Lothian Murder Files: Fiend who dodged noose to kill again

HE WAS branded Scotland's most dangerous man, escaped the noose only to kill again, and spent his old age as a drugs baron.

Yet double-murderer Donald Forbes was, to his son James, a loving father who helped with his homework and warned him against violence.

There might have been some contradictions in his life, but Forbes' capacity for violence was unequivocal.

In June 1958, during a robbery on a fish factory in Granton, he kicked and beat 67-year-old nightwatchman Allan Fisher to death, robbing him of a cigarette case, lighter and 11 10s. He later told police he had been "totally berserk with the drink".

The High Court jury took just an hour and 33 minutes to find him guilty, but, perhaps because the mood in the country was swinging against capital punishment and knowing that he was likely otherwise to hang, gave a strong recommendation for leniency.

Nonetheless, Judge Lord Wheatley sentenced Forbes, a trawlerman, to death, telling the court that the killing had been cold-blooded and brutal.

"The admission of repeated blows of such a severe nature on a man who, for the most, if not all of the time, was defenceless and who for the greater part of the time may well have been senseless, that would seem to indicate a callous indifference by accused for the consequences of his actions," he said.

Due to be executed in Saughton on 16 October, Forbes had another card up his sleeve, however.

He had already had one daughter, who had been taken into care and then adopted. Now his girlfriend, 21-year-old Rita McLean, was expecting their second child, and Forbes asked permission for them to marry before his death.

It was granted, and on 2 October in Saughton, he became the first Scot ever to marry on death row.

The event caught the imagination of a public already moved by calls for the abolition of the death penalty.

Forbes became a cause clbre, was painted as a victim of a troubled upbringing and an expectant father with a new wife. There were widespread calls for clemency. Such was the warmth of feeling for the couple that Glasgow millionaire AE Pickard even gave them 1,000 as a wedding present.

The public outcry was heard. On 10 October, Forbes' sentence was commuted to life. Yet the child lived only a few days and never met its father, and Forbes' marriage did not last much longer.

The relationship fell apart within a year of his sentencing, although the couple did not divorce until 1979.

He served less than 12 years before he was released on 11 May 1970, and less than eight weeks later, he killed again.

After a less-than-amicable darts match at the Duke's Head in Duke Street, Leith, a brawl broke out on the street outside. Forbes, inside the pub, was nothing to do with either the darts or the brawl. However, hearing the trouble, he walked outside, drew a knife, and for no apparent reason repeatedly stabbed 21-year-old Robert Gilroy. He then did the same to Robert's 25-year-old brother Charles, who bled to death.

Witnesses later told police that Forbes then walked calmly back into the pub, talking and laughing with a girl.

Within weeks of escaping the justice system, Forbes was back in court, found guilty of murder and attempted murder, and once again facing a life sentence.

This time, the public wanted to see Forbes swing, but it was too late – capital punishment had been outlawed five years earlier.

When the court discussed how rare it was for a man to commit two murders, Solicitor General for Scotland, DWR Brand QC, told the judge dryly: "In the past, a man could not commit more than one murder."

So, on 22 September 1970, Forbes began his second life sentence. But it was not the only time that history would repeat itself for him.

Incarcerated in Peterhead, he began writing to local hotel worker Alison Grierson and, in 1980, was again granted permission to marry. Now 45, he was allowed out to marry the 24-year-old at Peterhead Register Office, their wedding car mobbed by angry crowds.

Within weeks she was expecting baby James, said to have been conceived during stolen moments on their wedding day. This time Forbes' experience of fatherhood was different.

In an interview last year, James described how he would visit his father after school every day in Barlinnie's Special Unit, a controversial experiment which let prisoners' families into the jail.

He said: "It sounds incredible now, but I'd leave school and cross the road to the prison. The officers would let me in and I'd run up to my dad's cell. It was always open.

"He showed a great interest in my schoolwork. He would religiously spend an hour a night doing homework with me."

James found it difficult to reconcile the loving father he knew with the notorious double-killer depicted in the newspapers. "I found it hard to equate my father with this image of Scotland's most dangerous man. The dad I knew would scoop me up in his arms and give me a big hug."

He added: "Most of all, he told me never, ever to be violent. He made me promise to never carry any weapon and repeatedly told me, if provoked, to walk away. He lived in fear of me ending up like him."

It was not all harmonious family life, however. A year into his second sentence, Forbes escaped from Peterhead's maximum security wing, stole a car and was eventually found less than a mile from the Duke's Head back in Leith.

Four years was added to his sentence, he was transferred to Barlinnie, and in 1973 made a second escape attempt, using a hacksaw to cut open the lock on his cell door.

A few hours later he was found hiding in a shed yards from the prison gate, waiting for a chance to bolt.

Before the move to Barlinnie, James's mother Alison, had found another partner, Harry Livingstone, with whom she went on to have two children.

But Forbes sent "friends" to the house to intimidate him, and eventually Alison fled from Harry, taking their children with her.

In 1998, at the age of 63, Forbes was released for a second time and settled in Royston in Glasgow. But it was not to a peaceful old age.

In 2003, police burst into his flat to find it had been converted into a drugs factory. The flat contained 340,000 worth of cocaine and drugs.

Yet again, Forbes was convicted, but this time there would be no release.

Last year, he died, handcuffed to a Greenock hospital bed a mile away from his cell. Some reports said it was old age, others cancer, but either way, at the age of 73, he had racked up 45 years inside.

Scotland's most dangerous man had earned himself a new title – the country's longest-serving prisoner.