Paul Ferris, Glasgow Gangland Figure Turned Best-Selling Author, Dies at 62

Paul Ferris, a man whose life traced an unlikely arc from feared Glasgow underworld enforcer to published author, has died at the age of 62. He is understood to have passed away on Tuesday night at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow following a short illness, according to those close to him.

News of his death was first shared publicly by photographer Brian Anderson, a longtime friend who announced it on his Naked City Facebook page. Anderson described Ferris as a best-selling author and a "former notorious criminal," noting that the news would come as a shock to the many people who knew him across the vastly different phases of his life.

Speaking afterwards to BBC Scotland News, Anderson reflected on a friendship that few would have predicted would endure. He said the two had got on "really well" from the outset, describing Ferris as polite, funny and kind — qualities that sat uneasily alongside the fearsome reputation Ferris carried for much of his adult life. Anderson added that it had been a shock to everyone that their friendship lasted 25 years, a remark that hints at the improbability of the bond between a crime reporter's photographer and a man once regarded as one of Scotland's most dangerous figures.

Ferris first drew national attention in connection with one of the most notorious killings in modern Scottish criminal history. Arthur Thompson Jnr, the son of crime boss Arthur Thompson, was shot dead outside the family home in the Blackhill area of Glasgow in August 1991. The murder shocked the city and set in motion a legal process that would become a defining episode in Ferris's life.

Ferris was brought to trial the following year, accused of the murder. The proceedings, which began in 1992, were described at the time as the longest and most expensive criminal case in Scottish legal history. More than 300 witnesses gave evidence over the course of 54 days of hearings, and the case was estimated to have cost around £4 million — figures that underscored both the complexity of the allegations and the intense public interest surrounding them.

The prosecution's case rested heavily on the testimony of Dennis Woodman, a fellow inmate who claimed that Ferris had confessed to the killing while the two men were being held at Barlinnie Prison. Defence lawyers mounted a vigorous challenge to Woodman's credibility, arguing that the evidence against Ferris was deeply flawed and that the case could not bear the weight placed upon it.

After more than 24 hours of jury deliberations, Ferris was acquitted of the murder and of all other charges in 1992. The verdict closed one of the most closely watched chapters in Scottish legal history — but it did not close the case itself. No one has ever been convicted of Arthur Thompson Jnr's killing, and the murder remains one of Glasgow's most enduring unsolved crimes, a fact that has kept the events of that August night in the public imagination for more than three decades.

Ferris's own legal troubles were not over, however. In 1998 he was jailed for seven years for gun-running, a conviction that reinforced the perception of him as a central figure in organised crime and ensured his name remained firmly associated with the Glasgow underworld.

It was after his release from prison that Ferris began to reshape his public identity. In 2001 he published his first book, The Ferris Conspiracy, which offered his own account of his life and of the criminal justice system he had faced. The book was well received and set the pattern for a series of further publications, many written in collaboration with the writer Reg McKay, who died in 2011. Through these books, Ferris became, in Anderson's words, a best-selling author as well as a former criminal.

His story reached an even wider audience in 2013 when The Ferris Conspiracy was adapted into the film The Wee Man. The movie starred Martin Compston — best known for his role in the television drama Line of Duty — as Ferris, bringing his account of Glasgow's underworld to cinema audiences and cementing his status as a figure of popular as well as criminal notoriety.

Ferris's death has prompted tributes from those who knew him personally, with Anderson's comments capturing the complexity of a man who could be simultaneously described as notorious and as kind. For many observers, Ferris embodied a peculiar strain of Scottish criminal folklore: a figure whose violent reputation was matched by a talent for storytelling and a willingness to narrate his own life on his own terms.

His passing marks the end of a life that spanned the courtroom, the prison cell and the bookshelf. It also draws fresh attention to the unsolved murder at the centre of his early fame — a killing for which no one has ever been brought to justice, and which remains, like Ferris himself, a subject of enduring fascination and unease in Glasgow and beyond.