A GANGSTER’S overdose death is being reinvestigated – amid claims he was forced to kill himself.
William Manson, who was implicated in the double murders of hoods Joe Hanlon and Bobby Glover, died in 1997 at the age of 58.
His death was blamed on an overdose of the powerful painkiller coproxamol, which has since been banned.
But claims that he was forced to take a lethal dose of the pills surfaced in a book by late crime writer Reg McKay.
And last year a member of Manson’s family wrote to the Crown Office and asked them to look into the shocking allegations.
It emerged yesterday that prosecutors are now examining the claims and the inquiry could be reopened by a cold case team.
A Crown Office spokesman said yesterday: “The procurator fiscal in Glasgow is considering allegations regarding the death of a 58-year-old man on November 12, 1997.
“We will continue to liaise with the next of kin in relation to this matter.”
Hanlon and Glover were suspected of murdering Arthur “Fat Boy” Thompson, who was shot dead outside his home in Provanmill, Glasgow, in August 1991.
On the eve of his funeral, the pair were murdered and their bodies dumped in a car on the cortege’s route through Shettleston.
Manson, who was a close associate of Fat Boy’s father, Glasgow godfather Arthur Thompson snr, was later blamed for the double murder.
Convicted gunrunner Paul Ferris went on trial for Arthur Jnr’s murder but was cleared. The murders of Hanlon and Glover also remain unsolved.
On December 4, 2005, the body of Annie Borjesson, a 30-year-old Swedish woman, was discovered on the shore of Prestwick, on the west coast of Scotland. Police quickly ruled it a suicide by drowning, but Annie’s family wasn’t convinced, and they uncovered some odd things when they looked into it.
When Annie’s body arrived back in Sweden, the undertakers there claimed she had several bruises that she seemed to have incurred while she was still alive. The autopsy in Scotland hadn’t recorded these bruises. There were other marks on her body, too, which official reports had concluded to be the result of collisions with debris in the sea. What most concerned the family, though, were the unanswered questions about Annie’s last day.
Annie lived in Edinburgh, but on December 3, she traveled 129 kilometers (80 mi) to Prestwick Airport for unknown reasons. She tried to withdraw cash using her credit card twice, first £100, then £50. Both times, she didn’t have enough funds in her account to complete the transaction. She proceeded to the airport, where her image was captured on video surveillance in the late afternoon.
Time stamps from the airport’s security footage show that she moved the length of the terminal in 55 seconds. Independent investigators determined that this should take over a minute and a half at normal walking speed and concluded that she must have been running. In total, she spent less than five minutes at the airport. According to a friend who had seen the footage, she appeared to be walking around looking “annoyed and angry.” She then began walking toward Prestwick itself. She wasn’t familiar with the town, which was about a mile away from the airport. A witness later claimed to have seen a figure standing on the beach near the sea, but the figure was too far away to identify.
When Annie’s family began their investigation, they hit a wall of secrecy. Scottish authorities refused to release tissue samples that could help clarify the cause of death. When the family accessed Annie’s email account, they found that all of her emails had been deleted. A friend named Maria Jansson discovered that Annie’s phone company had failed to register any of the calls she had made to Annie during 2005, and the phone company refused to discuss it with her.
Maria began to frequently receive silent phone calls. Family members had problems with their email accounts. Police claimed that there were no records of any calls to or from Annie during her last three days, even though several people remembered talking to her. It later came to light that Annie’s hair had been cut after her death and thrown away.
Annie’s family continues to campaign for a full investigation. Her mother has met with the First Minister of Scotland, and a petition of 3,000 signatures was presented to the Scottish Parliament at the end of 2013. The family wants the police to investigate the possibility that Annie was killed during the missing 16 hours between the time she left the airport and when her body was found.
