The grandson of Glasgow crime boss Tam ‘The Licensee’ McGraw has been jailed for 30 months after being convicted of a knife attack. Twenty year old Rhys McGraw was charged with assault to severe injury, permanent impairment, and permanent disfigurement of a man in the centre of Glasgow in April last year.
He was handed the two and a half year jail term last week following a jury trial in May at Glasgow Sheriff Court. The charge alleged that he punched his victim Michael Newman on the head and then struck him repeatedly on the head and body with a knife in the city’s Killermont Street near Buchanan Bus Station.
McGraw has now lodged an appeal against both sentence and conviction though no date has been set for the hearing. His late father William was the son of Tam and Margaret McGraw.
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Grandfather Tam died in 2007 from a heart attack at the age of 55, William McGraw died in 2013 and Margaret in 2018 from cancer. At the time of his death Tam McGraw was one of Glasgow’s most notorious underworld figures said to have made a £30 million fortune from a life of crime over almost four decades.
Rhys’s mother Amanda Coletta, told the Daily Record that her son was innocent of the knife assault charges and a victim of a miscarriage of justice. Amanda added: “The jury got it wrong and an innocent boy has taken the blame.
“I have no faith in the justice system whatsoever. I am fighting for my son’s innocence.
“He’s not that kind of boy and would do anything for anyone. I don’t know what effect this is going to have on him.
“I am genuinely concerned for him right now.”
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Amanda also believes the jury made have been prejudiced by recent media reports about Rhys’s gran Margaret. She said: “The week he was up in court his gran was in the paper that’s how we have come to that conclusion.”
It’s understood that young McGraw, who lives in the Calton area of Glasgow had gone into the city-centre with another male to buy food from a late night takeaway when the knife attack took place. For more than 25 years Tam McGraw, who was nicknamed the Licensee, was a major figure in Glasgow’s criminal underworld.
To this day there is still great debate over how he got the Licensee monniker. To some it was a reference to the Caravel Bar he and wife Margaret ran in the Barlanark area of Glasgow for more than a decade until it closed and was knocked down in 1996.
To others it meant he had a licence to commit crime by the police in return for information on other lawbreakers. In his criminal career Tam McGraw rarely stood trial and when he did he was usually cleared or the charges dropped.
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He and Margaret had been childhood sweethearts and they married at a Glasgow register office in 1971 when McGraw was just 18. They then moved down to London to escape the growing police attention and both found work on the buses and in factories.
It was while in London that McGraw was said to have learned how to break past security alarms and into safes. He then set up the notorious Barlanark team who are said to have carried out a series of post offices robberies across Scotland.
All the members lived or came from that one Glasgow housing estate. There were also break-ins to off sales, warehouses and shops with high value thefts of anything from sweets to whisky.
In the early 1980s McGraw, began to focus on other interests including ice cream vans, which were an increasingly lucrative business in Glasgow’s sprawling housing estates. He then became embroiled in the city’s notorious Ice Cream Wars.
The conflict with legitimate traders had resulted in a series of assaults, shootings and vehicles being vandalised. It culminated in the murder of six members of the law abiding Doyle family in Ruchazie in 1984 when their home was set on fire.
The target was 18 year old family member Andrew Doyle who had resisted attempts to takeover his run. Former Barlanark team member Thomas TC Campbell and Joe Steele were convicted of starting the blaze and jailed for life later that year.
Both men spent almost 20 years in prison until they were cleared by the appeal courts in 2004.
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It’s been claimed over the years that McGraw was responsible for ordering the hit on the Doyle flat. Though questioned by police about the murders he never stood trial.
It was around this time that McGraw is said to have become involved in the city’s ever growing drugs trade. In 1993 Glasgow’s crime godfather Arthur Thompson snr died from a heart attack at his home leaving the way open for McGraw to be the main man in the city.
His reputation as “The Licensee” was cemented when he was cleared of drugs importation charges at the High Court in Edinburgh in 1998 following a 55-day trial. By the early 2000’s McGraw was said to be one of the wealthiest businessmen in Glasgow, through security companies and taxi firms as well as properties in Scotland, Ireland, and Spain.
However cracks also began to appear in his criminal empire around this time. Between September 2002 and March 2003 two of his most trusted associates, Gordon Ross, 37 and Billy McPhee, 38, were murdered.
The gangster died aged 55 in Glasgow Royal Infirmary in July 2007 after collapsing at his home in Mount Vernon, Glasgow from a heart attack. In 2013 McGraw’s younger brother Francis, then 55, was murdered at his home in Springboig, Glasgow. The man responsible was given a life sentence the following year.
That same year the body of Tam’s son 41 year old William McGraw was discovered at his flat in Uddingston, near Glasgow in 2013. There were no suspicious circumstances.
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Also in 2013 a movie the Wee Man was released about the city’s underworld starring Martin Compston as enforcer turned author Paul Ferris with McGraw portrayed by John Hannah. Four years later it was revealed that Margaret had sold off her late husband’s taxi firm interests for £1.4million.
Known as the Jeweller because of her love of bling she passed away at the relatively young age of 66, more than a decade after the sudden death of her husband.
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