The Iceman, The Gerbil and other big beasts of the Scottish underworld
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By Chris Summers 15 June 2025
On May 31 two Scotsmen, Ross Monaghan, 43, and Eddie Lyons junior, 46, were shot dead in a bar in Fuengirola, Spain.
In 2012 Monaghan, then 30, had been acquitted of the murder of gangster Kevin “The Gerbil” Carroll (pictured), who was shot dead in the Asda car park in Glasgow, in January 2010.
Today I am going to delve into Scotland’s underworld and find out about gangsters with nicknames like The Gerbil, The Iceman and The Licensee. Buckle up!
Today’s story was brought to me by Amy Moloney who I met at Crimecon UK in London last weekend.
Amy told me she remembered, at the age of eight, the police pitching a tent near her home in Glasgow in 2003, while they investigated the killing of a man called Billy McPhee.
“I asked my mum why the police were camping in the car park of the pub,” she told me, chuckling at her childhood naiveté.
I will return to Billy McPhee later.
I first went to Glasgow, as a journalist, in the spring of 2002 when I met the notorious Paul Ferris – of whom you will hear more later – and Thomas “TC” Campbell (pictured below in Ruchazie) who was out on bail pending a final decision on quashing his conviction for the infamous murder of the Doyle family during the Ice Cream Wars of the 1980s.
Whenever I go to Scotland and buy a tabloid paper like the Daily Record, it’s like stepping back in time, to an era when crime reporters were kings.
Duncan Campbell, the Guardian’s veteran crime correspondent – who I knew well, and sadly passed away last month – once wrote a crime novel called “If It Bleeds, It Leads”, a phrase which was once common parlance about Fleet Street news editors.
From the 1950s through until the late ‘80s, readers south of the border followed with interest the careers of gangsters like the Kray twins, the Richardsons, the Great Train Robbers and Ronnie Knight.
The papers would often have a “splash” (a front page lead) on the exploits of criminals like The Yorkshire Ripper (Peter Sutcliffe), The Black Panther (Donald Neilson) and The Fox (Malcolm Fairley).
But in the 1990s London-based tabloids eschewed crime reporting and front page splashes were more likely to be celebrity-led “kiss and tells” involving soap actors or reality TV stars.
The Scottish press, however, remains in the thrall of the beasts of the underworld.
Only in Scotland, for example, would you see an article like this – a splendid romp through eight unsolved underworld murders north of the border.
We have plenty of unsolved gangland murders in London – Solly Nahome, Mehmet Kaygusuz, Tommy Hole, and Terry Gooderham/Maxine Arnold – for example.
But there’s little appetite in England for such an article.
Amy told me that in Scotland there is even a magazine, The Digger, which specialised in gangland journalism.
She told me: “The Daily Record and the Evening Times are always reporting about gangsters. But it annoys me that clickbait it, with headlines like ‘Why gangsters brutally hacked so-and-so to death’. It annoys me but I guess an extreme headline works.”
So today I am going to take you for a ride among the beasts of the Scottish underworld.
The Gerbil
Kevin “The Gerbil” Carroll was 29 when he was gunned down in an Asda car park in the Glasgow suburb of Robroyston, which was presumably named after the Jacobite outlaw Rob Roy McGregor.
He had got his nickname in childhood, due to his likeness to Roland Rat’s sidekick on television in the late 1980s.
Carroll was an enforcer for the Lyons family and his death, on 13 January 2010, was one of the most memorable moments of a feud between them and the Daniel family which has dragged on for 20 years or more.
Carroll was said to be a “psychopath” who wanted to control Glasgow’s drugs market, so I doubt many people dared call him Gerbil to his face.
In May 2012 Monaghan was acquitted of murder after the judge ruled there was no case to answer because of DNA contamination.
It was said the prime suspect was William Paterson, who was 32 at the time, and was believed to be hiding out in Spain.
