Former home of paedophile ex Bay City Rollers manager sold for £1.2 million after renovation

The former Edinburgh home of paedophile ex Bay City Rollers manager Tam Paton has sold for more than £1 million.
Tam Paton, former manager of the Bay City Rollers pop group, outside his house near Ratho, Edinburgh.Tam Paton, former manager of the Bay City Rollers pop group, outside his house near Ratho, Edinburgh.
Tam Paton, former manager of the Bay City Rollers pop group, outside his house near Ratho, Edinburgh.

Paton died in a hot tub at the house, near Ratho, in 2009 after suffering a heart attack.

The Scottish Sun reports that the property has now been bought for £1.2 million by a married couple after being completely renovated by a property firm.

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The house, not far from Edinburgh Airport, was bought for £29,000 in 1974 and became a magnet for teenage boys who it is said would sell drugs on Paton’s behalf.

A property company bought the building in 2013 for £410,000 and knocked down the section where Paton died.

The firm The Scottish Sun: “It was the setting that really endeared us. It was clear this beautiful plot could encompass a truly spectacular home although the house required major refurbishment — ideally rebuilding.”

Paton oversaw the Rollers’ rise in the 70s but in 1982 he was jailed for three years for sex assaults on two boys.

In 2004, he was convicted of drug dealing after £26,000 worth of cannabis was found at the mansion, although he was later cleared on appeal.

Three years later, he was found not guilty of raping the band’s guitarist Pat McGlynn 30 years before.

The proceeds from the house sale went to good causes named in his will, while £2.6 million was left to a kids’ hospice and animal charities.

However late singer Les McKeown, who died in April, previously branded Paton “a thug, a predator and drug dealing b******.”

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Former band member Alan Longmuir, who died three years ago, also suggested in a book he wrote shortly before his death that Paton benefitted from friendships with politicians, police officers and senior members of the justiciary.

He wrote that more will emerge about Paton that will show “depravity ran deeper than we currently know.”

The Bay City Rollers sold more than 120 million records in the 1970s but the band members, who also included Stuart Wood and Eric Faulkner, saw little of the money that was generated by “Rollermania,” the phenomenon which saw them top the charts in Britain and America.

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