Killer Crime Boss Is Removal Man

Mar 9 2008 By David Taylor

Exclusive Crime Boss Who Was Jailed For Life For Executing A Drug Addict Is Now Back On The Street As A Removal Man

A CRIME boss sentenced to life in jail for the cold-blooded execution of a drug addict is back on the streets as a removal man.

Bulky Stewart Gillespie uses the extra muscle he has piled on in jail for his training-for-freedom job supplying a second-hand store.

The 48-year-old gangster looks dramatically different from the ferret-faced gangland killer who was locked up in 1996.

After 12 years of his life sentence, he will walk free later this year.

Paisley-based Gillespie was convicted of blasting 27-year-old Mark Rennie in the back after a drugs-related feud.

Rennie's crime was to have damaged cars which belonged to Gillespie and his brother Billy.

Gillespie also helped run the notorious Ferguslie Community Business (FCB) security firm - a publicly-funded front for drug dealing and money laundering.

The killer was an associate of drug barons George "Goofy" Docherty and Stewart "Specky" Boyd - both now dead.

His new life outside prison couldn't be further removed from the days when he ruled Paisley through fear, threats and intimidation.

He picks up furniture and other items stripped from houses and supplies them to a shop in Greenock selling second-hand goods for charity The Light Trust.

Gillespie bears little physical resemblance to the scrawny figure jailed 12 years ago, after putting on five stone eating prison food and body building

A source said: "Gillespie has spent most of his time in jail bulking up.

"He is one of the most feared guys in the Scottish prison system and he's determined to keep his nose clean until he's completely free. It used to be him, Specky and Goofy but Gillespie is lucky - he has stayed alive behind bars while the other two died on the outside."

Gillespie leaves Greenock prison five days a week and checks in to the anonymous-looking shop in the town's Lynedoch Street.

It is stacked with second-hand items which have been donated to the charity including three-piece-suites, clothes, lamps, filing cabinets and a stuffed polar bear.

Gillespie - dressed casually in faded jeans and a white t-shirt - travels in a van to pick up items which have been donated to the charity.

The gangster was caged after gunning down Rennie in a street in Paisley's Ferguslie Park scheme.

He was also found guilty of the attempted murder of Mark's brother Stewart and got 10 years, to run concurrently.

Gillespie and Docherty were among a gang clad in FCB uniforms who marched up to Stewart outside one of his family's homes.

Gillespie gave fellow gang member Robert Pickett, 43, a shotgun and pointed to Stewart before saying: "Shoot the fat b*****d."

Pickett pulled the trigger but the gun didn't go off. He was sentenced to 12 years for attempted murder.

Docherty then attacked Stewart with a machete. He received seven years for his part in the attack.

Former Paisley MP Baroness Irene Adams received death threats after she called for an inquiry into the running of FCB, alleging it was behind money laundering and drug running.

The firm had been set up with s180,000 backing from the Scottish Office, Strathclyde Region and Renfrew District Council.

Last night, Baroness Adams, who became a peer in 2005, said: "It is quite right that we try to rehabilitate people by letting them back into thecommunity.

"I'm sure that, like hundreds of others, the Prison Service won't have taken the decision to allow him to be involved in a programme like that lightly, and a lot of people will have been consulted before the decision was made."

Docherty was killed in August 2006. He was stabbed and run over with a car in Glasgow's Tollcross.

He had been targeted just two months earlier when he was stabbed 16 times in a failed gangland hit.

Boyd died in a fireball car crash in Spain in June 2003 after being released from an 18-month jail term for witness intimidation.

His daughter Nicola, 21, her friend and a three-year-old girl also died in the smash, after his hired Audi careered through a motorway's central reservation into an oncoming vehicle near Mijas.

A spokesman for the Scottish Prison Service said: "We do not comment on individual prisoners."

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