Monaghan later also moved to Spain, and there are rumours the Lyons family had good relations with Ireland’s Kinahan cartel, which although nowhere near the force they once were, retained a stronghold in Spain.
On 31 May, 2025 the pair were in Monaghan’s Bar, which Ross owned, watching Paris St Germain’s 5-0 victory over Inter Milan in the Champions’ League final.
After the game was over, a gunman arrived, chased the pair around the pub and shot them. The video footage of the killings went viral.
It is not clear if someone was avenging The Gerbil, or simply taking out more “oppos” as part of the Daniels-Lyons feud.
A few weeks before the Fuengirola murders, the home of The Gerbil’s ex-girlfriend, Kelly “Bo” Green, was reportedly torched back in Glasgow.
Kelly’s stepfather was former clan boss Jamie Daniel – who died of cancer, in 2016 – and her cousin is Steven “Bonzo” Daniel.
Her brother, Kevin “Fraggle” Green, is also allegedly high up in the Daniel hierarchy.
Her stepbrother is Zander Sutherland, who was back in the news in January 2025 after being extradited from Norway and put back behind bars, after absconding while on home leave.
The Iceman
Firstly to clarify – we are not here talking about Frank McPhie, a career criminal who was known as The Ice Man and was gunned down by a sniper outside his home in Maryhill, Glasgow in 2000, possibly by Jamie Daniel.
No, we’re talking about Jamie Stevenson (pictured below), who picked up the moniker The Iceman some time in the Noughties.
Stevenson, who was also known as The Bull, was originally from East Kilbride and began working for the notorious McGovern family in Glasgow in the 1990s.
In September 2000 Tony McGovern was shot dead outside the New Morvern Bar in Springburn.
Stevenson was initially accused of the murder, but the charges were dropped, probably because eyewitnesses felt a cold chill from the glare of The Iceman.
McGovern and Stevenson had been best man at each other’s weddings but they had fallen out.
After the charges were dropped The Iceman left Scotland for a wee while but returned to Glasgow a few years later and tried to take over the city’s drug business.
In 2004 he was brought down by Operation Folklore, a three-year police investigation which involved electronic surveillance and forensic accounting.
He was forced to plead guilty and was jailed for 12 years, and forced to hand over £1 million in cash.
In 2023 I covered a fascinating trial at Reading Crown Court involving the production of FOGs (fraudulently obtained passports).
I will no doubt retell the full story on a future Substack.
But suffice it to say that the gang – who were led by 61-year-old Anthony Beard – were producing FOG passports for villains who needed to get out of the country, or travel around the world, posing as someone else.
They included James and Barry Gillespie, who were involved in drug importation, murder, abduction, money laundering, and the possession of explosives.
The pair had been dubbed the Pablo Escobar brothers by the Scottish press, but had fled their base in Rutherglen, near Glasgow, and travelled to Brazil using FOGs.
The Gillespies are believed to have been murdered in the Brazilian city of Fortaleza by members of the local underworld and in 2022 Police Scotland cancelled a reward they had for the pair after saying they believed they had “come to harm” in Latin America.
Another customer of the FOG gang was The Iceman, who was also from Rutherglen.
The trial heard the gang procured a passport in the name of a real person – David Peter Morton – and applied to have it delivered to a flat in Homerton, east London.
The picture provided with the application has been identified as James Stevenson, who was five years younger than Mr Morton.
On 1 December 2017 surveillance officers spotted Stevenson meeting with Beard at a Starbucks in London’s Victoria railway station. They were looking at paperwork and Beard had with him an A4 envelope, which is believed to have contained the passport.
The Iceman used it to sneak out of the country but in 2023 he was detained in the Netherlands, ironically while out jogging with another fugitive, convicted killer Dean Ferguson.
In October 2024 Stevenson was finally brought to justice after he oversaw a plot to bring nearly a tonne of cocaine to Scotland – worth £76 million – in a consignment of bananas from Ecuador.
I wrote this Substack in December 2024 about drug smugglers’ love of banana boats.
