Frank McPhie

Frank McPhie was shot through the head by a sniper in Guthrie Street, Maryhill on 10 May 2000 at about 9pm.

The sniper had been on the eighth floor of a nearby block of flats where people used to hang out washing.

It was thought that he had been murdered in part of an escalating turf war over drugs or a local incident of road rage between him and a member of a local crime family.

The police said that they found that shortly before his murder that Frank McPhee had made a mystery trip from his home in Maryhill to Bothwell in Lanarkshire. It was also found that on his return journey he had been driving at speed in an attempt to escape a pursuing car. The police said that he had travelled along the M8 and then southbound along the M74 in his white Ford transit van, with registration number Q294 TDS.

It was said that the gunman had been waiting for Frank McPhie to returned and had shot him after he parked his van in Kelvindale Road and walked the 20 yards back to his flat, after which he fled through nearby flats and derelict buildings without being seen. It was also thought that he might have even stopped in one of the flats in the building until the situation quietened down. No cars were seen speeding off.

He had shot him from a flat in Carrbridge Drive, directly across from the Frank McPhie's home, with a Czech made ACZ Brno rifle with telescopic sight which he had left behind after killing him.

He was shot dead in front of his son.

The police appealed for anyone that had seen his van making that journey on the day to come forward. They said:

Frank McPhie had been a convicted Glasgow drugs dealer. He had been jailed in 1992 for 8 years for his part in a £200,000 drugs deal. He had also served other jail terms for previous convictions. 

He had also been previously tried, but cleared, for separate counts of murder.

In 1998 he was tried for the murder of Christopher McGrory, but a verdict of not proven was returned.

In 1997 he was tried with another man for the murder of William Toye in his cell at Perth Prison, however, verdicts of not proven were also returned on both men.

He was also described as one of Glasgow’s biggest underworld figures with an involvement in serious and organised crime going back to the 1970s.

The police had been to his flat in Guthrie Street just the week earlier to deliver a threat to life warning, also known as an Osman Warning, which are issued to people where the police have credible intelligence that violence is being planned against them. However, they said that Frank McPhie had been unconcerned about the warning and had made it clear that they, the police, were not welcome.

The police said that their main suspect was a local man who lived nearby and that as such, he would not have attracted any suspicion at the time.

Although it was thought that there might have been a number of reasons for his murder, it was thought that it might have been because of a recent confrontation with a local crime family following an incident of road rage. He was said to have then arranged for one of the crime family to be ambushed and stabbed outside a local Chinese takeaway and to have pulled back his mask to show the man he had been responsible. He was also said to have gone to the crime families scrap yard in Maryhill to show that he didn't fear any reprisals. It was said that it was following that, that the police had issued the Osman Warning to him.

However, it was said that no evidence was found to link the crime family to his murder.

The police were said to have hit a wall of silence during the investigation into his murder, finding no evidence or witnesses.

However, they later found that the gun had been used for target practice against a telegraph pole at a farm in Kilmarnock, and a witness gave the police the description of a man that was seen firing the gun, which led them to arrest a 37-year-old man from Maryhill, who happened to be an associate of the crime family that Frank McPhie had had the confrontation with. However, the charges against the man were later dropped due to lack of evidence.

A detective said: