Together with her formidable body and sandpaper voice, “Huge Mags” Haney was the crime clan matriarch who dominated over the troubled Raploch property in Stirling.
The chain-smoking granny and mum-of-11 first attracted public consideration for an anti-paedophile campaign within the 90s.
However behind the headlines and an look on a morning TV present, the neighborhood she claimed to be defending from the scourge of intercourse abuse knew the reality.
Haney’s household have been answerable for a criminal offense wave which had left residents at their wits’ finish.
And worse, she dominated over a vile empire peddling heroin and pocketing enormous sums of money whereas members of her clan did her bidding and bought loss of life on the streets.
That every one got here crashing down when the courageous individuals of Raploch stood up in opposition to her by first making certain she was turfed out of the property.
Later, locals turned to the Each day Report, passing key data to an undercover reporting workforce which gathered proof on her drug dealing.
Crowds cheered as she was carted off in a police raid with defiant Haney, wearing pink sweatshirt, leggings and slippers, elevating a handcuffed fist and shouting: “Get it up you!”
Born in 1942 right into a poor crofting household, Haney lived in a village simply outdoors Stirling the place her father was a miner.
After her mother and father cut up, seven-year-old Haney and two siblings have been taken to dwell in an Edinburgh convent the place she remained for six years.
Later, she made her house within the Raploch property, a neighborhood which endured depravation all through the 80s and 90s, wracked by unemployment and drug abuse.
The Haneys lived within the coronary heart of the property and gained notoriety for his or her legal actions.
Haney’s personal convictions stretched again to l975 and included assault, contempt of court docket, breach of the peace and fraud.
In 1995, Sheriff Norrie Stein branded them the “household from hell” and mentioned they blighted lives within the space.
Two years later, Haney would freely concede her youngsters had made tons of of court docket appearances between them, including: “My youngsters have been introduced up within the jungle.”
Regardless of this status, Haney put herself ahead as a self-styled vigilante in opposition to the specter of little one abusers, main a lynch mob after a paedophile was housed within the property.
She even appeared on the Kilroy TV present to speak about defending children from intercourse beasts and revelled in her mini-celebrity standing.
However residents who knew the true Huge Mags have been sick of the violence, thefts, and intimidation. They needed the Haneys out and one other mob, 400-strong, laid siege to their home this time.
After being hounded out of Raploch, neighbours waved banners in celebration whereas Haney claimed she was the sufferer of a vendetta.
She satisfied Stirling Council to rehouse her in a good-quality homeless individuals’ flat within the city’s Decrease Bridge Road, the place 5 of six flats could be occupied by her members of the family at one stage.
Their notoriety meant council chiefs couldn’t home them wherever else and locals took to calling it “Resort Haney”. The police would come to understand it as “Fortress Haney”.
It was from right here that Haney raked in piles of money from the distress of others as a heroin seller whereas sowing the seeds of her personal downfall.
In 2000, the Report arrange a Store-A-Vendor hotline asking readers to establish drug pushers.
Because the calls got here in, Haney was named as Stirling’s No1 drug seller and jumped to the highest of the record to be focused by a particular investigation. Haney was promoting as much as 600 “tenner baggage” of heroin each week whereas dwelling off advantages of £1200 a month.
She used her council house as a provide base and even bought medication in entrance of her eight-year-old grandchildren.
In her lair, Haney was seated in a giant chair which was identified to guests as her “throne”.
The ill-gotten positive factors have been stuffed into baggage, with stashes of banknotes hidden beneath beds and different locations at kinfolk’ properties.
The Report’s workforce managed to buy two £10 heroin offers from Haney and handed a file of proof to police.
At her trial in 2003, Haney admitted operating a £250,000-a-year medication operation utilizing a community of supply runners, together with her personal youngsters, grandchildren and nieces.
Prosecutor Drew Mackenzie informed how Haney was the controller of the operation. He mentioned: “Haney sat in her home like a queen and he or she was money-motivated”.
On the Excessive Courtroom in Glasgow, Haney, who was 60 on the time and strolling with a stick, admitted supplying heroin in Stirling over an 18-month interval.
Alongside her within the dock have been three different Haneys – her second-in-command, daughter Diane, then 35, son Hugh, then 31, and niece Rose-ann, then 40.
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All 4 pled responsible halfway via the trial.
Haney was jailed for 12 years, serving half that sentence at Cornton Vale jail, earlier than being launched in 2009.
However she didn’t return to Stirling and was as a substitute housed in Alva, Clackmannanshire.
Haney suffered from quite a lot of well being issues in her closing years earlier than dying from most cancers in 2013 aged 70.
Earlier than her loss of life, whereas confined to a wheelchair, Haney was requested a couple of member of the family who had simply been jailed for contempt of court docket in a homicide trial. Huge Mags answered: “She’s introduced whole disgrace on the entire of the household.”