Archive Crime Drugs Vice FERRIS PAL JAILED: THUG BEHIND BARS AT LAST
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Hitman suspect banged up over car ban after beating murder rap A GANGLAND thug once cleared of a notorious hit on a rival has finally been caged - for driving while banned. Mark Clinton, 35 - a henchman of hoodlum Paul Ferris - was sentenced to seven months for getting behind the wheel of his Ford Probe. Last year Clinton walked free over the Glasgow slaying of gangster Billy McPhee after the case collapsed when witnesses failed to identify him in court McPhee, 38, a sidekick of millionaire crime boss Tam "The Licensee" McGraw, was savagely knifed to death while watching a rugby match in a pub in a brutal gangland assassination. Clinton and Ferris, 41, are friends and appeared on TV presenter Donal McIntyre's Channel 5 show last year when Clinton needed subtitles to be understood. Jubilant Clinton was filmed outside court celebrating when his murder trial collapsed after just one day. Interviewed by McIntyre, he never denied killing McPhee and bragged that he was one of only three men in Glasgow capable of inflicting such violence. He confessed to other horrific knife attacks. But Clinton was sentenced to seven-months at Glasgow Sheriff Court last week after admitting motoring offences. He will be back in court in December to stand trial on a knife charge. A police source said: "He is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, if you'll pardon the expression but Ferris keeps him on side because he can be set off like a two-bob rocket." Ferris recently described his friend as "a good man" despite Clinton being renowned as one of the most dangerous men in Scotland because of his savage violence. Clinton, like Ferris, has reinvented himself as a "consultant" in the private security industry The Sunday Mail can also reveal he was quizzed by detectives after a feud with Jason Dickson - the son of dead drug dealer Vinnie Dickson. Clinton claimed to have won a lucrative contract in London Road, Glasgow, for Dickson's firm Lochwood Security. But the burly heavy later accused Dickson of reneging on a deal to pay him for his work and tried to take over the site. Before being jailed, Clinton told the Sunday Mail: "Lochwood are making £4500 profit from a site I got them so I think I'm due something. I went to London Road and told the site agent that it was no longer Lochwood doing security. "I then got lifted and told if anything happened I'd get the jail for it. "I phoned Dickson and he started ranting and raving." The Sunday Mail exposed Dickson's rogue Hamilton-based security firm three years ago. Earlier this year he was found guilty of carrying a knife at a Lanarkshire building site where he threatened developers
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