Scotland’s Johnnyboy: The Bird That Never Flew

Product Information

The fighting knife was also found at the scene but Steele claimed PJ had it and he’d never seen before. While most prisoners languished in miserable conditions, Barlinnie’s Special Unit took some of the most notorious and introduced them to an experimental regime of art, poetry and literature. Barlinnie already had a grim reputation when D Hall’s ‘Hanging Shed’ gallows opened in the mid-1940s. The execution cell was the last place 10 prisoners saw before being hanged and their bodies placed on a mortuary slab in a chamber below. Today, Barlinnie handles 20 per cent of Scotland’s prisoners. Even visiting time is a logistical nightmare of around 7300 visitors every month, including around 1100 children.

In what he says is his last interview before he reclaims the life he was denied when he battled for 20 years to clear his name, Joe Steele reveals how the brutal regime of prison life and being fitted up for the murders of six members of the Doyle family did not break him.

When I walked out into the sunshine and into the arms of the people I loved on the day I was finally cleared in 2004, the relief was on their faces and they were smiling. Steele spent many years in HMP Barlinnie as well as HMP Peterhead and the notorious cages in HMP Inverness. PJ, a promising chef chosen to cook for JK Rowling when he was 16, was killed after a fight outside a flat in East Kilbride on the day of Prince William’s wedding, April 29 last year.

He said: “Throughout the years I’d battled the system and never gave up hope. But being taken away from my family and new baby finally broke me. To relieve the pain, I did what I’d never done before – I succumbed to drugs. includes the alleged offences of named individuals unless it is considered to be already common public knowledgeBut like an old lag counting down the days to release, Barlinnie has now entered its final stretch. It was a constructive meeting. Mr MacAskill was really impressed with their resolve and determination to turn something terrible into something positive, through the valuable work they are doing with community projects to help turn around lives. A GRIEVING mother claims this picture is proof that the thug cleared of murdering her son is a liar – and must be put on trial again.

Steele along with his brother Jim and Archie Stein escaped from Barlinnie citing at the subsequent trial that they did not escape they fled the harsh and brutal regime enforced in Peterhead at the time, where they were due to return.There’s not a single prisoner who hasn’t sat inside Barlinnie and thought about how to escape,” says Johnny, one of the few to breach its walls when he scaled a shaft then abseiled 90ft to a drying green below. “It’s part of being in there. You are always looking for a way out.” Some, including notorious multiple murderer Peter Manuel, never left Barlinnie’s grounds. The graves now raise the uncomfortable issue of exhuming their remains and finding a new location for burial. Clearly, the Justice Secretary cannot become personally involved in appeals regarding the re-opening of such cases, that would be a matter for the relevant authorities.