High Court bombed by gang of heavies

DISCOS AND DEATH: A huge armed mob robbed the country at will. Worse, the cops didn't have a clue who they were.

A HUGE armed mob robbed the country at will. Worse, the cops didn't have a clue who they were. Over three years in the mid 1970s, the gang drove the police crazy. A battalion of armed raiders were hitting hospital pay rolls, wages depots and banks with military precision all over Scotland.

Every time some bank was robbed the media would blame the faceless gang. The cops said nothing.

Yet the journalists were right and didn't even know the half of it. It got to hysterical proportions. Ordinary folk fretted their wages were going to be stolen or a trip to the shops could land them in the middle of a full-scale shoot out.

It wasn't as if the folk of Glasgow were unused to armed robbers. In 1973, Al Brown and Sid Draper led a raid on the British Engineering Works in Townhead and a poor night watchman was shot and killed.

That was awful but that lot had been quickly caught and jailed. This new big mob seemed to be invincible.

The police were under pressure and yet clueless about the gang's ID. So clueless they had to give them a name.

XYY Gang, came from the radio code used by the cops. The more dangerous a wanted culprit was the further through the alphabet their code was.

For this team there was no doubt - XYY, the most lethal criminals in Scotland.

When the breakthrough came from an informant, many of the gang were found in Maryhill and in the south side of Glasgow, right under police noses, hundreds of yards from Orkney Street police station.

The cops thought it was the end of the matter but the trouble was just starting.

Walter Norval, a well-known face from the west of Glasgow, was the ringleader.

Norval was a hard man, a gangster of the old school who ruled with iron yet always according to a code.

He had made his name in the gangs, moving on to protection rackets, working pubs, clubs and bookies then, of course, to robbery.

Being a tough guy wasn't Norval's only strength - he had brains, too. With 13 men in custody, the cops began to unravel the scale of the operation.

Scores of large robberies, hundreds of foot soldiers, secret weapons arsenals and explosives.

So big they came up with another name for the team, Norval's Crime Syndicate.

Norval had run his large outfit with a mixture of discipline and determination - that's why they had survived so long.

After their arrest, the same attributes produced explosive results. The trial, due to start in November 1977, had to be delayed when the High Court in Glasgow was bombed in an effort to destroy all the paperwork relating to the case.

Norval's daughter, Rita Gunn, was charged with conspiring to damage the famous North Court but was acquitted. Rita's husband, William Gunn, wasn't so lucky, getting five years in jail for threatening to kill one of the leading witnesses.

The judges - four in all as the gang were to face separate trials - had to be constantly guarded by armed police. Jurors also came under attack and were provided with police bodyguards for the duration.

A leading prosecution witness in prison at the time was provided with a constant police escort and kept in solitary confinement. In spite of this, he was scalded with boiling water.

Glasgow was in turmoil. Who exactly was running the city? Had organised teams got so big and powerful the cops were out of their depth?

Other problems emerged in court. Though the Crown thought they had good inside information on how the gang worked, Norval had kept everything tight. Only he knew exactly what was going on. And he was old school - he wasn't talking.

For a while, it looked as if Norval and his crew were going to beat the powers of the state. Eventually, six were acquitted and seven found guilty of the armed robbery of a bank and a hospital payroll.

Out of many big armed robberies they could only get two jobs to stick.

The cops were furious. They were even angrier when Norval got only 14 years.

The remaining members of the gang went on to commit more robberies, many becoming major players in organised crime. Meantime, Norval served his sentence quietly.

A popular man in jail, he often organised concerts for the cons' entertainment and was never slow to get up on the stage himself. Norval was old school - he wasn't going to let a bit of jail time get him down.

The world had all but forgotten about Walter Norval until June 1999 when a 71-year old man limped into the dock at Glasgow Sheriff Court and pled Not Guilty to possessing cannabis.

His lawyer said the old man used it to relieve the pain of arthritis. The Crown believed him and dismissed the case.

Walter Norval, the most feared gang leader of the 1970s was back in court. This time without bombs.