffiths, who they heard had been in the area at the time.

In fact, Meehan, below, had been elsewhere that night.

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He had spent most of his adult life in prison and was well connected in Glasgow's underworld to people like Arthur Thompson snr said to be the city's major criminal figure at the time.

One man who would have confirmed Meehan's alibi was himself dead nine days later, shot by a police gunman.

Detectives had tried to speak to Englishman Griffiths at his flat in Holyrood Crescent in Glasgow's West End about the death of Rachel Ross.

He knew that both he and Meehan were prime suspects for her murder and thought they were being "fitted up" by police.

Abraham Ross had said that the two men in the house spoke with Glasgow accents but Griffiths was from Lancashire.

With the prospect of a life term looming Griffiths decided he wasn't going to be taken alive.

He began shooting at officers from the flat, hitting one in the back, before escaping through a back garden.

He hijacked a car and led police on a chase through the city.

In a mad two-hour rampage he shot 13 people, —one fatally.

Griffiths' spree, during which he took potshots from a rifle and a shotgun at terrified random victims including children, remains one of the bloodiest episodes in modern Scottish history.

The siege claimed the life of one man, William Hughes, who was shot in the Round Toll Bar in Possilpark.

Griffiths then hijacked a lorry, ending up in Kay Street, Springburn.

Cornered by police, he raced into a block of flats, breaking into a top-floor property from where he started shooting at the people below - including children Detective Sergeant Ian Smith - a firearms specialist - who was drafted in to apprehend Griffiths.

Armed with handguns, Smith and Chief Superintendent Malcolm Finlayson sneaked into the tenement close.

When Griffiths, from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, ignored their pleas to surrender and fired at the officers, Finlayson hit him with a shot through the letter box before the pair stormed the property and dragged him out.

He died from his injuries, aged 34.

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It gave Griffiths, above, the ignominy of becoming the first man shot dead by police in this country.

Griffiths was given a pauper's funeral in Linn Cemetery, Glasgow.

The Lord Advocate ruled that there would be no public inquiry into his death, saying the officers had taken the necessary steps to protect the public. He also praised their bravery.

Later that year Meehan stood trial at the High Court in Edinburgh.

Meehan's defence was that he and Griffiths had passed through Ayr on their way to case a place in Stranraer.

He was a safe-blower with convictions for bank robbery and had no convictions for violence, though Griffiths had several.

However, Meehan's alibi had died in a hail of police bullets.

He had another special defence, alleging that two Glasgow criminals, Ian Waddell and William "Tank" McGuiness, were the guilty pair.

However, the jury did not believe him and he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Before he was taken away Meehan stood to attention in the dock and said: "I am innocent of this crime. You have made a terrible mistake."

Had capital punishment still been an option on that day in 1969, Meehan would have been hanged.

At the time few believed in his innocence apart from his lawyer Joe Beltrami.

McGuinness, who was also a client of Beltrami's, had told the lawyer that he was Rachel's killer.

Bound by client confidentiality, the lawyer was forced to keep the secret.

However, Meehan's campaign was taken up by the famous broadcaster of the time Ludovic Kennedy.

The case took a further twist when in 1974 Waddell turned up at one newspaper and confessed to the Ross break-in and murder, also giving information only the raiders could have known.

McGuinness was then murdered in a brawl in March 1976 in Janefield Street near Celtic Park.

Local criminal John Winning was charged with his murder, but the case against him collapsed because of insufficient evidence. Winning was also later murdered.

Following the death of McGuinness Beltrami asked his family for permission to reveal what he knew of his involvement in the Ross murder which would allow the lawyer to break his privacy commitment. It was given, and after spending seven years in jail, Meehan was freed in 1976 following an appeal.

Later that year, Waddell was put on trial for the murder of Mrs Ross.

At his trial he submitted a defence of incrimination, claiming that the murder was committed by Meehan and Waddell was acquitted.

In 1982 Waddell was later murdered by an associate, Andrew Gentle, shortly after a robbery in which they murdered a woman.

Gentle was convicted of both murders and later took his own life in prison.

In 1984 Meehan was awarded £50,000 compensation (around £180,000 now) for his time behind bars.

However, Meehan wasn't happy with that outcome and the case took yet another bizarre twist.

He claimed he had been framed for the Ross murder by British intelligence over his alleged role in the escape of a notorious spy George Blake in 1966 from Wandsworth Prison in London.

In 1955, Meehan masterminded the escape of Terry "Scarface" Martin from Peterhead prison and did it himself in 1963 when serving an eight-year sentence in Nottingham Prison for attempted robbery.

At the time the world was in a grip of a cold war between the allies and the Soviet Union.

Meehan thought he could make a lot of money by going behind the Iron Curtain and advising the Stasi secret police in East Germany and their equivalent the KGB in Russia on how they could spring supporters from British prisons.

Travelling on a false passport he made his way to East Germany where he was held for 14 months where, according to Meehan, he passed on information about how Blake could be broken out of prison.

Blake, a British double agent who was jailed in 1961 for 42 years for spying for the Soviet Union, then broke out of his cell in Wormwood Scrubs in London in October 1966 and made his way to Russia.

He had climbed out of a window when most of the prison was watching a film and scaled the outer wall using a ladder made of knitting needles.

When he returned to Britain Meehan claimed that he had warned secret service agents that an attempt to free Blake was imminent.

The warning was then passed to the Home Office. Yet no further restrictions were placed on Blake.

During his lifetime Meehan's claims were dismissed as the ramblings of a career criminal with a grudge against the system.

An inquiry into his miscarriage of justice held due to public demand, and chaired by Lord Hunter, was reported back in 1982.

This concluded that, despite a pardon, Meehan's guilt was not disproved, and there was no evidence of the police fabricating evidence as claimed. It was widely criticised as a whitewash.

However it is now generally accepted that the murder of Rachel Ross was committed by Waddell and McGuiness, Meehan died from natural causes in 1994 in a hospital in Swansea from throat cancer having settled in nearby Port Talbot with family members.

After his death, some elements of his life story were adapted and used by the author Denise Mina in her 2005 novel The Field of Blood, with the main character a female journalist bearing his name.

To this day mystery still surrounds the murder of Rachel Ross and its links if any to Meehan.

In a book about his own legal career Beltrami, who died in 2015, wrote: "It was the most astonishing case I have ever had - and the most difficult."