Trial & Error: The Glasgow Ice Cream Wars TV - Scotsman online article - British Gangsters: Faces of the Underworld TV - The Ice Cream Wars TV - Once Upon a True Crime TV -
If the judges think they’ve closed the files on the Ice Cream wars they’re wrong. For six years we’ve been uncovering the full extent of a conviction that disgraces Scottish justice. And now at last we can reveal it: it began one winter’s evening 14 years ago in the bleak outer suburbs of Glasgow. Trial & Error: The Glasgow Ice Cream Wars, Channel 4 1998
There was a war on: In Easter week 1984 he [Doyle] was murdered, so were five other members of the Doyle family … We believe that those responsible have never been brought to justice, and that two men innocent of it have already spent a decade behind bars. ibid.
The travelling vans provide a necessary service: there’s money in a van round. ibid.
The Glasgow Ice Cream Wars trial started at Glasgow Crown Court in the Autumn of 1984. The trial did not run smoothly … It was to find brothers [T C] Campbell and [Joe] Steele guilty. ibid.
A conviction which depended so heavily on the word of criminal informants … Campbell and Steele were convicted on evidence which by the law’s own logic simply could not be true. And the system which convicted Campbell and Steele had held in its own files for twelve long years the evidence which could have freed them. ibid.
There are five ways to prove William Love is a deliberate liar. ibid.
As they were cleared at the Court of Appeal in Edinburgh of the murder of six members of a Glasgow family during a fire-raising attack in 1984, Joseph Steele and Thomas Campbell did not turn to each other or their loved ones packed together in the public gallery, but looked straight ahead, staring unflinchingly at the bench.
Their reaction was perhaps fitting in the circumstances – the true legacy of their 20-year campaign for freedom has been their blinkered determination to overturn one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in Scottish criminal history.
The murder of six members of the Doyle family in an arson attack at the height of the so-called ice-cream wars is surpassed in Scottish criminal notoriety only by the horrific deeds of Peter Manuel, who was hanged at Barlinnie Prison in 1958 after being convicted of seven murders. Scotsman online article 18th March 2004, ‘Ice-cream wars verdicts quashed as justice system faulted
In 1984 Joe Steele was sentenced to Life imprisonment for 6 murders during Glasgow’s ice-cream wars. He spent 18 years behind bars before evidence emerged which proved that he was in face innocent … He was eventually released in 2004. British Gangsters: Faces of the Underworld s1e6: Goodfellas? Quest 2014
Two people have died last night in a fire in Glasgow. Seven others were injured. The Ice Cream Wars I, BBC Breakfast news, Amazon 2014
Vicious gangsterism aimed at controlling at major sector of the city’s ice cream trade. ibid. reporter
Ice creams vans compensated for the lack of shops. ibid.
It was not only gangs who had become territorial. ibid.
T C Campbell: part of the Barlanark team … Tam McGraw was very very feared. ibid.
Rumours spread that criminals were using ice cream vans as a quick and mobile way to deal drugs. ibid.
Just three members of the Doyle family survived the fire. ibid.
The Secretary of State has decided to refer the cases of the so-called Ice Cream Wars murderers back to the Appeal Court. The Ice Cream Wars II, BBC news
Effectively the Campbell family were in the ice-cream business. ibid. reporter
Thomas Campbell and Joe Steele became known as the Glasgow 2. ibid.
This is Backend Street in Glasgow’s East End. Standing here it’s hard to believe but back in the 1980s this was the scene of a mass murder that transfixed and horrified the country, and this community which bears the scars to this day. The fire that engulfed and killed six members of the same family was a shocking crime that changed many lives for ever. It was said that the fire was ignited by a bitter turf war. Once Upon a True Crime s1e4: The Ice Cream Wars
‘At that time people were well aware that there were individual officers within Glasgow that were in the pay of serious organised crime.’ ibid. lawyer for Campbell
This one has no ending. Why did this happen? What lay at the heart of an innocent family? And who was really responsible? ibid.
The police case against Joe Steele and Thomas Campbell was built around two witness statements from two known criminals. ibid.