Paul Hamilton

Paul Hamilton was shot in his Daimler car at about 10pm on Tuesday 23 November 1993.

A man was arrested and charged with Paul Hamilton's murder on 15 December 1993, but later released.

Paul Hamilton had been shot as he was driving his car and was found slumped at his wheel after he lost control and crashed into a tenement block.

He had been shot in the back of the head. A man was seen to run away from the scene. The man seen running away was described as being blonde, aged between 25 and 30 and wearing a dark leather jacket.

The police noted that they knew of at least five people that were said to have been in the Cumbernauld Road area near to Dee Street where Paul Hamilton was shot, but that none of them had come forward.

They said that the five people were:

• A man and a woman aged in their 20s who were seen standing near a bus stop opposite the Vogue bingo hall. They said that the man was about 5ft 6in tall, with a medium build, and with dark collar-length hair, whilst the woman was about the same height, with a slim build and with long dirty fair hair.
• Another was a woman aged in her 60s who got on a number 42A bus shortly after the shooting and who mentioned it to the bus driver. She was said to have had grey or black, wavy or permed hair, and to have been wearing large, round plastic-framed glasses.
• The other two people were the drivers or occupants of two cars seen in the area. The first car was a blue Vauxhall Nova that had turned from Dee Street into Cumbernauld Road and the other car was a yellow Vauxhall Astra-type van that had been parked on a grass verge on the south side of Dee Street.

Paul Hamilton had been a mechanic, a florist and a second hand-goods trader with a shop in Alexandra Parade. It was also said that he also dabbled in crime and had a number of previous convictions.

He had lived in Bargeddie Street in Blackhill.

He had become involved with another man about a year earlier for whom it was said he had given an alibi after it was said that the man had landscaped another man, shooting him in the knee on the A77. Paul Hamilton told the court that the man had been in the Caravel bar in Barlanark, Glasgow, on the night of the shooting.

It was heard that on the night that he had been murdered, Paul Hamilton had gone out to collect money for the man that he had given the alibi to.

It was noted that the man that Paul Hamilton had been working for had called Paul Hamilton's wife after shortly after his shooting to find out where he was.

It was also noted that the man that Paul Hamilton had given the alibi to later wrote a book in which he implicated Paul Hamilton in the murders of two other men and the police later said that they had interviewed him in relation to the murders of the two men, who were Bobby Glover and Joseph Hanlon, who were killed in Darleith Street, Glasgow in 1991.

Paul Hamilton was also noted for having given evidence in the murder trial of Arthur Thompson Jr, a heroin dealer, who was murdered on 18 August 1991 and for which the accused man, the same man that he worked for and had given the alibi for in the A77 trial, was acquitted.

His widow said that she regretted the day that Paul Hamilton got involved with the man that he gave the alibis for and for whom he was collecting money on the night he died, saying that that was how he got involved with him. She added that she had a feeling that he was in danger on the night that he went out and was murdered.