Home leave lag a no-show at nick

Jul 22 2011 by Denis Brown, Perthshire Advertiser Friday

A CONVICTED murderer is on the run after failing to return to a Perthshire open prison.

Brian Barry McGowan (36) had been granted temporary home leave to Callendar and due back at HMP Castle Huntly last Sunday.

However, the lag, believed to have pals and criminal associates in and around Stirling and Edinburgh, was a no-show and now Tayside Police are on the hunt for the lifer.

Murder

McGowan received a life sentence at Stirling High Court in 1994 after being convicted of murder and was transferred to the Longforgan nick in May this year.

He is five feet four inches tall, of medium build and has short brown hair and blue eyes.

A police spokesman said if anyone believed they had seen the fugitive or knew his whereabouts, they should contact police immediately.

Controversy has plagued the Longforgan prison during the past few years following frequent vanishing acts by inmates.

One notorious con, Brian ‘The Hawk’ Martin – once described as the most dangerous man in Britain – surrendered himself to authorities a week after absconding in May 2009.

Opposition politicians demanded to know why Martin, then 51, and serving a 12-year sentence for assault, robbery and firearms offences, had been transferred from a high-security nick to an open prison.

Regulations were reviewed the previous year after another inmate, Robert Foye, raped a schoolgirl after escaping.

More recently cops launched a hunt for violent criminal, Ian Lennox (32), after he went AWOL from Castle Huntly when on home leave in May this year.

Lennox had been sentenced in September 2008 at Glasgow High Court to eight years and three months in jail for assault to severe injury and permanent disfigurement.

And last December, 28-year-old violent criminal Ian McDonald absconded from Castle Huntly just eight days after being transferred there from a closed prison. Screws conducting an initial search discovered many of the lag’s personal belongings had vanished from his cell and examination of CCTV footage showed McDonald doing a bunk carrying a big plastic bag.

But cops eventually traced the fugitive to his mother’s home in Paisley three weeks later and following a court appearance he had an extra six months added to his sentence.

McDonald had been serving a four-year sentence for assault to severe injury, imposed on April 30, 2009.

l Contact Tayside Police on 0300 111 2222 or tip-off Crime Stoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.