Stevenson’s bananas – and his coke – was found when a ship docked at the port of Dover in Kent.
He was also convicted of producing and supplying 28 million valium tablets at a pill factory, also in Kent.
The Licensee
Remember that guy I mentioned earlier, Billy McPhee?
McPhee was an enforcer and trusted associated of one of Glasgow’s most infamous, feared and loathed gangsters, Tam McGraw, known as “The Licensee.”
McGraw’s nickname did not mean he was a publican.
It referred to the allegation circling in the Glaswegian underworld that McGraw was an informant, a grass, and had a “licence” to do what he wanted because he was on the books of what was then Strathclyde Police (which in 2013 was merged into Police Scotland).
That was why he was loathed in Glasgow.
McGraw had got started as an armed robber but like many turned to supplying drugs, especially heroin, which was a huge problem in Glasgow in the 1980s and 1990s.
TC Campbell – who I mentioned earlier – once told me he believed it was McGraw or his henchmen who had arranged the fire at the Doyle family’s flat during The Ice Cream Wars.
The Licensee walked away untouched.
He was finally brought before a court in 1998.
But a jury returned the uniquely Scottish verdict of “not proven” against McGraw on charges of drug smuggling in 1998 and the attempted murder of a policeman 20 years earlier.
Four years later McGraw was stabbed several times, suffering wounds to his arms, wrists and buttocks, in an attack near his home.
Then, on 8 March 2003, McGraw’s top enforcer, Billy McPhee, was having a drink in a Brewers Fayre pub in Baillieston, Glasgow.
The Old Firm derby had been played at lunchtime.
For those football fans reading this, Celtic’s John Hartson scored the only goal of the game and the Rangers team contained Mikel Arteta, the current Arsenal manager.
It was around 5pm and most people in the pub were engrossed in watching Scotland v Wales rugby match.
A young man in a grey hoodie and jeans did not attract any attention until he suddenly walked up to McPhee and stabbed him several times in the chest before running off.
Amy Moloney told me what she remembered of it, as a child looking back: “We were driving past the pub in my mum’s car and there was a white tent. I now know it was a crime scene tent, but obviously I knew nothing about forensics then.”
She said: “I asked my mum why the police were camping and she said ‘They’re not camping. They’re trying to find something’.”
Amy said her mum, many years later, told her she had turned the TV off or switched channels if there were reports of the Billy McPhee murder.
She told me: “It was about a year after the Soham murders (of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells) and my mum was trying to protect me. She was quite protective of me.”
A 33-year-old man, Mark Clinton, was charged with McPhee’s murder but he walked free from court in 2004, after he lodged two special defenses.
One was that he had an alibi for the “material time” and the other was that McPhee was killed by two men that he named, and a man of Arab extraction who he did not name.
In 2023 Detective Chief Inspector Brian Geddes told The Glasgow Times: “The murder of Billy McPhee remains unresolved, however, as with all unresolved cases, it is subject to review and any new information about his death will be investigated.”
“Police Scotland never considers such cases closed and the passage of time is no barrier to the investigation of unresolved homicide cases,” he added.
As for The Licensee himself, he died of a heart attack at his home in Mount Vernon, Glasgow, in July 2007, aged 55.
After his death, BBC Scotland correspondent Mark Daly said of him: “He was one of the most notorious gangsters that Glasgow has ever seen, spanning a career of up to 40 years which began in the ‘60s robbing local post offices.”
McGraw’s wife Margaret – who was nicknamed “The Jeweller” and was said to be the brains to his brawn – survived him.
Fat Boy and Bananas
Okay, I’m going to pick up the pace now and rattle through some other notorious figures in Scottish underworld history.
Arthur Thompson senior was a Glasgow gangland legend – who had once employed a young Paul Ferris – but on 31 August 1991 his 31-year-old son, Arthur – better known as “Fat Boy” – was fatally wounded outside his parents’ barracks-like home, nicknamed The Ponderosa, in Glasgow’s Springboig district.
He was on weekend leave from Noranside prison, where he was serving a sentence for drug dealing.
Thompson senior drove him to the hospital at speed in a vain attempt to save his son’s life.
Ferris, who was seeking to take over from Thompson as the king of Glasgow’s criminals, was soon arrested and charged with murder.
His accomplices were believed to be Joe “Bananas” Hanlon and Bobby Glover.
But on 18 September 1991 Glover and Hanlon were shot and their bodies left in a car close to Ferris’s favourite watering hole, The Cottage Bar in Shettleston.
Ferris, who had incriminated a guy called William Lobban during his trial, was later sensationally acquitted of murdering Fat Boy.
Lobban held a grudge and in 2014 brought out a book, The Glasgow Curse, in which he wrote: “Ferris has been blaming me for years, saying that I was behind not just Hanlon and Glover’s demise, but all three killings, but he does have a tendency to change his tune.”
“Let’s not forget, during his 54-day trial at the High Court in Glasgow in 1992 he accused me of being the person who shot and killed Arthur Thompson Junior, only for him to change his story and then accuse someone he refers to as ‘The Apprentice’ instead,” he added.
Ferris’s own memoirs, The Ferris Conspiracy, and Vendetta, came out a decade earlier and were penned by the late Reg McKay, a former social worker turned crime reporter.
In his autobiography Ferris referred to Lobban as “Judas” and claimed he had been paid £10,000 to set up Glover and Hanlon.
He also described him as an “ungrateful moaner”.
Lobban was never charged with any of the murders, which remain unsolved.
I remember meeting Ferris and McKay in Glasgow in the spring of 2002. They were great company and deeply knowledgeable about the city’s gangsters.
I was very sad when I learned to learn of McKay’s death from cancer in 2009.
Honourable (or Dishonourable) Mentions
There are a few other gangsters I should name check in a hurry.
Martin Hamilton, aka “Hammy The Poof”, was a heroin dealer in Edinburgh who was notorious for raping his young, male, dealers.
In November 2000 Hamilton (pictured below) – also known as The Blackhill Butcher after the Edinburgh district which was his stronghold – was jailed for life for supplying heroin and torturing rival dealers.
He was released in September 2014 but went missing in April 2015.
His remains were found in woods in West Lothian in December 2015 and the man accused of killing him, James Farrelly, 52, died of natural causes before he could face trial.
Another Edinburgh villain was cannabis smuggler, Roddy “Popeye” McLean, who was known to have connections with London’s Adams Family in the 1990s.
Customs officer Alistari Soutar was crushed to death when he tried to board one of McLean’s boats.
In 1997 McLean was jailed for 12 years for smuggling cannabis.
He was transferred to an open prison in England, HMP Leyhill, and absconded in November 2003.
The 60-year-old’s body was found in a flat in Streatham, south London a few weeks later.
Finally, a special mention for the most intelligent man in the Scottish underworld.
Brian “The Professor” Doran, whose aliases included Gustavo Duran, Bernard Martin, and Bernard Dunn.
He had a degree in Latin American Studies and spoke Spanish and Portuguese fluently.
A former travel agent and hairdresser, Doran started off selling packets of cocaine for the Happy Dust Gang in Glasgow pubs and went on to leading a crime syndicate, worth £10 million.
He was finally brought down in the mid-1990s by Operation Stealer and in 1997 was jailed for 25 years at the Old Bailey.
But the conviction was thrown out after it was found HM Customs officers had broken into hotel rooms and planted bugging devices without any warrants.
The case was due for a retrial in 1999 but collapsed.
Doran walked free and disappeared into obscurity.
EPILOGUE – Michael Riley, 44, was arrested in Liverpool, on June 13, 2025, and appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court in London on the morning of June 14, in connection with an extradition warrant from Spanish police, who want him over the murder of Ross Monaghan and Eddie Lyons jr. He was remanded in custody.
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